BERLIN, June 5 (RIA Novosti) - U.S. President Barack Obama spoke out against Holocaust denial on Friday after touring Buchenwald on Friday with Germany's chancellor and two survivors of the former Nazi concentration camp.
Speaking of the importance of recognizing and remembering what happened in the camps during World War II, the president said "these sights have not lost their horror with the passage of time."
The visit came a day after a landmark speech in Cairo aimed at Muslims in which he also spoke forcefully against the denial of the Holocaust.
"To this day, there are those who insist that the Holocaust never happened - a denial of fact and truth that is baseless and ignorant and hateful," Obama said at Buchenwald. "This place is the ultimate rebuke to such thoughts; a reminder of our duty to confront those who would tell lies about our history."
The U.S. president was accompanied by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and two former inmates, Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel and Bertrand Herz, the head of a survivors' group.
Their tour lasted about an hour, and at the end Obama laid a single white rose at the camp's memorial to Holocaust victims.
Obama also spoke out against "every form of intolerance - racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, and more," and praised Germany for facing up to the horrors of its history.
"It's not easy to look into the past in this way and acknowledge it and make something of it, make a determination that they will stand guard against acts like this happening again," he said.
Buchenwald opened in 1937 and in 1945 contained 112,000 prisoners. About a quarter of a million people from across Europe passed through the camp, and around 56,000 of them died.
