President Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel all visited Buchenwald together. In quoting from a news source, it was written:
The president called the camp where an estimated 56,000 people died the "ultimate rebuke" to Holocaust deniers and skeptics. And he bluntly challenged one of them, Iranian President Ahmadinejad, to visit Buchenwald.
"These sites have not lost their horror with the passage of time," Obama said after seeing crematory ovens, barbed-wire fences, guard towers and the clock set at 3:15, marking the camp's liberation in the afternoon of April 11, 1945. "More than half a century later, our grief and our outrage over what happened have not diminished."
It speaks well of our world that a sitting American President, and a sitting German Chancellor can visit this place with a Holocaust survivor like Wiesel.
It is a stunning reminder of horror. It is the horror of human hatred. Buchenwald, like so many other former Nazi Concentration Camps remind us that there is human evil and human horror. The freezing of the clock at the hour of liberation, however, reminds us that goodness still also prevails and lives in the hearts of people.
In a way, this place is a living reminder of horror and hope.
Tomorrow, June 6, 2009 is the 65th Anniversary of another day of horror and hope. It is the day when American, British, Canadian, and French soldiers stormed the beaches at Normandy France to begin the liberation of western Europe from Nazi occupation. Omaha Beach was a place of bloody and brutal horror; yet out of that horror sprang hope for the people who were liberated.
These places remind us of horror and hope and challenge us to always face, confront, and challenge evil which brings about horror----and invite the world to have hope.
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