Arnold Schwarzenegger has visited the site of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp, meeting a Holocaust survivor and the son of survivors, and saying it is time to end hatred.
The former California governor and barracks look at the remains of gas chambers that have been uncovered during World War II as evidence of the German extermination of Jewish people and others.
He also met Lydia Maksimovicz, a three-year old child who was subjected to experiments by the notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.
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 is now home to the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation.
He stood next to Simon Bergson, who was born after the war to Auschwitz survivors, and mentioned his own family history.
Schwarzenegger, a 75-year-old, said he was the son of a man who fought in the Nazi war and was a soldier.
He said that he and Mr Bergson, who are close in age, were united in their work.
Arnold and I are living proof that hatred can be shifted completely within a generation, according to Bergson. Governor, thank you for joining us today. Schwarzenegger was the first to visit the site in southern Poland, which was under German occupation during WWII, and was part of his work with the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation, whose mission is to fight hatred through education.
He received the inaugural Fighting Hatred Award in June for his anti-hatred stance on social media.
He said he couldn't attend in person due to the fact he was filming a new action series in Canada and was in a COVID bubble. After his visit to Auschwitz, he promised that it wouldn't be his last. I'll be back, he said, using a famous line from The Terminator.
Schwarzenegger, who was originally from Austria, has spoken openly about his father, Gustav Schwarzenegger, who was a Nazi soldier during the war.
In a video posted on social media in March, he told Russians 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 of how his father was lied to as he fought, and how he returned to Austria as a broken man after being wounded in Leningrad.
Approximately 1.1 million people were killed in Auschwitz during the war, according to Historians. Nearly 1 million of them were Jewish. Some 75,000 Poles were killed there, as well as Roma, Russian prisoners of war and others.