England Players to Visit Auschwitz, Meet Survivors

The players on England's Euro 2012 soccer squad will visit the Auschwitz death camp when they travel to Poland for the European Championship.

The final tournament of the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship, or Euro 2012, will be hosted by Poland and the Ukraine between June 8 and July 1, 2012.

England's players will go to Auschwitz before their opening game against France. They will sign the museum's guest book and light a candle of remembrance on the train tracks at Birkenau.

Other team members will visit Oskar Schindler's factory in Krakow, where the gentile owner helped save more than a thousand Jewish lives. Some senior players and staff will meet with Holocaust survivor Zigi Shipper and meet weightlifting champion Ben Helfgott, another survivor.

The English Football Association and the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET) have partnered to produce an educational program on the Holocaust for all secondary schools and colleges in England.

"This educational partnership brings together the important work of teaching future generations about the horrors of the Holocaust, using the ability of football to interest and engage young people," said Football Association chairman David Bernstein.