Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid paid tribute to his late grandfather who was killed in Mauthausen concentration camp just weeks before the Nazis surrendered. 

During an emotional visit to the site with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer on Thursday, Mr Lapid recited the Kaddish and laid a wreath to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

He also lit a candle in memory of all those who died there and his grandfather, Dr Bela Lampel, a lawyer from Novi Sad in what is now Serbia.

Some 190,000 people were held in Mauthausen, and at least 90,000 were killed over seven years.

“Dear Yair, I apologize on behalf of the Republic of Austria for the crimes committed here. I apologize that your grandfather was murdered here,” Mr Nehammer said in his speech.

Dr Lampel was arrested by an SS soldier in March 1944 in front of his son Tommy Lapid, then 12. 

Dr Lampel was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and sent to Mauthausen, where he died in April 1945. 

His son and wife fled to Budapest and were rescued by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. They later moved to Israel in 1948.

Addressing Thursday's commemoration, Mr Lapid, said, “I came here today to remind the world that Bela Lampel was not a number.  He was my grandfather. 

“He loved his beautiful wife. He went to football matches with his child. He loved to have an omelet at the coffee shop next to his home. He never wronged anyone. He wasn’t an important man.  He didn’t hate anyone. He was simply Jewish.”

Mr Lapid added, “That was the last significant thing the Nazis did: killing my grandfather. 

“But dying was not the last significant thing that he did. Because my grandfather did one other thing, even if he did it after his death. He sent me here today. 

“Grandpa Bela, a quiet man whose family nickname was ‘Bela the Wise’, sent me here today to say on his behalf, that the Jews have not surrendered. 

“They’ve established a strong, free, and proud Jewish state, and they sent his grandson, to represent them here today.”