Ban Ki-moon will make history on Monday, being the first United Nations secretary-general to visit the Auschwitz death camp in Poland since the international organization's establishment.
UN spokesman Martin Nesirky says Ban will visit the camp "to pay tribute to the victims of the Holocaust and to stress the importance of the UN's work for genocide prevention, tolerance and peace."
Ban asked Israel 'sformer Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau ,who survived the Buchenwald concentration camp, to accompany him on the visit to Auschwitz. He will tour the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum and has also requested to visit the synagogue in the town of Oświęcim.
More than 1.1 million Jews died in Auschwitz and the adjacent Birkenau death camp in gas chambers or from starvation, disease and forced labor.
Ban will fly to Krakow, Poland, following visits to Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania and will then go on to Warsaw to attend the high-level session of a UN conference on climate change.
The Associated Press contributed to this report