Merkel and Morawiecki laid the wreaths on Friday at the so-called Black Wall, a place where prisoners were executed in the main camp.
This is Merkel’s first official visit to Auschwitz after 14 years as Germany's chancellor.
She has brought a EUR 60 million donation to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, which works to preserve the site, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
Merkel was set to attend ceremonies alongside a camp survivor and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
More than 1.1 million people were killed by the Germans at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Nazi-occupied southern Poland during World War II.
The victims were mostly European Jews, but also Poles, Roma, Soviet POWs and prisoners of other nationalities.
The German Auschwitz-Birkenau camp operated from 1940 until its liberation by the Soviet Red Army on January 27, 1945.
Over six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, the German Nazi campaign to eradicate Europe’s Jewish population.
(jh/pk)
Source: IAR/Reuters
(More to follow...)