George bush began at Auschwitz. He laid wreaths at the wall of death, a place where prisoners were summarily shot, and at the unbearable ruins of Birke-nau's gas ovens, a jumble of bricks that remain as they were found in 1945, half-destroyed by the retreating Nazis. The sombre symbolism of the camps suited a week-long tour to the two most troublesome objects of American diplomacy. As the president said later that day, "They remind us that evil is real and must be called by name and must be opposed." That was aimed at critical Europeans. The camps also provide-though this remained unspoken-terrible reminders about Jewish insecurity. This was not irrelevant to the second half of the visit, to the Middle East.
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