Pope Benedict XVI visited Auschwitz today. Among his reported remarks:

To speak in this place of horror, in this place where unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man, is almost impossible — and it is particularly difficult and troubling for a Christian, for a pope from Germany. … In a place like this, words fail; in the end, there can be only a dread silence, a silence which itself is a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?

(Addendum: full text here)

Meanwhile, some of the remarks President Ahmadinejad of Iran made in the course of an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel have been hitting the wires.

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.

…

“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.

“How long is this going to go on?” he added. “How long will the German people be held hostage to the Zionists?… Why should you feel obligated to the Zionists? You’ve paid reparations for 60 years and will have to pay for another 100 years.”

These are certainly interesting times, as that supposed Chinese curse goes.

…

Ring them bells, ye heathen
From the city that dreams,
Ring them bells from the sanctuaries
Cross the valleys and streams,
For they’re deep and they’re wide
And the world’s on its side
And time is running backwards
And so is the bride.

…

(Click here for sample of Dylan’s astounding string-accompanied rendition in Japan, 1994)

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