German Chancellor Angela Merkel delivers a speech during her visit to the former German Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oswiecim, Poland on Friday. Photo: AFP

 

Germany's Angela Merkel crossed the gates of the former Auschwitz Nazi death camp in ­Poland on Friday for the first time in her 14 years as chancellor, promising to battle a new wave of anti-Semitism.

Merkel is only the third chancellor ever to visit the Nazi German camp where a million Jews were killed between 1940 and 1945 and which has come to symbolize the Holocaust as a whole.

Her trip, which came ahead of the 75th anniversary of the camp's liberation by Soviet troops on January 27, is being seen as an important political message.

On the eve of her visit, 65-year-old Merkel said that "the fight against anti-Semitism and against all forms of hate" was a priority for her government.

Merkel was accompanied during the visit by a survivor of the camp, 87-year-old Bogdan Stanislaw Bartnikowski, as well as Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

Merkel said acknowledging Nazi crimes was part of Germany's national identity in a message aimed at far-right calls for a shift away from a culture of remembrance.

Members of the Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party have said there should be less apology for Germany's Nazi past and other periods of its history should be celebrated instead.

"Remembering the crimes... is a responsibility which never ends. It belongs inseparably to our country," Merkel said.