12 September 2007
During a three-day visit to Austria, Pope Benedict XVI has paid tribute to the victims of the Holocaust. The German-born pontiff chose Vienna’s Judenplatz, [Jews Square], as one of the first stops of his tour. He joined the city’s chief rabbi Paul Chaim Eisenberg for prayers in front of a monument to the 65,000 Jews from the city killed by the Nazis. The Pope had earlier said that the gesture, in a city where the Jewish population was all but eradicated, was intended to show "our sadness, our repentance and our friendship with the Jewish people".
Vienna had a Jewish population of 185,000 before 1938. Today the number is less than 7,000. In his welcoming address to the Pope the Austrian President, Heinz Fischer, said that his country had experienced "dark hours in its history".
