German chancellor is first to enter site of Nazi centre for detention of 'undesirables', where more than 41,000 died

Angela Merkel became the first German leader to walk through the imposing steel gates marking the entrance to Germany's original concentration camp in Dachau on Tuesday, touring the memorial as controversy continued to rage over the timing of the historic visit during her election campaign.

"For me this is a very special moment," said the chancellor at the camp, according to a DPA report. "The memory of the fate [of these victims] fills me with deep sorrow and shame."

The German leader laid a wreath at the camp in memory of more than 41,000 people, mostly Jews, who died at its satellite sites between 1933 and 1945, and met with survivors, including 93-year-old Max Mannheimer, chairman of the Dachau camp community association, who was imprisoned at Dachau in 1944 at the age of 24.

Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, said the visit was a "very strong and important symbol".

"There are several concentration camps, like Auschwitz, abroad, and for decades chancellors and German presidents have been travelling to these places of horrible German crimes and taking historical responsibility," she said.

"But the fact that she's visiting a location within Germany where these unimaginable crimes took place, that doesn't happen so often … it shows her determination and will to learn the right lessons from history."

Dachau concentration camp first opened on March 22, 1933, just weeks after Adolf Hitler became chancellor, as a camp for political prisoners. It was situated close to Munich on the site of a derelict first world war munitions factory and served as a model for later concentration camps, that were placed all over Europe.

More than 200,000 prisoners were interned at the camp before it was liberated in 1945 by American troops.

But while Merkel has received praise from the Jewish community, the Green party parliamentary leader, Renate Künast, criticised her for deciding to visit the camp during the election campaign and before an election rally to be held a beer tent, calling it "tasteless".

"If you are serious about commemorating such a place of horror, you would definitely not make such a visit during an election campaign," Künast told the German newspaper, Leipziger Volkszeitung.

• This article was amended on 21 August 2013. The subheading initially referred to Angela Merkel as the German president. This error, introduced in the editing process, has been corrected