French president visits gas chamber to honor Nazi camp victims
PARIS - French President Francois Hollande will hold a moment of remembrance on Sunday afternoon inside a former gas chamber to honor Jews, Gypsies and French resistance fighters killed in the only Nazi concentration camp on French soil.
The ceremony at the Natzweiler-Struthof camp in Alsace is among events marking 70 years since the last Nazi camps were liberated by Allied troops in World War II.
Fighters resisting the Nazi occupation of France made up most of the around 50,000 inmates of the Natzweiler-Struthof camp. Nearly half the inmates died.
The Nazis also built and tested one of their first gas chambers at the camp. Hollande and European Parliament President Martin Schultz will visit the chamber and unveil plaques in memory of the Jews and Gypsies killed there.
