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On Friday, President Obama was in Germany, where he met with Chancellor Angela Merkel and toured the Buchenwald concentration camp, where tens of thousands of Jews perished during the Holocaust of World War Two. In Germany, the Holocaust is referred to by the Hebrew term “Shoah.”
One person who was there to see Obama was Dirk Heckmann, a correspondent for Deutschlandradio. Dirk spent a week at KSMU in 2004 as a fellow through the RIAS program, and filed this report for us from abroad.
It was a silent moment when Barack Obama and Angela Merkel put down a white rose, followed by the survivers of the Shoah, Bertrand Herz and Elie Wiesel. KLB -- this means Konzentrationslager Buchenwald -- is written on the memorial. 250,000 people, many Jews, members of the Resistance and homosexuals, were arrested here during World War II. Ten thousands of them were murdered by the Nazis.
Moved, the American president and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said there was no appropriate description for the Shoah. She remembered the victims of the Nazi Regime and those who lost their lifes to free Germany.
"For us Germans, it is part of the reason of state to remember the Shoah; in this way only we can create our future," the chancellor said.
Barack Obama refered of his Granduncle Charles Paine, who was member of the US-Army, who helped to free the concentration camp and who went back home in a condition of shock. To remember these crimes is crucial, said Obama.
Barack Obama passed over to Elie Wiesel, who was arrested in Buchenwald and lost his mother, his little sister and his father there. He always was hoping to return, so that he can tell his father that the world has changed; that those who were of good will accept the duty to remember. He called for peace in Middle East and cited Albert Camus finally.
Reporting from Weimar / Buchenwald, Deutschlandfunk-Correspondent Dirk-Oliver Heckmann, for KSMU News.
