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At Yad Vashem, Bush says U.S. erred in not bombing Auschwitz
By The Associated Press
Tags: Condoleezza Rice, George Bush 

President Bush had tears in his eyes during an hour-long tour of Israel's Holocaust memorial Friday and told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the U.S. should have bombed Auschwitz to halt the killing, the memorial's chairman said.

Bush emerged from a tour of the Yad Vashem memorial calling it a "sobering reminder" that evil must be resisted, and praising victims for not losing their faith.

Wearing a yarmulke, Bush placed a red-white-and-blue wreath on a stone slab that covers ashes of Holocaust victims taken from six extermination camps. He also lit a torch memorializing the victims.
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Bush was visibly moved as he toured the site, said Yad Vashem's chairman, Avner Shalev.

"Twice, I saw tears well up in his eyes," Shalev said.

At one point, Bush viewed aerial photos of the Auschwitz camp taken during the war by U.S. forces and called Rice over to discuss why the American government had decided against bombing the site, Shalev said.

The Allies had detailed reports about Auschwitz during the war from Polish partisans and escaped prisoners. But they chose not to bomb the camp, the rail lines leading to it, or any of the other Nazi death camps, preferring instead to focus all resources on the broader military effort, a decision that became the subject of intense controversy years later.

Between 1.1 million and 1.5 million people were killed at the camp.

"We should have bombed it," Bush said, according to Shalev.

Upon viewing an aerial shot of Auschwitz, taken during the war by U.S. forces, Bush called the ruling not to bomb it "complex." He then called over Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to discuss President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's decision, clearly pondering the options before rendering an opinion of his own, Shalev told the Associated Press.

"We were talking about the often-discussed 'Could the United States have done more by bombing the train tracks?'" Rice told reporters later aboard Air Force One. "And so we were just talking about the various explanations that had been given about why that might not have been done."

Rice did not say what those reasons were.

Tom Segev, a leading Israeli scholar of the Holocaust, said the Bush comment, which appeared spontaneous, marked the first time an American president had made this acknowledgment.

"It is clear now that the U.S. knew a lot about it," he said. "It's possible that bombing at least the railway to the camps may have saved the lives of the Jews of Hungary. They were the very last ones who were sent to Auschwitz at a time when everybody knew what was going on."

But Segev said the question of a bombing is not so clear cut, noting that "it wasn't clear that the United States had the ability to carry out such an operation."

Eliezer Schweid, a professor of Jewish Thought at Israel's Hebrew University, said the question of a bombing is irrelevant in retrospect.

"World Jewish leadership was afraid to ask publicly for the Allies to bomb the death camps, believing that would turn the conflict into a war for the Jews," Schweid said.

In the memorial's visitors' book, the president wrote simply, "God bless Israel, George Bush."

The memorial was closed to the public and under heavy guard Friday, with armed soldiers standing on top of some of the site's monuments and a police helicopter and surveillance blimp hovering in the air overhead.

"I was most impressed that people in the face of horror and evil would not forsake their God. In the face of unspeakable crimes against humanity, brave souls - young and old - stood strong for what they believe," Bush said.

"I wish as many people as possible would come to this place. It is a sobering reminder that evil exists, and a call that when evil exists we must resist it," he said.

It was Bush's second visit to the Holocaust memorial, a regular stop on the visits of foreign dignitaries. His first was in 1998, as governor of Texas. The last U.S. president to visit was Bill Clinton in 1994.

Bush, making the most extensive Mideast trip of his presidency, was accompanied on his tour by a small party that included Rice and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

At the compound, overlooking a forest on Jerusalem's outskirts, Bush visited a memorial to the 1.5 million Jewish children killed in the Holocaust, featuring six candles reflected 1.5 million times in a hall of mirrors. At the site's Hall of Remembrance, he heard a cantor sing a Jewish prayer for the dead.

Shalev presented Bush with illustrations of the Bible drawn by the Jewish artist Carol Deutsch, who perished in the Holocaust.

Deutsch created the works while in hiding from the Nazis in Belgium. He was informed upon, and died in 1944 in the Buchenwald camp. After the war, his daughter Ingrid discovered that the Nazis had confiscated their furniture and valuables but had left behind a single item: a meticulously crafted wooden box adorned with a Star of David and a seven-branched menorah, containing a collection of 99 of the artist's illustrations of biblical scenes.

The originals are on display at Yad Vashem. The memorial recently decided to produce a special series of 500 replicas, the first of which was to be presented to Bush.

Debbie Deutsch-Berman, a Yad Vashem employee whose grandfather was Deutsch's brother, said she was proud that Bush would be given her relative's artwork.

"These are not just his paintings, they are his legacy, and the fact that they survived shows that as much as our enemies tried to destroy the ideas that these paintings embody, they failed," she said.

Later Friday, Bush was to wrap up his three-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories with a visit to Christian holy sites in Galilee before departing for Kuwait, the next stop on his Mideast tour.

