Soccer: Italy players in tears during Auschwitz visit

(ANSA) - Auschwitz, June 6 - A number of Italy players were brought to tears on Wednesday after hearing the stories of three Holocaust survivors during a visit to the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland. Cesare Prandelli's men, who are in Poland for Euro 2012, spent over an hour at the Auschwitz I base camp and laid a wreath at an execution wall inside it before moving to the nearby Birkenau extermination camp. Midfielder Riccardo Montolivo and Antonio Nocerino, and defender Andrea Barzagli were among the players who could not stop themselves from weeping after speaking to survivors Piero Terracina, Anna Weiss and Samuel Modiano and embracing them.
"It leaves you devastated," Montolivo told Rai television. "At moments like this, all you feel is a great emptiness. We couldn't fail to come here.
It's a moment that makes you look inside yourself.
I'm shocked".
Italy start their Euro 2012 campaign against world and European champions Spain in Gdansk on Sunday. The Azzurri's group at the tournament, which takes place from June 8 to July 1 in Poland and Ukraine, also features Ireland and Croatia.