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Pope laments memory of Nazi death camps

Updated: 30/Nov/2005 16:44

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Pope Benedict XVI told more than 20,000 pilgrims during his weekly general audience on Wednesday that Nazi death camps were an "indelible shame on the history of humanity."

Benedict, who normally devotes his audiences to religious teaching, mentioned the Nazi "extermination camps" in a comment on a biblical psalm which recounts the tragedy of the Jewish people after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC.

The 78-year-old pope said Psalm 136 "is almost the symbolic anticipation of the extermination camps" which remained "an indelible shame on the history of humanity."

The pope visited a synagogue in Cologne during his first foreign trip as pope last August and decried the "insane racist ideology" of Nazism.

He also explained that he had been an "unwilling" member of the Hitler youth organisation, and later served in an anti-aircraft unit before deserting the German army.

Benedict, who succeeded the late Pope John Paul II last April, has pledged to use his pontificate to establish closer ties between Christians and Jews.

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