Schwarzenegger’s ‘I’ll be back’ Auschwitz message raises eyebrows
The film star and former California governor appeared to quote a line from the Terminator films – but the Auschwitz Memorial says he's simply planning a longer visit
Michael Daventry is Jewish News’s foreign and broadcast editor
Arnold Schwarzenegger capped a visit to Auschwitz this week by inscribing an iconic line from his Terminator films into its guestbook: “I’ll be back”.
The 75-year-old actor was visiting the death camp as part of his work for the Auschwitz Jewish Centre Foundation, a US-based body that provides education about the Holocaust.
“This is a story that has to stay alive, this is a story that we have to tell over and over again,” he said afterwards.
But there was some criticism on social media that his guestbook inscription was “frivolous and tacky”.
I'm glad he visited and wrote in the book but I had to think twice about the message. I'm sure he meant it in the nicest possible way and having been there I know its hard to find the right words but I'm not sure these were the best
— ????????????????????????????❤️???????????????????????????? (@LeeLeaLeeLea) September 28, 2022
One Twitter user wrote: “I’m glad he visited and wrote in the book but I had to think twice about the message.
“I’m sure he meant it in the nicest possible way and having been there I know it’s hard to find the right words but I’m not sure these were the best.”
The Auschwitz Memorial said it was “meant to be a promise to return for another and more in-depth visit”, because this trip was planned to be relatively short.
Schwarzenegger’s visit did include a meeting with a woman who was subjected to experiments by Nazi doctor Josef Mengele when she was three years old.
He also saw the watchtowers and the remains of gas chambers at the site of the death camp in Poland where around 1.1 million people were killed – the vast majority of them Jews.
Referring to his father Gustav, who was a Nazi soldier during the war, Schwarzenegger said: “I was the son of a man who fought in the Nazi war and was a soldier. Let’s fight prejudice together and let’s just terminate it once and for all.”
Gustav Schwarzenegger was wounded fighting Soviet Russia in Leningrad and, according to his son, returned to his native Austria as a physically and emotionally broken man after being lied to as he fought.
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