German soccer players and officials will travel to Poland on Friday to visit the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, after an exhibition game against Israel before the European Championship, the Associated Press (AP) reported Wednesday.

Germany captain Philipp Lahm, German Football Federation (DFB) president Wolfgang Niersbach, Polish players and other officials will visit the death camp along, along with a German Jewish community leader before the teams travels to Poland for the Euro 2012 match against Ukraine.

Jewish leaders in Germany have been urging the country’s soccer federation to have the group visit Auschwitz during the tournament, which runs from June 8-July 1, noted the AP.

English Football Association said Tuesday that England delegation will visit Auschwitz soon after they arrive June 6 at their training base in Krakow.

Meanwhile, President Obama came under fire today during an award ceremony during which he cited the late Polish resistance fighter Jan Karski, saying “resistance fighters told him that Jews were being murdered on a massive scale and smuggled him into the Warsaw Ghetto and a Polish death camp to see for himself.”

A spokesman for Obama’s National Security Council, Tommy Vietor, said the president “misspoke” while referring to “Nazi death camps in Poland.”