Arnold Schwarzenegger – whose father was a decorated Nazi – visits Auschwitz where he meets son of Holocaust survivor, signs visitor book ‘I’ll be back’ and says: Let’s terminate hate’

• Arnold Schwarzenegger visited the Auschwitz Nazi death camp on Wednesday
• He spoke against prejudice and hatred, something he feels strongly about
• He met a woman who as a 3-year-old child was subjected to cruel experiments
• The Austrian’s own father was a Nazi soldier during the Second World War

Beloved action hero star Arnold Schwarzenegger visited the Auschwitz Nazi death camp on Wednesday to deliver the message of ‘terminating prejudice once and for all.’

The former Governor of California viewed the barracks, watchtowers and remains of gas chambers that endure as evidence of the Nazi extermination of Jews and others during World War II.

He also met with a woman who as a 3-year-old child was subjected to experiments by the notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, known as the Angel of Death infamous for his cruel experimentation on inmates at Auschwitz.

‘This is a story that has to stay alive, this is a story that we have to tell over and over again,’ he said after his visit to the site of the death camp, speaking in a former synagogue that now is home to the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation.

‘Let’s fight prejudice together and let’s just terminate it once and for all,’ Schwarzenegger said.

He stood alongside Simon Bergson, who was born after the war to Auschwitz survivors. The Terminator actor said that he and Bergson, who are close in age, were united in their work to fight prejudice.

Actor and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger visited former Nazi German concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, near Oswiecim, Poland today

The former Governor of California viewed the barracks, watchtowers and gas remains of gas chambers that endure as evidence of the Nazi extermination of Jews and others during World War II

‘Let’s fight prejudice together and let’s just terminate it once and for all,’ the Terminator actor said after his tour of the concentration camp

Schwarzenegger was alongside Simon Bergson (right), who was born after the war to Auschwitz survivors

Schwarzenegger signed the visitor’s book with his immortal catchphrase ‘I’ll be back’

Schwarzenegger, who is originally from Austria, also mentioned his own family history. 

‘I was the son of a man who fought in the Nazi war and was a soldier,’ the 75-year-old said.

He has spoken openly in the past about his father, Gustav Schwarzenegger, being a Nazi soldier during the war.

Gustav Schwarzenegger (17 August 1907 – 13 December 1972), father of Arnold

After his visit to Auschwitz, he vowed it wouldn’t be his last, signing the visitor’s book with his immortal phrase ‘I’ll be back’.

His visit to the harrowing heart of the Nazi extermination of the Jews and others during World War II in southern Poland was his first and came as part of his work with the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation, whose mission is to fight hatred through education.

He received the foundation’s inaugural ‘Fighting Hatred’ award in June for his anti-hatred stance on social media. He said he couldn’t attend in person then because he was filming a new action series in Canada and was in a ‘COVID bubble.’ 

He told Russians in a video posted on social media in March that they were being lied to about the war in Ukraine and accused President Vladimir Putin of sacrificing Russian soldiers to his own ambitions.

In that video he brought up painful memories about how his own father was lied to as he fought, and how he returned to Austria a broken man, physically and emotionally, after being wounded at Leningrad.

He posted it on his 22.2million Instagram followers and media company ATTN’s Facebook page, sharing his love for Russia and the Russian people before making scathing remarks to Putin and the Kremlin. 

Arnold Schwarzenegger has made a direct appeal to the Russian President and the people of Russia to shed light on the ‘the truth’ about the invasion on Ukraine, describing it as a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’

Describing himself as a ‘long-time friend’ of the Russian people, he gives a direct message to Putin: ‘To President Putin, I say, you started this war. You are leading this war. You can stop this war.’

He also asks Putin and his Kremlin counterparts: ‘Let me just ask you, why would you sacrifice those young men for your own ambitions?’

The nine-minute clip garnered over 250,000 Instagram views, and 120,000 on Facebook, in an hour, with thousands commenting support and praise to the film star for his efforts to help stop the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Historians estimate that around 1.1 million people were killed at Auschwitz during the war. Around 1 million of them were Jews. Some 75,000 Poles were killed there, as well as Roma, Russian prisoners of war and others.

Who was Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death? 

Josef Mengele, the unspeakable Angel of Death at the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz during the Holocaust

Born in 1911 in Günzburg, near Ulm, Germany, he received his medical degree in 1938, the same year he joined the SS.

After being injured on the Easter Front in 1943 serving as a field medic, he was transferred to Auschwitz to be a camp doctor. 

One of the main duties of Dr Josef Mengele at the Auschwitz death camp was to select who would be kept alive to work and who would be sent to the gas chambers when new prisoners arrived.

He got his nick name from his coldly cruel demeanor on the ramp new arrivals walked up, often appearing there even when off duty.

But he gained horrific notoriety for his medical experiments on pairs of twins, where he performed a broad range of agonizing and often lethal experiments, most of them children.

He also acquired the habit of collecting the eyes of his murdered victims, supposedly for medical purposes.

He was a devout believer in Nazi ideology and carried out barbaric experiments to prove the degeneracy of Jews and gypsies and their susceptibility to various diseases.

Many of his ‘test subjects’ died as a result of the experimentation or were murdered in order to facilitate post-mortem examination. 

After the war he managed to escape war crimes charges and fled to South America, where he lived until he died in Brazil in 1979 aged 67.

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