11 January 2008
The US president George W. Bush has paid homage to Holocaust victims at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem memorial on the last day of a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories. Bush's visit to the memorial honoring the six million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II came before a tour of Christian sites in the region later on Friday. The US president was accompanied by his Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres, Israel’s prime minister Ehud Olmert, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, Israel’s foreign minister Tzipi Livni, and the Yad Vashem chairmen, Tommy Lapid and Avner Shalev.
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. Shalev told the ‘Jerusalem Post’ that Bush was visibly moved during his hour-long tour of the site. "Twice, I saw tears well up in his eyes," he said.
Shalev also told the paper that at one point, Bush viewed aerial photos of the Auschwitz death camp taken during the war by US forces and called Rice over to discuss why the American government under Roosevelt had decided against bombing the site. Rice explained that at the time the US did not think such a move would halt the extermination of the Jews. Shalev said on Israel’s Army Radio that Bush "reiterated my own explanation: They did not want to deviate from the war's objective, didn't want to be seen as if they were fighting for the Jews. Bush then paused for a moment to think, then said to me 'We should have bombed it.’" In the memorial's visitors' book, the president wrote simply, "God bless Israel, George Bush."
After completing his visit to the Holy Land President Bush and travel to Kuwait.
