Death camp visit

Obama, who became the first US president to visit the camp, said Buchenwald and concentration camps like it were "the ultimate rebuke" of those who would deny the Holocaust in acts that were "baseless, ignorant and hateful."

He said the former death camp was "a reminder of our duty to confront those who would tell lies about our history.

"Also to this day, there are those who would perpetuate every form of intolerance, racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism and more, hatred that degrades its victims and diminishes us all.

"This place teaches us that we must be ever-vigilant about the spread of evil in our own time. That we must reject the false comfort that others' suffering is not our problem and commit ourselves to resisting those who would subjugate others to serve their own interests."

Obama also expressed particular thanks to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the German people, "because it is not easy to look into the past in this way and acknowledge and make something of it, make a determination that they will stand guard against acts like this happening again."

The "horror"

Merkel and Obama spoke after touring the camp where 56,000 people perished during the Nazi era. By the end of World War II, Buchenwald was the largest Nazi concentration camp on German soil.

The two leaders placed white roses on a plain metal plaque bearing the names of the 50 countries from which the 250,000 prisoners kept under inhuman conditions at the camp came.

During the Buchenwald visit, Merkel said she "bows before all the victims" of the Nazis.

"Incomprehension, horror: there is no word to describe the terrible things that happened to so many people in this camp and in other concentration and death camps," she said.

"How could such a thing happen," Merkel said. "We Germans are determined to ensure that nothing like this is ever reproduced."

Lesson learned?

Buchenwald survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Weisel accompanied the two leaders on the camp walk-through. Speaking after Obama, Weisel told of the terror of watching his father die alongside him at the death camp and questioned whether the world had learned from the Holocaust.

"We must continue believing in a future, because the world has learned. But then again, the world hasn't. Had the world learned there would have been no Cambodia, and no Rwanda, and no Darfur, and no Bosnia. Will the world ever learn?

"I think that is why Buchenwald is so important - as important, but differently, as Auschwitz," he said.

Earlier, Merkel and Obama held talks in the eastern German city of Dresden, where they vowed to redouble their efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East and pledged to work together to resolve the nuclear dispute with Iran.

Obama will also visit a US military hospital in Germany, before heading to France for D-Day commemorations.

dfm/Reuters/dpa/AFP
Editor: Trinity Hartman