US Vice President Cheney to Head US Delegation at Auschwitz Observances

AFP ^ | 1/24/2005

[West Coast Conservative]

WASHINGTON, Jan 24 (AFP) - Vice President Dick Cheney will lead a US delegation to Poland for observances marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkinau death camps, the White House announced Monday.

The vice president, accompanied by his wife Lynne, was to join some 2,000 survivors of the Auschwitz extermination camp on Thursday, alongside world leaders and several of the surviving Red Army soldiers who liberated the facility.

Cheney is also to take part in an event honoring survivors of the Holocaust who are now American citizens, and plans to deliver remarks to an international forum. He will also tour the Auschwitz facility, the White House said.

Cheney's agenda is to include meetings with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka, and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, US officials said.

Also in the delegation accompanying the US vice president is Nobel Peace Prize laureate and author Elie Wiesel, a survivor of Auschwitz.

[RockinRight]

Go VP Cheney!

[GretchenM]

bttt

[ken5050]

It will be interesting to see, during all the news reports from Auschwitz, if the media shows any of the archival footage taken when the camps were liberating. Words fail...but the MSM is today sooooo worried about underwear on the heads of Iraqi prisoners..

[GretchenM]

I caught a few minutes of a special on tv last night in which two Auschwitz-Birkenau survivors were interviewed, one man and one woman. The man was 15 when he was hauled off with his father and another male relative (brother or uncle, I think). The time came when his Jewish father and the other relative were separated out and they all knew it was The End for the two older men. The survivor said that every time the family returned from synagogue, the father spoke a blessing over his family, and he did this over his son in their final meeting which lasted only a few seconds. And then the boy was left all alone, in a concentration camp dedicated to destruction.

The lady spoke of the medical and genetic experiments done to the women; anesthetic was never used; parts of their wombs were removed, etc. Sterilization was often part of this. With the trauma still vivid on her face, she said it was always terror when they were taken to the medical rooms. She said they were given two choices by Josef Mengele (sp?), who addressed them quietly, in person. They could either sign a statement that they were voluntarily participating in these experiments, or they could go to the gas chamber.

[GretchenM]

On that same show, one man was quoted as saying that current polls taken worldwide show that 40 to 50 percent of the people polled have never heard of the Holocaust.

[snugs]

My father says he remembers as a teenager the footage shown in the cinemas in the UK and in his opinion they never showed footage to the extend of how bad the conditions and treatment was again. Maybe on the 60th anniversary they may actually show some of this footage so that my and the subsequent generations may know what a dreadful and barbaric race the Nazi's were.

[ken5050]

PBS a while back had a documentary about the Holocaust. Much of the film was taken by the British military units that liberated the camps. I believe that's what you refer to..The old 16mm film...grainy B&W..the mounds of bodies being hand carried by German prisoners to mass graves, or being bulldozed in, then covered with lime..words truly are inadequate. I've been to Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and of course the Holocaust museum in Israel..What is so annoying about the media today is that were me to wake up tomorrow living in an Islamic state, they'd be the first targets of the Islamofascists..

[Grzegorz 246]

I'm not sure If you are talking about the same polls, but in the polls I saw, people were asked: have you ever heard about Auschwitz ? It doesn't have to mean that people, who has never heard (or don't remember) about Auschwitz, also have never heard about the Holocaust.

[GretchenM]

If I remember correctly, it was the Holocaust that people who were polled had not heard of.