VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI has marked Holocaust Remembrance Day by denouncing the “horror” of the Shoah and the “unheard of brutality” of death camps created by Nazi Germany.
The German-born pope issued an appeal Wednesday “that such tragedies never repeat themselves.”
Benedict called the death camps “abhorrent and inhumane places” and turned his thoughts to the “countless victims of a blind racial and religious hatred.”
He told his weekly audience the memory of those events, and especially “the tragedy of the Shoah that has struck the Jewish people,” should induce respect for all mankind. Shoah is Hebrew for the Holocaust.
Six million Jews were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II, including 1 million at the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps.
