May 12, 2009 / 15:39 pm
Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks at Israel’s national Holocaust memorial, despite saying such an "atrocity" as the Holocaust should never "disgrace mankind again," drew criticisms from several Israeli sources who complained that the Pontiff did not express enough remorse for the Nazi genocide of Jews.
On Monday at the Holocaust Memorial Pope Benedict began with a quotation from Isaiah 56: "I will give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name … I will give them an everlasting name which shall not be cut off."
Those who lost their lives "will never lose their names," Pope Benedict said of the Holocaust victims. He explained their names are "indelibly etched" on the hearts of their loved ones, their survivors, and "all those determined never to allow such an atrocity to disgrace mankind again."
The cry of Holocaust victims "still echoes in our hearts," he said, describing it as a "perpetual reproach against the spilling of innocent blood" and like "the cry of Abel," the first murder victim.