Pope Francis visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp this weekend, a powerful experience made even more meaningful for the pontiff by his meeting with 25 Righteous Gentiles Among the Nations — Christian Poles who risked their lives to rescue Jews during the Holocaust.

The meeting was arranged for this past Friday by the Chief Rabbi of Poland, Rabbi Michael Schudrich, a New Yorker whose grandparents immigrated to the United States from Poland.

The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous offers financial support to the 200-plus “Righteous Among the Nations” who are still alive in Poland.

For some time, Schudrich has contemplated what kind of spiritual gift he could give these precious people who were so willing to risk their lives for the souls of Jews.

“I thought a special blessing from the pope would make them feel honored because of their unbelievable morality and humanity,” he told Associated Press.

New York’s World Trade Center was all lit up Sunday night in blue and white — the colors of the Israeli flag — to honor the memory of Holocaust survivor and renowned author Elie Weisel.

The gesture by the City of New York was made as the body of the Nobel Laureate was laid to rest at the Sharon Gardens cemetery in Valhalla, New York, in Westchester County.

The Nobel laureate passed away in New York on Saturday at the age of 87 after a long illness. He is survived by his wife Marion and his son Elisha, a partner at Goldman Sachs.

Wiesel, who dedicated his life to ensuring future generations would never forget the Holocaust, lived to see and enjoy his two grandchildren after having survived the Auschwitz death camp.

Social media is still all a-Twitter with comments about the latest attempt by the Auschwitz Holocaust memorial museum to cool off visitors to its site. The museum, which issued a statement explaining its position, appears to be digging itself further into an already difficult situation.

In an attempt to reduce the risk to tourists from one of the worst heat waves ever to hit Poland, the site installed a long length of misting shower heads right in front of the death camp.

It is the first sight to greet visitors to Auschwitz, and has shocked many to their very core.

But the Auschwitz Holocaust memorial museum explained in a statement this week that the showers were simply a “public safety measure.”

“We must do everything possible to minimize the risks connected with the heat and high temperatures and take care of the safety of health of our visitors,” museum officials said in a statement posted to Facebook. “The health of visitors is for us the priority during the time of these extreme heats and the sprinklers have been really helpful. The sprinklers are installed on the days of highest temperatures and removed with the temperature drops.”

Tourists making a pilgrimage to the Auschwitz death camp found the reasoning to be bizarre.

One visitor told the Hebrew-language Ynet news site, “It was a punch to the gut.”

More than a million Jews were exterminated at the site by the Nazi regime during World War II, the vast majority murdered in facilities where they were told they were entering ‘shower rooms.’ The “showers” were lethal gas chambers from which the bodies of Jews were then dragged to crematoria for efficient disposal.

Countless visitors come to the camp, among them many Israelis and other Jews, including those who lost relatives in the Holocaust.

Israeli high schools have adopted the custom of bringing eleventh grade students to the Nazi death camps on a special field trip each year called “March of the Living,” to teach them about this part of their history. Special preparations for the trip begin months before the students’ flight to Poland.

Numerous visitors who have been to the site have also posted about the experience on the Google-plus social networking site as well.

The location of the gas chambers at the notorious Sobibor death camp has been revealed, Yad Vashem announced Wednesday.

On October 14, 1943 some 600 prisoners rose up in revolt and escaped from the camp. Most were recaptured or murdered, but 100 to 120 managed to survive. Of those, 60 made it through to the end of the war, when Allied Forces arrived to free the captives.

But a quarter of a million Jews were murdered at the death camp in Poland, where the Nazis worked hard to cover up their evil crime. After the uprising, the Nazis bulldozed the site and planted evergreen trees to conceal the mass graves.

Now, an archaeological dig has uncovered the truth nevertheless.

Dr. David Silberklang, a senior researcher at the Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust research said, “The discovery of the exact location of the gas chambers at the Sobibior Camp is a discovery of the utmost importance in Holocaust research.”

He said it was important to understand that “there are no remains from any Jews who worked in the area of the gas chambers, and therefore these findings are the only thing left from those who were murdered.” Silberklang said “a small window has been open into their daily suffering.”

Personal effects of the victims who lived and died in the tragedy have been found near the gas chambers. Among the items uncovered were jewelry – including wedding rings – and perfumes, medicine and utensils.

Archaeologist Yoram Haimi added that “we found near the gas chambers wedding rings with the inscription in Hebrew, ‘Harei at mekudeshet li” (Behold, thou art consecrated unto me.”)

Silberklang said that for the first time the excavation taking place at the site would enable researchers would be able to better understand the murder process in the camp and what the Jews went through before their deaths.

German police arrested three men in their 80s and 90s Thursday on suspicion of accessory to murder when they were guards at the Auschwitz death camp. Three others, all in their 90s, may also be arrested if police uncover enough evidence to warrant putting them on trial.

“This is a major step,” said Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem. After being told of the arrests, he told the Associated Press, “Given the advanced age of the defendants, every effort should be made to expedite their prosecution.”

German authorities announced last year they would investigate former guards at Nazi death camps. At the trial of former Sobibor death camp guard John Demjanjuk, who died in 2012 while appealing his conviction, the courts set a precedent by accepting prosecutors’ arguments that death camp guards were accessories to murder.

Judicial officials in Germany have investigated 49 former Nazi guards at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp and said 30 of them should be prosecuted, while nine others have since died

Another seven of the former guards are living outside of the country. Some of the guards are reportedly as old as 97.

The justice agency in Ludwigsburg, Baden-Wuerttemberg, which heads German investigations into Nazi war crimes, also plans to carry out “time-consuming” work and re-examine files of all former Nazis who worked in extermination camps and were part of Nazi murder squads.

An 88-year-old survivor of the Auschwitz death camp has donated a new Torah scroll to the Lubavitch Chabad of Skokie, near Chicago, the ultimate revenge against the Nazis who tried to eradicate Jews and Judaism.

Her other revenge was to dwell in the future and present, instead of the past, and marry and bring more Jews into the world.

Marge Fettmen, her children and grandchildren attended a recent Torah dedication ceremony, in memory of her late husband Daniel, also a Holocaust survivor.

Fettman, known by the Nazis as prisoner No. 21880, told the Chabad website, “God gave me a good idea – to have a Torah written. It is our guide. I want the Torah to be used to teach people about Judaism.”

Fettman was living with her family in Romania in 1944 when the Nazis stormed into their town of Szaszregen and herded her and her relatives into a cattle car for Auschwitz.

“When we arrived, Dr. [Josef] Mengele stood there flicking his whip, sending some of us to the right and others to the left. I was separated from my family,” she told Chabad. “Since I had the snacks we had packed for the children, I was concerned that they would be hungry. I wanted to bolt to the other side to be with them, but Mengele saw and shouted at me in German, ‘Are you a fool?’ I stayed where I was, and my life was spared.”

After surviving the death camp, she married her husband, and the couple moved to the United States in 1949, where they raised they raised their children in the Jewish tradition. Her husband, a grocery store owner, died in 2004 at the age of 83.

Her parents were very religious, and she decided that dedicating a new Torah scroll was the best way to remember them forever.