Elie Wiesel

President Barack Obama toured Buchenwald with Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. President Barack Obama toured Buchenwald with Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel . Buchenwald is the camp with Wiesel's own father perished. Afterwards, the president gave a speech commerating those who died in the Nazi concentration camps. From an article at ABC News At the Buchenwald concentration camp Friday afternoon, President Obama spoke about the lessons of the Holocaust after touring the camp with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. “If these trees could talk," Wiesel said to the president on their tour of the camp, which sits on the northern slope of ... Read Full Story

A monument dedicated to the memory of Holocaust victims in Romania was inaugurated on Thursday in Bucharest, in the presence of survivors and government officials. The memorial designed by Romanian sculptor Peter Jacobi consists of an austere concrete structure, a column bearing the inscription "Remember" in Hebrew, a star of David and a wheel, symbolizing the Roma community, itself a victim of persecutions and deportation during World War II. "By inaugurating this memorial, Romania reaffirms its determination to assume its past," President Traian Basescu said during the ceremony. "The responsibility for the abuses and crimes targeting the Jewish and the Roma communities between 1940 ... Read Full Story

Obama rebukes Iranian leader's Holocaust denial - trip to Nazi camp builds on totalitarianism warning. guardian.co.uk Kate Connolly in Berlin Friday 5 June 2009 19.31 BST Barack Obama visited a former Nazi concentration camp which his great-uncle helped to liberate, laid a white rose at a memorial to its victims, and described the site where 56,000 people died as the "ultimate rebuke" to Holocaust deniers. After seeing the crematoriums, guard towers and barbed-wire fences, and a clock set at 3:15 – when the camp was liberated on 11 April 1945 – Obama said: "These sites have not lost their horror. More than half a ... Read Full Story

Romania on Thursday unveiled a monument in memory of some 300,000 Jews and Gypsies killed during the Holocaust in the country, which at times denied that the extermination even happened. President Traian Basescu said it was Romania's duty to "recognize the genocide during World War II" and to honor the victims. Basescu was joined by Holocaust survivors, both Jewish and Gypsies, and other leaders during the unveiling the euro5 million (US$7.35 million) marble and concrete tomblike monument. Romania today has only 6,000 Jews. The country's role in the Holocaust and the deportation of Jews were ignored by the Communists and minimized by subsequent governments ... Read Full Story

Elie Wiesel Mocked at J Street Conference The "independent" blogger panel at J Street's conference can only be described as clownish. The panel consisted mostly of crackpots and self-described anti-Zionists and "one-staters" (J Street director Jeremy Ben-Ami calls the one-state solution a "nightmare," but it seems to be the dream of many of the organization's supporters). Though J Street tried to distance itself from the panel by describing it as an "unofficial" and "independent" event, the bloggers used one of the rooms otherwise reserved for conference events, a podium in the front had a J Street placard on it, and a J Street banner ... Read Full Story