MUNICH, Germany (AP) - U.S. Vice President JD Vance will visit the Dachau concentration camp memorial Thursday, making a stop at one of the most powerful symbols of World War II on the eve of his critical talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about the three-year Russia-Ukraine conflict.
VP Vance is visiting the Dachau concentration camp memorial on eve of his big meeting with Zelenskyy
MUNICH, Germany (AP) - U.S. Vice President JD Vance will visit the Dachau concentration camp memorial Thursday, making a stop at one of the most powerful symbols of World War II on the eve of his critical talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about the three-year Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Vance, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is due to sit down Friday with Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference to discuss President Donald Trump's intensifying push for Ukraine and Russia to begin negotiations to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.
But first Vance is stopping at the solemn memorial that is a powerful reminder of the Nazis’ World War II-era atrocities and the U.S. and Western allies’ slowness to take decisive action to confront Adolf Hitler and the rise of his violent nationalist ideology.
Dachau was established in 1933 - the same year Hitler took power - as one of the first concentration camps. More than 200,000 people from across Europe were held at the camp, and over 40,000 prisoners died there in horrendous conditions. U.S. soldiers completed the liberation on April 29, 1945.