- Grant asked Hodgson to join the squad's Auschwitz visit to explain to them what happened
- His father buried his parents and siblings during the Holocaust
- Trip was filmed to educate secondary school pupils about the Holocaust
- Captain Steven Gerrard led an additional visit to Oskar Schindler's factory
By Rob Preece and Helen Collis
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Avram Grant, the former Chelsea manager who led the team close to victory in the Champions League 2008 title, carries with him unforgettable stories of family tragedy from the Holocaust.
Recalling the unimaginable suffering endured by his father as he fled the Nazis, Grant today led members of the England squad, including Wayne Rooney, around the work houses and gas chambers at Poland's Auschwitz concentration camp..
Players joined coach Roy Hodgson and Football Association chairman David Bernstein at the site in Poland, which is 40 miles from the team's base for the Euro 2012 tournament.
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Wayne Rooney leaves the gas chamber and crematoria during a visit by an England Football Association delegation to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial and former concentration camps
An estimated 1.3 million people were killed at the Auschwitz-Birkenau site, of which 90 per cent were European Jews
Sombre visit: Wayne Rooney and other members of the England team during a visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial and former concentration camp, ahead of UEFA Euro 2012
The remainder of the squad, led by captain Steven Gerrard, visited a factory on the outskirts of Krakow, where industrialist Oskar Schindler helped protect Jewish workers from deportation and death.
An estimated 1.3 million people were killed at the Auschwitz-Birkenau site, of which 90 per cent were European Jews. Political prisoners, homosexuals and ethnic minorities were also among those who died.Â
Mr Grant asked England coach Roy Hodgson if he could join the squad on their visit to the camp, so he could explain what happened and the atrocities of the Holocaust.
Members of the England team enter the Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz, under the sign which translates into: 'Work makes you free'
England's visit to the camp is part of an ongoing partnership with the Holocaust Educational Trust
Mr Grant's father, Meir Granat, was just a teenager when his father decided to uproot his family and flee their hometown of Mlawa, Poland in 1937.
Meir's father Avram, feared that something terrible would happen and took his wife and nine of their ten children on a three-year trek to find safety - across Poland, into the horrors of the Warsaw camp and eventually to a remote forest in Russia.
According to an interview with the BBC, Grant explained that one child, Hertsel, was hidden in a monastery, Rachel and Estera were placed in an orphanage and the rest were constantly moved around Eastern Europe in search of safety.
Guide: Avram Grant, whose father Meir survived the Holocaust, shows England around
The trip was filmed and will be included in a DVD used in secondary schools to educate students about the Holocaust
Roy Hodgson, right, speaks to former Chelsea manager Avram Grant, whose family suffered and died at Auschwitz, during a visit by England FA members to the death camp
Two of Grant's father's siblings - Koppel Hannah - were pulled from their train when it stopped and were never seen again. He later discovered that both died at Auschwitz.
The rest of his father's family along with many other Jews were taken by train deep into Russia's wilderness and offloaded to die in temperatures as low as -40C.
His father's sister Sarah, aged 15, was the first to die after eating poisonous mushrooms.
Sarah was the first of seven family members Meir was forced to bury, digging their graves with his own hands. He also buried his own mother and father.
Grant first visited the Auschwitz Nazi death camp, where members of his family died, in 1988 and returns each year with Holocaust survivors for the 'March of the Living'. He told the BBC however that his father Meir, who died in October 2009, never went back to Poland, because he couldn't face it.
England team members visited Oskar Schindler's former factory near Krakow and left their mark signing a football and the visitors' book
Members of the squad saw items manufactured in the factory, which employed Jewish people and saved them from death camps
Schindler's List: The names of Jewish people saved from the death camps by Oskar Schindler's factory
The squad visit, which was part of an ongoing partnership between England and the Holocaust Educational Trust, was filmed and will be included in a DVD used in secondary schools to educate students about the Holocaust.
Players from Germany, Italy and Holland have also attended the site in the run-up to the tournament in Poland and Ukraine, which begins today.
A large crowd of photographers and spectators gathered as Gerrard led squad members on a visit to the factory of Oskar Schindler, whose protection of more than 1,000 Jews from the Nazis was featured in the Oscar-winning movie Schindler's List.
Other players who visited the factory included Chelsea defender Ashley Cole and Manchester United team-mates Ashley Young and Phil Jones.
Defender Joleon Lescott was one of 14 players to visit the factory and said: 'Days like today you tend to look back on as much as the tournament itself in years to come, the things you have done, the people you have met.
