Peres Visits Bergen-Belsen, Tells of Horror

In bitter cold and light snow, Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel visited the site of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp today, and said “there are screams of horror on every side” from the victims. “We must do everything to make sure it never happens again. This is a terrible place,” Peres said.

During his visit, machine-gun and cannon fire could be heard from target practice at a nearby NATO base.

“You don’t have to look for reasons to be insulted,” Yitzhak Ben-Ari, Israeli’s ambassador in Bonn, told accompanying reporters when asked about the din.

Peres laid wreaths to commemorate the 50,000 people, most of them Jews, believed to have died at Bergen-Belsen, and the 6 million Jews historians estimate were slain by the Nazis during their rule in Germany in 1933-45.

Choked With Emotion

The Israeli leader’s voice was choked with emotion, and he wiped his face with a handkerchief after visiting mass graves containing the remains of thousands of Jewish victims.

“There are screams of horror on every side. I pray for the memory of the millions and also for peace.” Peres said.

Peres later addressed a luncheon hosted by the Lower Saxony state government in Hanover.

“It was an occasion that leaves you without words,” he said of his Bergen-Belsen visit. “I have a deep sentiment of the memory of the past and the need to educate our children, so that it will never happen again.

Solemn Prayer

“I prayed in Bergen-Belsen that it (the Holocaust) will never happen again. Not to our people, and not to any other people.”

Peres’ visit came on the second day of his trip to West Germany, the last stop on a three-nation European tour that took him to the Netherlands and Britain.