The President toured Buchenwald Concentration Camp earlier today, accompanied by Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Holocaust survivor Bertrand Herz. Both Mr. Herz and Mr. Wiesel were incarcerated at Buchenwald, in what is called the "Little Camp," where children were imprisoned and performed slave labor. 56,000 people were murdered at Buchenwald, including Mr. Wiesel's father, and Mr. Wiesel has written extensively about his own experience. (Above: President Obama, Chancellor Merkel, Mr. Wiesel, and Mr. Herz lay white roses at the crematorium ovens)President Obama made remarks while standing beneath the entrance tower to the camp, where the clock is permanently frozen at 3:15, the "hour of liberation" when Allied troops first entered. He said:
We are here today because we know this work is not yet finished. To this day, there are those who insist that the Holocaust never happened -- a denial of fact and truth that is baseless and ignorant and hateful. This place is the ultimate rebuke to such thoughts; a reminder of our duty to confront those who would tell lies about our history....More than half a century later, our grief and our outrage over what happened here have not diminished.
Mr. Wiesel's said his visit was partly to visit his father's grave, although his father has no actual grave at Buchenwald. "His grave is somewhere in the sky, which has become...the largest cemetery for Jewish people," Mr. Wiesel said.
*Read the full text from President Obama's tour here; photo by Pete Souza, White House photographer.
