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Then he added: ldquo;I donrsquo;t want to make you bitter, but I have to say the truth.ldquo;How much pain! How much cruelty! Is it possible that we humans created in Godrsquo;s image are capable of doing these things rdquo; the pontiff said of the atrocities 70 years ago. He then carried a large white candle to the Death Wall, where prisoners at Auschwitz were executed.At the dark underground prison cell that once housed St.ldquo;You donrsquo;t need words.rdquo;These are questions, he added, that ldquo;humanly speaking, have no answer.He then traveled two miles (three kilometers) to Birkenau, where Christian Poles who saved Jews during the war and other guests stood in respect as the pope arrived, his vehicle driving alongside the rail tracks once used to transport victims to their deaths there.The pope wanted an ldquo;atmosphere of silence, silent compassion, silent prayer,rdquo; said Vatican spokesman, the Rev. people are being tortured.His only public words were in a guest-book entry, where he wrote in his native Spanish: ldquo;Lord, have mercy on your people! Lord, forgiveness for so much cruelty!rdquo; He then signed his name in Latin, ldquo;Franciscus. Cruelty did not end in Auschwitz, in Birkenau.Elzbieta Sobczynska, who was 10 when she was brought to Auschwitz in 1944 from the Warsaw ghetto, said that in his silence, Francis spoke volumes.rdquo;ldquo;Today in many parts of the world where there is war the same thing is happening.

A few shafts from a tiny window were the only light cast on the pontiff.Francis spent his nearly two hours at the death camps in quiet prayer and reflection.At Auschwitz, Francis prayed silently for more than 15 minutes before speaking individually to the survivors, shaking their hands and kissing them on the cheeks.Francisrsquo; visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Adolf Hitlerrsquo;s forces put to death more than 1 million people, most of them Jews, came on the third day of a five-day trip to Poland that included meetings with young Catholic pilgrims gathering in Krakow for World Youth Day, a global celebration of faith.rdquo;Later, however, Francis spoke with passion about his Auschwitz visit to a crowd of young people gathered outside the archbishoprsquo;s residence where he was staying for the night. Oswiecim, Poland: Choosing silence to convey his sorrow, Pope Francis visited the former Nazi death factory at Auschwitz and Birkenau on Friday, meeting with concentration camp survivors as well as aging saviors pvc Sliding Window who helped Jews escape certain doom.

There he greeted 25 Holocaust rescuers, including Anna Bando, who as a child helped her mother smuggle bread hidden in their handbags to Jews forced by Nazi occupiers to stay in Warsawrsquo;s ghetto.Calling on the young pilgrims to show mercy to refugees and other persecuted people, the pontiff then asked: ldquo;Where is God when innocent persons die as a result of violence, terrorism and war.Unlike his predecessors, St. His visit, the first ever by a pontiff, was part of his overall efforts aimed at healing centuries of bitterness between the Vatican and Jews.One by one, he greeted 11 survivors, among them 101-year-old Helena Dunicz Niwinska, who played the violin in a death camp orchestra, and two other centenarians.His successor, Pope Benedict XVI, who visited in 2006, was a German who served in the Hitler Youth for a time as a teenager.rdquo;Francis is the first pope to visit Auschwitz who did not himself live through the brutality of World War II on Europersquo;s soil.