MUNICH, Germany – Vice President J.D. Vance visited the Dachau concentration camp, one of the first of the camps established during Nazi rule. He was joined by his wife, Usha, as well as Abba Naor, a 97-year-old survivor of a Dachau sub-camp.
Speaking to his tour guides and members of the traveling press pool, including The National Pulse, Vance said: “We’re grateful to the leadership of this memorial site here at Dachau and especially grateful to our new friend Abba here for being willing to share his story.
“I’ve read a lot about the Holocaust in books, but being here and seeing it up close in person really drives home what unspeakable evil was committed and why we should be committed to ensuring that it never happens again,” he said.
“I really am really moved by this site, and I think that while it is, of course, a place of unspeakable atrocity and terror and evil, it’s very important that it’s here. And it’s very important that those of us who are lucky enough to be alive can walk around can know what happened here and commit ourselves to prevent it from happening again.
Naor told Vance that he lives with his memories of Dachau “every day.”
The Vice President and the Second Lady also participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at the memorial site’s International Monument, which was followed by a moment of silence. A bronze sculpture shows human figures entangled in barbed wire.

Their visit began at the Jourhaus, the camp entrance, which prisoners were forced to construct in 1936. Every newly arrived prisoner passed through the Jourhaus’s wrought-iron gate, which had the infamous, cynical inscription “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work will set you free”).
They also saw the “Schubraum,” or the “push room,” where newly arrived prisoners were subjected to degrading intake procedures, including surrendering their clothes and personal items.
NOW: @VP @JDVance arrives at Dachau concentration camp outside Munich. pic.twitter.com/hNcYHS4hKO
— Raheem. (@RaheemKassam) February 13, 2025
The visit comes ahead of Vance’s speech tomorrow at the Munich Security Conference and his bilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
During his visit to Dachau, Vance and the Second Lady were shown maps of how the camps operated and heard stories of both those who survived and those who perished.
Dachau was established in 1933 and held more than 200,000 individuals, with over 40,000 inmates dying there. U.S. forces liberated the camp on April 29, 1945.