President Obama probably had Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in mind today when he attacked “hateful” Holocaust deniers after his tour of the Buchenwald concentration camp.
“There are those who insist that the Holocaust never happened, a denial of fact and truth that is baseless and ignorant and hateful,” Obama said. “This place is the ultimate rebuke to such thoughts, a reminder of our duty to confront those who would tell lies about our history.”
Earlier, in an interview with NBC News, Obama criticized Ahmadinejad for (again) describing the Holocaust as a “deception.”
“I have no patience for people who would deny history, and the history of the Holocaust is not something speculative,” Obama told NBC.
Obama made his public remarks after a tour of Buchenwald, which the Nazi rulers of Germany opened in 1937. They imprisoned some 250,000 there until the end of World War II in 1945. They killed about 56,000 prisoners, including 11,000 Jews.
The tour included German Chancellor Angela Merkel as well author Elie Wiesel; the group visited the building where Wiesel was imprisoned more than six decades ago.
“These sights have not lost their horror wit the passage of time,” Obama said. “More than half a century later, our grief and our outrage over what happened have not diminished. I will not forget what I have seen here today.”
Obama said it was his first visit to a concentration camp, and he has a “personal connection” to Buchenwald: His great uncle helped liberate it.
“He returned from his service in a state of shock,”Obama recalled, “saying little and isolating himself for months on end from family and friends, along with the painful memories that would not leave his head.”
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2009/06/67675019/1