Barack Obama toured the Buchenwald concentration camp Friday,
the same Nazi camp where the author and Nobel Prize winner Elie
Wiesel was imprisoned as a 16-year old, a few months before the
end of World War II. Wiesel walked the grounds with Obama,
saying to the president at one point, “If only these trees could
talk.” At the end of the tour, German Chancellor Angela Merkel,
Obama and Wiesel delivered remarks. Wiesel went last, speaking
without notes. Hours later, the White House press pool is still
talking about the powerful eloquence of his words. They are
reproduced in full below. As I came here today it was actually a
way of coming and visit my father’s grave — but he had no grave.
His grave is somewhere in the sky. This has become in those
years the largest cemetery of the Jewish people. The day he died
was one of the darkest in my life. He became sick, weak, and I
was there. I was there when he suffered. I was there when he
asked for help, for water. I was there to receive his last
words. But I was not