Angela Merkel visited the former Auschwitz Nazi death camp on Friday for the first time as chancellor and said admitting Nazi crimes was a key part of Germany's identity that could combat growing anti-Semitism.

"Remembering the crimes... is a responsibility which never ends," Merkel said during the visit in a message aimed at calls from the German far right for a shift away from a culture of remembrance and atonement.

"To be aware of this responsibility is part of our national identity, our self-understanding as an enlightened and free society," she added.

Merkel is only the third chancellor ever to visit a place that has come to symbolise the Holocaust. She expressed Germany's "deep shame" at what happened in Auschwitz and neighbouring Birkenau, where a million Jews lost their lives between 1940 and 1945.