Pope at Auschwitz

Calling himself "a son of Germany," Pope Benedict prayed at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz yesterday and asked why God was silent when 1.5 million victims, mostly Jews, died in this "valley of darkness."

Ending a four-day pilgrimage to Poland, Pope Benedict, 79, said humans could not fathom "this endless slaughter" but only seek reconciliation for those who suffered "in this place of horror."

As on the rest of his trip, he walked in the footsteps of his Polish-born predecessor John Paul, who came to the camp in 1979 on his first visit to Poland as pope. Pope John Paul died in April last year and is revered as a saint in his native country.

"Pope John Paul II came here as a son of the Polish people. I come here today as a son of the German people," Pope Benedict said in Italian at a monument near the ruins of a crematorium at Birkenau, the death camp section of the Auschwitz complex.

"I could not fail to come here," he said. The leader of 1.1 billion Roman Catholics also prayed for peace in his native German, which he has mostly avoided not to hurt Polish and Jewish sensitivities.

He was forced to join the Hitler Youth and drafted into the army during the war.

Scattered rain fell over Auschwitz until the main ceremony, when the skies cleared and a rainbow appeared.

Pope Benedict said it was almost impossible, particularly for a German Pope, to speak at "the place of the Shoah."

"In a place like this, words fail. In the end, there can only be a dread silence, a silence which is a heartfelt cry to God - Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?"

Key facts on the Nazi Auschwitz death camp

Pope Benedict visited the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz yesterday to underscore his commitment to carrying on John Paul's work of improving relations with Jews and fighting anti-Semitism.

Here are some key facts on Auschwitz:

¤ German forces occupying Poland set up Auschwitz in southern Poland in 1940 as a labour camp for Polish prisoners, gradually expanding it into a vast labour and death camp.

¤ The complex contained three camps and at least 36 sub-camps which were built outside the town of Oswiecim, on an isolated 40 square-kilometre site, between 1940 and 1942.

- Auschwitz I was built for Polish political prisoners in June 1940. Above its entrance gate is written the infamous motto "Arbeit macht frei" (Work makes you free).

- Auschwitz II was built in October 1941 in Birkenau, three kilometres from the main camp. It held more than 100,000 inmates and was the main site of mass killings. Gas chambers and crematoria capable of disposing of about 2,000 a day were built there. By 1944, 6,000 a day were being killed.

- Auschwitz III supplied forced labour for the nearby I.G. Farben chemical plant.

¤ Between 1.2 and 1.5 million people died at the camps, most of them Jews. Many were not even registered because they were sent directly on arrival at Birkenau from their trains to the nearby gas chambers.

¤ Other groups of people who died included Polish political prisoners, Soviet prisoners of war, Gypsies, homosexuals, people with disabilities and prisoners of conscience or religious faith.

¤ The camp was liberated by Soviet soldiers on January 27, 1945.

¤ About 200,000 inmates of the camp survived.

¤ Out of a total of about 7,000 guards at Auschwitz, including 170 female staff, 750 were prosecuted and punished after Nazi Germany was defeated.

(Sources: Reuters/Oxford Companion to the World War II/BBC)