All now are very aged, like Helena Dunicz Niwinska, 101, who played the violin in the Auschwitz orchestra.
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The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp opened in 1940 in Oswiecim, a Polish city that the Nazis annexed.
The pope will travel the 3km to Birkenau, the main extermination site, and be driven along tracks laid in 1944 to allow trains of prisoners to be transported directly to the gas chambers and crematoria.
Those who helped people persecuted by the Nazis sometimes paid the ultimate price.
Pope Francis walks through the entrance of the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz on July 29, 2016 in Oswiecim as part of his visit to the World Youth Days (WYD).
It was a contemplative and private visit of almost two hours that Francis passed in silence, except for a few words he exchanged with camp survivors and Holocaust rescuers.
Passing each plaque, Pope Francis reached the end of the monument where he set a candle in a large glass bowl and once again stood in silence, clasping his hands together over his chest in prayer.
Pope Francis also left a message in Auschwitz’s commemorative book, writing in Spanish: “Lord, have mercy on your people”. He then signed with his name in Latin, “Franciscus” and added the date “29.7.2016”.
Later, however, Francis spoke with passion about his Auschwitz visit to a crowd of young people gathered outside the archbishop’s residence where he was staying for the night.
He said: “How much pain?”
“To serve with love and tenderness persons who need our help makes all of us grow in humanity”. The psalm begins with a cry to God: “From the depths I have cried out to you, O Lord”. “I come here today as a son of the German people”.
“This is the sign of true civility, human and Christian: to make those who are most disadvantaged the center of social and political concern”, he said. “In many places in the world, where there is war the same thing happens”, he said.
“How I would wish that we Christians could be as close to the sick as Jesus was, embracing them and willingly seeking them out”, Pope Francis said.
Unlike Pope Benedict, who was German and the Polish-born Pope John Paul II, Pope Francis has no personal connection with the notorious concentration camp where the Nazis turned mass murder into an industry.
The frail, 82-year-old John Paul II consecrated the new basilica during his last visit to his homeland in 2002, by anointing its white marble altar and celebrating prayers there. His visit, the first ever by a pontiff, was part of his overall efforts aimed at healing centuries of bitterness between the Vatican and Jews.
Free for once of his security entourage or cardinals, he sat on a bench among the trees and bowed his head in prayer, remaining at length in silent contemplation before meeting Holocaust survivors.
The Pontiff also prayed in the cell of St Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan friar who volunteered to die at Auschwitz to save the life of a family man. A few shafts from a tiny window were the only light cast on the white-clad figure.
While he prayed, the voice of Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Joseph Schudrich echoed Psalm 130 in Hebrew throughout the camp.
Francis devoted Friday to the theme of suffering.
“I would like to listen to everyone here, even if for only a moment, and to be still before questions that have no easy answers”.
Yad Vashem in Israel has recognized 6,620 Polish gentiles who sheltered Jews among the so-called “Righteous Among the Nations”.
Fellow survivor Alojzy Fros, who turns 100 this year, said the memories of death were seared into his mind.
He noted that a US group, the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, offers them some financial help.
For John Paul and Benedict, “those trips were nearly cathartic” and they set a template for the popes to follow, said Gibson.
Some media commentators have accused Polish Church leaders of enjoying a lifestyle protected from the difficulties of Poland’s economic transition from communism to capitalism.
Pope Francis has met with several survivors of the Auschwitz death camp during a historic visit to the memorial site in southern Poland.
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Among those present for the solemn occasion was Rabbi Abraham Skorka, a longtime friend of the pope from Buenos Aires.
