Soccer took a backseat as England players visited the former concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau on Friday, to pay their respects to the people who were brutally murdered by the Nazis in World War II.

An estimated 1-1.5 million Jewish people were murdered in Auschwitz, and an England delegation led by manager Roy Hodgson visited the site. The group also included Wayne Rooney, Theo Walcott, Joe Hart, Andy Carroll, Jack Butland and FA chairman David Bernstein, a Jew himself. They were accompanied by former Chelsea and West Ham manager Avram Grant, who lost 15 members of his family in Auschwitz.

"It is a very chastening experience. It's difficult to imagine this type of inhumanity," Hodgson said. "I have no great knowledge of the war, but obviously know about certain aspects of it.

"You cannot understand how it can be so systematic, de-human. It was a job. It is difficult to get your head around.

"There are so many lessons to be learnt and understood from the Holocaust and we believe football can play its part in encouraging society to speak out against intolerance in all its forms, and in advancing the important work of teaching future generations about the horrors of the Holocaust.

Rooney was also moved by the experience. "It's good to get that history of what happened. It puts football into perspective.

"It's hard to understand. When you see the amount of children's clothes and shoes, it's such a sad experience. You have to see it first-hand to understand. You don't realise how those who lived there to work, managed without food, without water. It's a form of torture and then they died. The others got murdered."

"It will never be forgotten. We know that kids nowadays are interested in footballers, and if a few more people understand what happened because we came here today then that has to be good."

Walcott added: "It is unreal. I learned some of this stuff at school but I could never imagine anything on this scale, it is just beyond belief or comprehension."

The other members of the England squad, led by captain Steven Gerrard, visited the Schindler factory museum. Schindler, a German, saved thousands of lives by employing them in his enamelware and munitions factory.

"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," Joleon Lescott, one of the 14 members who visited the factory, said.

"I'm sure, in years to come, the tournament will be a highlight, but so will visiting places like this."

The Dutch and Italian teams also visited Auschwitz over the past week.