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The Times - At the heart of evil, a German pope prays for Auschwitz dead

A DRAWN and grim-faced Pope Benedict XVI yesterday shattered a taboo in the often-blighted relationship between Christians and Jews by using his native German language to pray for forgiveness and reconciliation in the former Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz.

The Bavarian-born pontiff, who as a teenager had been a reluctant member of the Hitler Youth, seemed to buckle under the weight of history as he walked through the camp’s main gate with its cynical, wrought-iron slogan: Arbeit macht Frei — Work sets you Free.

About 1.5 million people died in the camp, starved, gassed and shot. Throughout his four-day pilgrimage to Poland, a sentimental tribute to his predecessor and mentor John Paul II, Pope Benedict has avoided speaking German, aware that the older generation still regard it as the language of the old oppressor. Instead he has been mixing accented Polish with fluent Italian. The choice of German in Auschwitz was a deliberate gesture — a recognition that he had come to the camp not just as the Head of the Roman Catholic Church, but as a German and as an individual.

Reuters - Germans should stop feeling Holocaust guilt: Ahmadinejad

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Germans they should no longer allow themselves to be held prisoner by a sense of guilt over the Holocaust and reiterated doubts that the Holocaust even happened.

In an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine, Ahmadinejad said he doubted Germans were allowed to write “the truth” about the Holocaust and said he was still considering traveling to Germany for the World Cup soccer tournament.

“I believe the German people are prisoners of the Holocaust. More than 60 million were killed in World War Two … The question is: Why is it that only Jews are at the center of attention?,” he said in the interview published on Sunday.

Not to completely change the subject, but I found myself mulling over those statistics about conversions in Africa…