Merkel criticised for Dachau camp visit on campaign trail

Angela Merkel has become the first German chancellor to visit the former Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, but critics slammed her decision to include the stop on an election campaign swing.

Ahead of a beer-tent rally for supporters in Dachau, northwest of Munich, Merkel spent an hour at the site on Tuesday, making a short but emotional speech, laying a wreath of flowers and touring the remnants of the camp with a handful of survivors.

"The memory of the prisoners' fates fills me with deep sadness and shame," said Merkel, 59, the first German leader born after the second world war.

A visibly moved Merkel said that the camp, whose gate still bears the Nazi motto Arbeit macht frei (Work will set you free), stood for "a horrible and unprecedented chapter of our history". "At the same time, this place is a constant warning: how did Germany reach the point of taking away the right of people to live because of their origin, their religion ... or their sexual orientation?" she asked.

Merkel visited at the invitation of 93-year-old Dachau survivor Max Mannheimer, who called the decision to pay her respects historic.

But while Holocaust survivors hailed a long overdue gesture, the opposition blasted a tasteless combination of electioneering and historical atonement.