Last update - 00:00 12/09/2006
At Yad Vashem, Polish pres. calls Holocaust 'lesson for future'
By The Associated Press
Polish President Lech Kaczynski on Tuesday visited Israel's official Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, where he referred to the history of Jewish life in Poland and urged the world to remember the lessons of the Holocaust.
"The nation which I represent, and on the soil of which the German Nazis committed their terrible, criminal plan of the Holocaust, knows very well the importance of maintaining the memory of these events that broke a one thousand year presence of Jews in Poland," he wrote in the Yad Vashem guest book. Most of the Nazi Germany's concentration and death camps were in Poland.
"What happened in Europe at that time should be a warning and a lesson for the future of the entire civilized world," Kaczynski wrote. "We already know that all crimes are possible, and in this regard, we have to do everything in order to prevent them from happening."
Kaczynski is in Israel on a four-day trip for talks on the current tension in the Middle East following the war in Lebanon, along with focusing on strengthening Israeli-Polish ties.
Poland, which has about 215 soldiers in Lebanon as part of the UNIFIL stabilization force, has pledged to send another 300 troops to the new international peacekeeping effort.
Poland and Israel generally enjoy good relations, although Jerusalem has voiced concerns about the presence of what it deems an anti-Semitic party, the League of Polish Families, in Poland's governing coalition.