Bush: 'We should have bombed Auschwitz'
At the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial this morning, President Bush took issue with the actions of one of his predecessors: Franklin Delano Roosevelt: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.Maybe we should have taken him there on Wednesday before his meetings started.
Bush was visibly moved during his hour-long tour of 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 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 [the tracks leading to Auschwitz and other camps. Israel Radio interview with Shalev via CiJ], Shalev said.
Rice explained that at the time the US did not think such a move would halt the extermination of the Jews.
Shalev said on Army Radio that he "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,' " Shalev added.
In the memorial's visitors' book, the president wrote simply, "God bless Israel, George Bush."
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:20 PM
5 Comments:
Bush gives the term "scant consolation" a bad name.
No, we should stop taking them to Yad Vashem altogether. We should take them to our military, to our schools, to our industries, to our hi-tech parks. We can then tell them what a miracle it is to have accomplished all this strength, intelligence and success in a mere 60 years, after half our nation was wiped out in one of history's worst horrors and we will not allow all of this to be destroyed again by any idiot with sympathies to a totalitarian society hell-bent on slaughtering Jews and tossing them into the sea and we will not tolerate anyone who tries to compromise our rights, security and lives.
Gandhi's grandson may have a point.
Oh Please! The President can spare us the tears. If he really wanted to be different from FDR, he would not be pushing the Nazi Palestinian reichlet upon Israel.
The Arabs want to do to Israel's Jews what the Nazis did to the Jews Of Europe. Its a distinction that gets lost upon the world. That being said, I think his hosts should have taken him there first thing and then to Sderot to show weakness breeds catastrophe.
But Israel is too afraid of offending the Arabs despite the fact they're savages, to reveal the truth.
That sounds misleading, Bush said the US should have bombed the "tracks leading to Auschwitz and other camps" -- Not Auschwitz itself. The title you chose seems to be an unfair excersize in Bush bashing.
I'm exceedingly glad to see that President Bush was able to express some emotion at Yad Vashem...proof once again that while people have sympathy for Jews when they're victims, things get very different when Jews actually assert themselves in their own country and claim rights like any other nation.
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