Jillian Rayfield June 23, 2011, 3:41 PM

Glenn Beck said Thursday that he will be visiting the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz in a visit to Poland, and he’ll broadcast a special from a town outside of the camp because this will help him “figure out,” he says, “how did this happen?”

“I’m going over to Poland in a couple of weeks on something that’s a venture that I’m doing,” he told Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who was the guest. “I am not doing a special on Auschwitz per se — I’m visiting Auschwitz, but I’m talking about the town which is just a few miles outside of the gate.”

“Poland, I didn’t know this when I first started doing my research.” Beck said, “Poland rose up, a lot of Poles rose up, to try to help the Jews but they had nothing left. They had no arms.”

Though there were certainly many Polish people who helped the Jews during the Holocaust, the country at that point did not exactly have a reputation for passionate philo-Semitism. Towards the end of the war, anti-Jewish riots even broke out in several Polish cities as Jews were returning to their homes.

Beck is planning a “Restoring Courage” rally in Israel August 20, which he says will be a “life altering event” that the “very gates of hell” will seek to prevent. He has previously alluded to the Holocaust as part of the reason why his rally is so super important: “Because I’ve read history. I know how it ended last time and I know how it started. First they came for the Jews, and I said nothing. Let me declare to the entire world, and ask who’s with me. This time I will stand. This time I will say something. This time I will be a force for good.”

Watch the video:

Fox News, Glenn Beck, Israel