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Austrian-born Schwarzenegger, 75, is the son of
a Nazi party member who served in the German army in World War
Two.
The former California governor and Auschwitz Jewish Center
Foundation Chairman Simon Bergson, the son of Holocaust
survivors, highlighted how prejudice can be wiped out in the
space of a generation.
"He (Bergson) was born after the Second World War to this
wonderful Jewish family and I was the son of a man who fought in
the Nazi war and was a soldier," he told reporters.
"One generation later - here we are... we both fight prejudice
and hatred and discrimination."
More than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, perished in the gas
chambers or from starvation, cold and disease at Auschwitz,
which the Nazis set up in occupied Poland during World War Two.
Schwarzenegger entered the camp through the main gate which
bears the phrase "Arbeit macht frei", or "Work makes you free".
He then visited the exhibition of the Auschwitz Memorial museum
and a crematorium.
He placed candles at the 'Death Wall', where German soldiers
shot many inmates, and at a monument to victims in the Birkenau
section of the camp.
During the visit he also met Holocaust survivor Lidia
Maksymowicz, who was an inmate in the camp when she was three
years old.
"People like her can help us to never stop telling that story
about what happened here 80 years ago... this is a story that
has to stay alive," Schwarzenegger said.
(Reporting by Kuba Stezycki, writing by Alan Charlish, editing
by Alexandra Hudson)
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