Death camp horrors shock England soccer players

England soccer players at Auschwitz. Photo / Michael Regan

Walking through the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz, the horrors of the Holocaust were brought home to England's footballers yesterday.

Shaking their heads in astonishment, the players spent around 90 minutes hearing about the magnitude of the atrocities committed at the former Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau camps, where an estimated 1.1 to 1.5 million people died during World War II.

Striker Wayne Rooney paused to read one sign: The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again.

After entering the building housing gas chambers and ovens, defender Phil Jagielka read aloud another sign: You are entering a building where the SS murdered thousands of people. "I knew a bit about Auschwitz but this tells you so much more," Jagielka said later. "The lads wanted to come here. You would like to think society has moved on. Unfortunately, there are people out there who have extreme views."

The players, watched as England manager Roy Hodgson and Football Association chairman David Bernstein donned skull caps to light candles at the site where prisoners got off trains at the most notorious death camp Nazi Germany operated on Polish soil.

Linking Europe's darkest days and football was the Jewish former Chelsea manager Avram Grant, who joined the England delegation to recall how 15 members of his family were among the Auschwitz victims.

"It's very important you are here," the former Israel manager told the players by the Auschwitz ovens. "It's important to talk about this and spreads the message of what happened here."

"It is unreal," winger Theo Walcott. "I learned some of this stuff at school but I could never imagine anything on this scale."

One of the most harrowing scenes for the players was the stacks of shoes and glasses removed at the camp.

"You see the children's clothes and shoes, it's really sad," Rooney said. "You have to see it firsthand. You don't realise how those who lived there to work managed without food, without water. It's a form of torture and then they died. The others got murdered.

"It's good for us to see what happened and get that history, how it happened. It puts football into perspective. It's a disaster, what happened. It will never be forgotten."

Other members of the squad visited the Krakow factory where German businessman Oskar Schindler employed Jewish workers to spare them from concentration camps during the liquidation of the ghetto in the city where England are based for Euro 2012.

"Coming here makes you grateful for what you have got but you must not rest on that," said Joleon Lescott, whose team faces France on Tuesday in their first match. "You must not take that for granted. You have to move forward and use this information to pass on to our children to show how people struggled and survived." David Beckham has moved a step closer to realising his dream of Olympic participation after being named in Great Britain's 35-man provisional squad.

The announcement of Stuart Pearce's 18-man squad will be made on July 6 and if confirmed in that line up,

Beckham would appear as one of three permitted over-age players.

Ryan Giggs, Craig Bellamy, Rio Ferdinand and Frank Lampard have also been mentioned as potential candidates.

-AAP