Pope asks why God was silent at Auschwitz

The Pope described the Nazi regime as a

OSWIECIM, Poland - Pope Benedict has prayed at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz and asked why God was silent when 1.5 million victims, mostly Jews, died in this "valley of darkness".

Ending a four-day pilgrimage to Poland on Sunday local time, Pope Benedict, 79, said humans could not fathom "this endless slaughter" but only seek reconciliation for those who suffered "in this place of horror".

As on the rest of his trip, he walked in the footsteps of his Polish-born predecessor John Paul, who came to the camp in 1979 on his first visit to Poland as pope.

"I come here today as a son of the German people," Pope Benedict said in Italian near the ruins of a crematorium at Birkenau, the death camp of Auschwitz. "I could not fail to come here."

The leader of 1.1 billion Roman Catholics also prayed for peace in his native German, which he had avoided until then to not hurt Polish and Jewish sensitivities. He was forced to join the Hitler Youth and drafted into the army during the war.

Scattered rain fell over Auschwitz until the main ceremony, when the skies cleared and a rainbow appeared.

Benedict said it was almost impossible, particularly for a German Pope, to speak at "the place of the Shoah".

"In a place like this, words fail. In the end, there can only be a dread silence, a silence which is a heartfelt cry to God - Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?"

Before the ceremony, Pope Benedict visited the main Auschwitz camp, where he walked under the gateway topped with the infamous motto "Arbeit macht frei" (Work makes you free) and met 32 survivors of the camp at the Wall of Death firing line.

Pope Benedict described the Nazi regime as a "ring of criminals" which took power in Germany through false promises and terror "with the result that our people was used and abused as an instrument of their thirst for destruction and power".

Saying humanity traversed a "valley of darkness" at Auschwitz, he ended quoting Psalm 23: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want ... even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for you are with me."

Pope Benedict left from Krakow airport almost two hours after the scheduled end of his four-day visit, during which he celebrated huge open-air masses in Warsaw and Krakow, visited John Paul's hometown and prayed at shrines dear to his predecessor.

- REUTERS