OSWIECIM, Poland (CNS): German-born Pope Benedict XVI stood in silence on the site of the Nazis’ former Auschwitz death camp.
He walked alone on May 28 under the entrance gate sign, “Work will make you free”, and joined three dozen survivors before the wall where firing squads shot thousands.
Moving to the nearby Birkenau camp, he walked past the ruins of gas chambers where hundreds of thousands of people died from the fumes of Zyklon B gas and past the chimneys of the crematoriums where the bodies were reduced to ash.
“To speak in this place of horror, in this place where unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man is almost impossible – and it is particularly difficult and troubling for a Christian, for a Pope from Germany,” he said, standing at the Holocaust memorial at the end of the railroad tracks inside Birkenau.
The service included the recitation of the Jewish kaddish prayer for the dead.
Holocaust survivors, Jewish representatives, diplomats serving in Poland and Israeli ambassador to the Vatican, Oded Ben-Hur, participated in the service.
