How we talk about the Holocaust now

VICE PRESIDENT J.D. VANCE ARRIVED AT THE DACHAU concentration camp under low, gray clouds.

- MASSIMO CALABRESI

During a visit to the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site in Germany on Feb. 13, Usha and J.D. Vance meet Abba Naor, a camp survivor

He climbed out of his armored Suburban SUV and approached the stucco and cement gatehouse, gravel crunching underfoot. Waiting for Vance beneath a low arch, in front of a gate that had the words ARBEIT MACHT FREI set into its ironwork, was Abba Naor, a survivor of the camp.

Over the course of the next 80 minutes, Vance, 40, toured the site with Naor, 97, at his side. In the first room of the memorial's main exhibition building, a large map displayed the network of Nazi concentration camps that existed at the height of World War II. Gesturing to the map, Naor showed Vance his hometown of Kaunas, Lithuania, and described the route by which he arrived at Dachau in 1944, via the Stutthof concentration camp. On the way, he was separated from his mother and younger brother, who were sent to Auschwitz. "The moment I saw my mother and brother heading toward the train, I realized that was it," Naor told Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust memorial. "I could say 'goodbye' forever." At Auschwitz, and at other death camps like Sobibor, Treblinka, and Belzec, 6 million Jews-2 of every 3 in Europe-were killed.