Kohl Honors Nazi Victims at Auschwitz

German Chancellor Helmut Kohl paid his respects Saturday to the more than 1.5 million people killed at Auschwitz during World War II.

Kohl, on a three-day visit to Poland, toured the site of the former Nazi Germany’s death camp with Poland’s Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, an Auschwitz survivor.

Kohl, accompanied by his wife, Hannelore, stopped at the camp gate bearing the German inscription, “Arbeit macht frei “ (“Work makes you free”) and laid a wreath at the “death wall” where thousands were executed.

Kohl later went to Birkenau, one mile away, to lay another wreath near the ruins of the deadly gas chambers and crematoria.

“This suffering and death, the pain and tears, force us to remain silent in this place,” Kohl wrote in the Auschwitz memorial book.

It was Kohl’s second trip to the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, the most notorious Nazi death camp. He previously visited Auschwitz during his historic trip to Poland in 1989 that warmed German-Polish relations.

Built in 1940 near the southern city of Oswiecim, primarily for Polish political prisoners, Auschwitz became a place where Jews from all over Europe were killed under Adolf Hitler’s “Final Solution.” The camp was liberated by the Soviet Red Army in January, 1945.

Ninety percent of Auschwitz victims were Jewish.

From Auschwitz, Kohl traveled to the historic city of Krakow before his scheduled return to Germany on Saturday night.

During talks with Polish leaders in Warsaw on Thursday and Friday, Kohl strongly endorsed Poland’s hopes for membership in Western political and military alliances.