Clinton announces U.S. pledge of $15M for Auschwitz preservation

The Obama administration has pledged $15 million to the foundation created to preserve the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced the grant Saturday that will go to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, created in 2008 after the museum at Auschwitz said it lacked the funds needed for renovations. The group has sought more than $150 million in contributions from the international community.

During World War II, 1.1 million died at the hands of Nazis at the Auschwitz death camp.

The $15 million U.S. grant would be given over five years starting in 2012 and is subject to congressional approval.

Germany has pledged more than $75 million to the foundation so far.

Clinton announced the grant at in Krakow, Poland, at the Schindler Factory Museum, which honors Oskar Schindler, the German manufacturer who saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust.

"The preservation and continuation of Auschwitz-Birkenau is essential so that future generations can visit and understand how the world can never again allow a place of such hatred and persecution to exist," the State Department said in announcing the grant. "It is also an important educational tool to show those who doubt that the Holocaust ever existed that indeed, tragically, it did."