Martyrdom & Resistance, January/February 2008

ID Transcript mare3403_01 "Vol. 34-N0.3 ISSN 0892-1571 January/February 2008-Shevat/Ad PRESIDENT BUSH VISITS ISRAEL'S YAD VASHEM HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL President Bush had tears in his eyes during an hour-long tour of Israel's Holocaust memorial and told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the U.S. should have bombed Auschwitz to halt the killing, the memorial's chairman said. Bush emerged from a tour of the Yad Vashem memorial calling it a ""sobering reminder"" that evil must be resisted, and praising victims for not losing their faith. Wearing a yarmulke, Bush placed a red- white-and-blue wreath on a stone slab m that covers ashes of Holocaust victims taken from six extermination camps. He ? also lit a torch memorializing the victims. Bush was visibly moved as he toured ■ the site, said Yad Vashem's chairman, Avner Shalev. ""Twice, I saw tears well up in his eyes,"" Shalev said. At one point, Bush viewed aerial photos of the Auschwitz camp taken during the war by U.S. forces and called Rice over to discuss why the American government had decided against bombing the site, Shalev said. The U.S. had intelligence reports about the death camps during the war i^w : r but chose to focus resources on the U broader military effort, a decision that M^ drew criticism years later. ""We should have bombed it,"" Bush said, according to Shalev. In the memorial's visitors' book, the president wrote simply, ""God bless President George W. Bush, Yehudit Shendar, Deputy Director & Senior Art Curator, Museums Division, Yad Vashem Jerusalem, Eli Zborowski, Israel, George Bush."" Chairman of the American & International Societies for Yad Vashem, and Dr. Elizabeth Mundlak-Zborowski, Cultural Director at the American & ""I was most impressed that DeODle in International Societies for Yad Vashem during the recent visit of President Bush to Yad Vashem, Jerusalem on January 11, 2008. the face of horror and evil would not forsake their God In the face of unspeak- was in 1998, as governor of Texas. The candles reflected 1.5 million times in a while in hiding from the Nazis in able crimes against humanity brave 'ast ^.S. president to visit was Bill hall of mirrors. At the site's Hall of Belgium. He was informed upon, and souls - young and old - stood strong for Clinton in 1994. Remembrance, he heard a cantor sing a died in 1944 in the Buchenwald camp, what they believe,"" Bush said. Bush, during his most extensive Jewish prayer for the dead. After the war, his daughter Ingrid discov- ""I wish as many people as possible Mideast trip of his presidency, was Eli Zborowski, Chairman of the ered that the Nazis had confiscated their would come to this place. It is a sobering accompanied on his tour by a small American Society for Yad Vashem was furniture and valuables but had left reminder that evil exists, and a call that Partv tnat included Rice and Israeli excited to meet President Bush in Yad behind a single item: a meticulously when evil exists we must resist it,"" he Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Vashem. ""I could see that he really cares crafted wooden box adorned with a Star said. At the compound, overlooking a forest about it."" of David and a seven-branched meno- It was Bush's second visit to the on Jerusalem's outskirts, Bush visited a C'i was a member of the Jewish rah, containing a collection of 99 of the Holocaust memorial, a regular stop on memorial to the 1.5 million Jewish chil- C-underground. His job was to trans- artist's illustrations of biblical scenes, the visits of foreign dignitaries. His first dren killed in the Holocaust, featuring six fer underground confidential documents The originals are on display at Yad to the ghettos. He was hidden, together Vashem. The memorial recently decided with his mother and siblings, for 18 to produce a special series of 500 repli- months by two Catholic families in the cas, the first of which was to be present- town of Zarki, Poland. ""We lived knowing ed to Bush. ;hive allo\ that any mjnute someone cou|d come Debbie Deutsch-Berman, a Yad The Nazi connection to Islamic terrorism ...4 gnd kj|| us had g|so had Vgshem , whose grandfather Children of the Holocaust train 5 ,_,,_, n* * u» u *u Z u A love triangle in... Bergen Belsen .6 hope that the world would reco9nize was Deutsch s brother, said she was The French Anne Frank 7 what was done to us and that is really proud that Bush would be 9iven ner re,~ World remembers victims of Holocaust. 8 the case"" atlves artwork Studying the Holocaust In a time of Holocaust denial and anti-semitism ........9 Chairman of Yad Vashem Avner ""These are not just his paintings, they Yad Vashem launches Arabic website ....10 Shalev presented Bush with illustrations are his legacy, and the fact that they sur- Secret diary details Holocaust and Nazi crimes ., .12 of the Bible drawn by the Jewish artist vived shows that as much as our ene- Joy in Dachau........ ...........................15 Carol Deutsch, who perished in the mies tried to destroy the ideas that these Memory of Holocaust victims honored through series of UN events..... 16 Holocaust. Deutsch created the works paintings embody, they failed,"" she said. IN THIS ISSUE "