Obama video visiting a former Nazi concentration camp
Barack Obama visited a former Nazi concentration camp which his great-uncle helped to liberate, laid a white rose at a memorial to its victims, and described the site where 56,000 people died as the "ultimate rebuke" to Holocaust deniers.
After seeing the crematoriums, guard towers and barbed-wire fences, and a clock set at 3:15 when the camp was liberated on 11 April 1945 Obama said: "These sites have not lost their horror with the passage of time. More than half a century later, our grief and our outrage over what happened have not diminished."
Obama's visit to Buchenwald, which because of the US military's role in its liberation has had a big impact on the US understanding of the Holocaust, gave him the opportunity to revisit the themes touched on in his Cairo address on Wednesday, including the need to fight totalitarian ideology.
It was also a chance to underline what he described in Egypt as America's "unbreakable" bond with Israel, as well as signalling to domestic and European audiences the important role the US military has played in world history.
Obama also made a thinly-veiled riposte to Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly questioned the Holocaust. "To this day, there are those who insist the Holocaust never happened," 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, Obama told NBC that the Iranian president "should make his own visit" to Buchenwald. "I have no patience for people who would deny history," he said.
Accompanied by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, Obama said the camp had made an deep impression on him since he was told stories of how his great uncle, Charlie Payne, had helped liberate a Buchenwald sub-camp, Ohrdruf, as a member of the US 89th Infantry Division. "I've heard about this place since I was a boy," he said, recounting how Payne had had a "very difficult time readjusting to civilian life" after what he saw at the camp.
The impulse for the visit, during a 20-hour stopover in Germany en route to D-Day commemorations in France, came from the Nobel prize winner Wiesel, who was one of more than 900 children liberated from Buchenwald in April 1945.
On his first return, Wiesel, 80, spoke movingly of watching his father die just days before the camp was freed.
"And I thought one day I would come back and talk to him and tell him of the world which had become mine. But can I tell him that the world has learnt? I am not so sure." Obama embraced him at the end of the speech.
Obama's Uncle Charlie, now 84, has expressed surprise in interviews with the German media that his experience as a young soldier had inspired the visit. "We had never talked about that ...This is a trip he chose not because of me, I'm sure, but for political reasons," he told Der Spiegel magazine.
During Obama's election campaign, Obama referred to a great uncle who was "part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps". When it was pointed out that the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, Obama called his uncle and his advisers quickly corrected the name of the camp.
Obama said Payne had been so traumatised that "when he came home he just went up into the attic and he didn't leave the house for six months". But Payne implied Obama may have exaggerated. "My sister (Obama's grandmother) and her brother were great storytellers and sometimes made up the details to go along with it," he said. But he recalled the horror of seeing corpses piled up. "I can assure you I was horrified by the lengths to which men will go to mistreat other men."
President Barack Obama's speech at Cairo University
Text of President Barack Obama's speech at Cairo University, as provided by CQ Transcriptions.... Good afternoon. I am honored to be in the timeless city of Cairo and to be hosted by two remarkable institutions. For over a thousand years, al-Azhar has, had stood as a beacon of Islamic learning. And for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt's advancement. Together, you represent the harmony between tradition and progress.
I'm grateful for your hospitality and the hospitality of the people of Egypt. And I'm also proud to carry with me the good will of the American people and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: Assalamu Alaikum.
(APPLAUSE)
We meet at a time of great tension between the United States and Muslims around the world, tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of coexistence and cooperation but also conflict and religious wars.
More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims and a Cold War in which Muslim majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.
Violent extremists have exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims. The attacks of September 11, 2001, and the continued efforts of these extremists to engage in violence against civilians has led some in my country to view Islam as inevitably hostile not only to America and Western countries but also to human rights.
All this has bred more fear and more mistrust. So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, those who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. And this cycle of suspicion and discord must end.
I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap and share common principles, principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.
I do so recognizing that change cannot happen overnight. I know there's been a lot of publicity about this speech, but no single speech can eradicate years of mistrust nor can I answer in the time that I have this afternoon all the complex questions that brought us to this point.
But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly to each other the things we hold in our hearts and that too often are said only behind closed doors. There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other, to learn from each other, to respect one another, and to seek common ground.
As the holy Quran tells us: "Be conscious of God and speak always the truth."
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