Leading: England captain Steven Gerrard arrives at the Oskar Schindler factory in Krakow, Poland
Visit: Chelsea player Ashley Cole, right, makes his way to the museum on the factory site, left
'I am sure, in years to come, the tournament will be a highlight but so will visiting places like this.
'It is fresh in my mind at the moment so it might take a while for it to sink in. I will go back to the hotel and think about what has been said to us by the guide.
'Most youngsters today have a glorified image of a ghetto but the ghettos we have learned about today are not like that. I did not have a full understanding of what the word means.'
Birmingham City's 19-year-old goalkeeper Jack Butland, a late addition to the squad following the withdrawal of Norwich City player John Ruddy, was also there.
Speaking before England's visit to Auschwitz, goalkeeper Joe Hart revealed that his father had convinced him to see the site.
Hart said: 'Ever since Krakow was chosen as the venue, he said, "You need to go and do this, go and see, experience it".
'It's hard. I'm not being sick or perverse. You need to see these things to appreciate them.
'It's talked about and you hear people chuck words like "Holocaust".
Subdued: Manchester United player Ashley Young looks at the floor while spectators take photographs
Duty: Manchester United player Phil Jones, left, and Birmingham goalkeeper Jack Butland, right, head inside
'You need to know what they are. It gives you more of a feeling of the history of this world.'
Holocaust survivors Zigi Shipper and Ben Helfgott both addressed England's players before they left for Poland last week.
'I've never seen a room so silent and intense,' the goalkeeper said, 'people hanging off every word as these guys spoke about what they did, and what their end message was.
'There was no hate. They weren't angry. They just had that message of how you can be a better person.
'I couldn't get over them, the two guys. They were amazing.
'They spoke at the end about what roles we have as footballers and what sort of message we can hand out.
'It got me. It was great to speak to them. I just wanted to thank them for coming in. Two amazing people.'
PROTECTOR: THE MAN CREDITED WITH SAVING MORE THAN 1,000 JEWS
The story of Oskar Schindler, whose factory was visited by many of the England squad, has been told in a novel and a Hollywood blockbuster movie.
The ethnic German industrialist, born in Moravia, is credited with saving more than 1,100 Jews during the Second World War.
He shielded Jewish workers from the Nazis by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories.
Schindler was a regular guest at Nazi SS parties from the early stages of the war, but increasingly protected his Jewish staff as Hitler's anti-Semitic extermination campaign progressed.
He was appalled when many of his workers were rounded up and killed in a 1943 raid on a Jewish ghetto in Krakow.
He later sought to use all his powers of persuasion to shield workers from deportation and death.
One such occasion is recounted by author Eric Silver in The Book of the Just: The Unsung Heroes Who Rescued Jews from Hitler.
'Two Gestapo men came to his office and demand ed that he hand over a family of five who had bought forged Polish identity papers,' Silver wrote.
'"Three hours after they walked in," Schindler said, "two drunk Gestapo men reeled out of my office without their prisoners and without the incriminating documents they had demanded".'
Germany classed Schindler's factory as a 'business essential to the war effort', which enabled him to claim exemptions for his workers whenever they were threatened with deportation.
Wives, children and the handicapped were shown to be necessary mechanics and metalworkers.
Schindler died in October 1974 aged 66. His protection of Jews was reimagined in Thomas
Keneally's 1982 novel Schindler's Ark and Steven Spielberg's Oscar-winning 1993 film Schindler's List.
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This will forever be etched in the player's mind and heart's. Life-changing moment's tend to do this. The generation who lived through this..What brave people they are. We must never forget and we must never allow any group to destroy other's who are different in belief and appearence. We see hate crimes popping up around the world. Time to say "Been there, done that and won't allow it again"
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Sobering visit for the team that should put their luxury lifestyle in perspective.
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You mean Wayne was there, not that he led them?
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I hope the Holocaust Education Trust, who clearly have a good deal of influence in these matters, will encourage a delegation to visit Babyn Yar ravine in Kiev, where a hundred thousand mostly, though not entirely, Jewish people were shot, including three Dinamo Kiev players. Wayne Rooney will not be playing in the group game in Kiev, and has shown himself a willing ambassador. Apart from creating goodwill in Ukraine this would show that the Holocaust isn't just about Auschwitz.
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Although every respect to the victims of the appalling Holocaust but I fail to see the connection with football and what this visit will achieve.
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