Word: auschwitzes
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...Even his final stop on this second foreign tour as Pope, at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp later on Sunday, was in many ways a tribute to his predecessor. John Paul II himself visited the death camp on his first return to Poland as Pope in 1979, an early sign of how committed he was to healing the wounds between Catholicism and Judaism. But Benedict's arrival here on Sunday was also rich with its own significance...
...Pope?s physical presence at Auschwitz - his gestures - were really the news. His deep prayers in front of the wall of death where prisoners were regularly executed; the two-cheeked kiss he shared with a Jewish survivor; his using German for the first time all trip to say a prayer at Birchenau. The visit followed two trips Ratzinger made to the camp a quarter-century ago as a Cardinal...
...course, that there is ever news at a place as horribly frozen in history as Auschwitz is a story in itself. Nearly 50 years ago A.M. Rosenthal, the New York Times Warsaw correspondent who would go on to become the paper of record's top editor, wrote what became a famous article headlined, ?There is No News at Auschwitz,? describing how the mundane of the present exists in disquieting company alongside the horrors at the defunct Nazi concentration camp. Rosenthal, who just recently died at the age of 84, movingly recalled his unease at seeing the sunny rows of poplars...
...Almost as if on cue, as Benedict's voyage to Auschwitz drew toward its close early Sunday evening, the wind picked up and a cool rain began to fall. The final ceremony began with the Pope pausing to pray at memorials in the different languages of the 1.5 million killed. But by the time he reached the final plaque, the rain had stopped, the umbrellas were tucked away, and the pack of reporters noticed that across the broad field of half-standing brick barracks of Birkenau, a vivid rainbow had appeared. The editors of TIME, like those...
...Benedict, who previously made the trip as a Cardinal, was asked by journalists on the plane how he felt about visiting Auschwitz "as a German." The Pope responded: "I am above all a Catholic. I must say that this is the most important point." Nationalities, he said, can help fulfill the "togetherness of the communion of the Catholic Church." After his election last April, Benedict said he saw a "providential design" in a Polish pope being succeeded by a German one. "Both popes in their youth - both on different sides and in different situations - were forced to experience the barbarity...