Pope Benedict denounces the horror of the holocaust ; hopes that the memory will arouse greater respect for the dignity of each person

Sixty-five years after the horrific tragedy of the holocaust in Nazi Germany, the Holy Father recalled how the gates of the Nazi concentration camps near the Polish city of Oswiecim, better known by its German name of Auschwitz, were opened and the remaining survivors were freed.

"Today we celebrate 'Holocaust Remembrance Day', the Pope said,  "to recall all the victims of those crimes, and especially the planned annihilation of the Jews, and to honor those who, at the risk of their own lives, protected the persecuted and sought to oppose the murderous insanity. Deeply moved, our thoughts go to the countless victims of that blind racial and religious hatred, who suffered deportation, imprisonment and death in those abhorrent and inhuman places."

"May the memory of those events", he concluded, "and in particular the drama of the Shoah which struck the Jewish people, arouse ever greater respect for the dignity of each person, so that all mankind may feel itself to be one large family. May omnipotent God illuminate hearts and minds, that such tragedies never happen again.

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