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      1.   Why not to bomb 18:21  |  realism 11/01/08
      2.   LIKE HE BOMBED BAGHAD? 18:26  |  indrajaya 11/01/08
      3.   Bush said they should have bombed Auschwitz. 18:28  |  David Nigel Braham 11/01/08
      4.   would that the allies had bombed 18:35  |  frenz 11/01/08
      5.   1--realism 18:36  |  Steve 11/01/08
      6.   The zionists ignored Auschwitz (un) 18:37  |  Daniel Gerard 11/01/08
      7.   The zionists ignored Auschwitz (deux) 18:38  |  Daniel Gerard 11/01/08
      8.   Humanitarian bombing is always right 18:41  |  Ethel 11/01/08
      9.   Humanitarian bombing is always right 18:41  |  Ethel 11/01/08
      10.   Bush at Yad Vashem 18:51  |  Daniel 11/01/08
      11.   Bombing Auschwitz was unnecessary, 18:55  |  Victor 11/01/08
      12.   ask bush senior 18:56  |  susan 11/01/08
      13.   I pity you, Indrajaya 18:56  |  A Jew 11/01/08
      14.   Allies & Ocwiecm 18:58  |  Jeffrey Blustein 11/01/08
      15.   indrajaya AND Disgusting Maureen,... 19:01  |  akiva (zionist) 11/01/08
      16.   Prescot Bush disagrees. Doing business w/ Nazi`s was good 19:03  |  POP 11/01/08
      17.   Should have liberated Lebanon 19:06  |  Ethel 11/01/08
      18.   It is unfortunate 19:06  |  Palestinian 11/01/08
      19.   Daniel Gerard, you are so right. 19:08  |  akiva (zionist) 11/01/08
      20.   I pity you as well Indrajaya 19:14  |  JJ 11/01/08
      21.   # 2 INDY...figures released by Iraqi Gov 19:17  |  Lynn 11/01/08
      22.   TEARS FOR ISRAEL, NONE FOR OUR 3,000 DEAD AND 20,000 MAIMED 19:20  |  GEORGE 11/01/08
      23.   So make up for it be bombing Iran nuke sites NOW 19:30  |  tomer 11/01/08
      24.   God Bless President Bush 19:31  |  Dave from Chicago 11/01/08
      25.   Bush and Republicans 19:40  |  Ethel 11/01/08
      26.   RESPONSE TO #22 re Bush crying 19:41  |  Avi 11/01/08
      27.   Bush`s wisdom on Slowman`s education 19:44  |  Press Ass 11/01/08
      28.   Bush critize "The Greatest Generation" 19:46  |  Lastdaywatchers 11/01/08
      29.   Bush: You shed no tears for our boys and girls killed Iraq! 19:49  |  Disgusted US Citizen 11/01/08
      30.   # 21, LYNN 19:49  |  indrajaya 11/01/08
      31.   2nd Try,the current evil is the Crime Syndicate and the terrorist 19:52  |  lakshmi 11/01/08
      32.   Mr Bush: Where are your tears for the Iraqi civilians killed? 19:53  |  Eric 11/01/08
      33.   Bush and bombs 20:03  |  Lea 11/01/08
      34.   Who cares? 20:04  |  Soothsayer 11/01/08
      35.   What part whould they have bombed? 20:07  |  MIke McGuire 11/01/08
      36.   #22 GEORGE 20:13  |  Jon 11/01/08
      37.   Israeli gov`t trips to YV are the height of boorishness 20:18  |  Tim 11/01/08
      38.   Kaddish 20:22  |  Scharker Yid 11/01/08
      39.   TEN QUESTIONS TO THE ZIONISTS 20:28  |  Dav 11/01/08
      40.   We had a war to win; hindsight is 20/20 20:29  |  Isaiah 11/01/08
      41.   We had a war to win; hindsight is 20/20 20:29  |  Isaiah 11/01/08
      42.   God Bless everyone 20:30  |  Steve Beikirch 11/01/08
      43.   Scharker Yid - And where do we place the safety of Christians? 20:36  |  Christians 11/01/08
      44.   #18 20:38  |  Jane 11/01/08
      45.   1958 4 million killed 20:39  |  Dav 11/01/08
      46.   pop 20:41  |  realism 11/01/08
      47.   the current evil from lakshmi) 20:45  |  Rasputin 11/01/08
      48.   One remembers others who visited, insisted on bearing their heads 20:50  |  Iz Ray Leigh 11/01/08
      49.   Often mentioned, with the comment that never mentioned 20:52  |  Iz Ray Leigh 11/01/08
      50.   Worry not, President Bush 20:54  |  Denise Thompson 11/01/08
      51.   #31-Where did you dig up your garbage story 20:56  |  Alan 11/01/08
      52.   How Bush`s grandfather helped Hitler`s rise to power 20:57  |  Pepe 11/01/08
      53.   about clean hands to realism 21:06  |  Rasputin 11/01/08
      54.   to Mike Mcguir the Hol denier 21:33  |  TAZ 11/01/08
      55.   #39 Actually, it`s not true. Thanks for asking. 21:42  |  McQueen 11/01/08
      56.   Bush at Yad Vashem 22:06  |  steven kargman 11/01/08
      57.   Bush tactical judgement 22:11  |  W 11/01/08
      58.   No. 53, TAZ 22:15  |  W 11/01/08
      59.   Had George W. Bush been President during WW2 22:18  |  Tosefta 11/01/08
      60.   We erred in not fighting Zionism 22:21  |  Harold 11/01/08
      61.   Strategic decision 22:36  |  Jim 11/01/08
      62.   Bush is right but. . . 22:50  |  Yosef ben Shalom 11/01/08
      63.   to Tim 22:55  |  Sol 11/01/08
      64.   Here comes the pity party 23:02  |  Harold 11/01/08
      65.   # 11 Victor 23:05  |  Jim 11/01/08
      66.   the allies knew 23:32  |  Baba 11/01/08
      67.   #35 Mike McGuire 23:42  |  Jim 11/01/08
      68.   # 39 23:47  |  Jim 11/01/08
      69.   #22 george and real figures of usa casualties 23:53  |  victor hardman 11/01/08
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