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Indian President at Auschwitz Site
The President of India, Pratibha Devisingh Patil, visited the Auschwitz Museum and Memorial on April 26. She viewed Oświęcim-Auschwitz, the archival film footage shot by Soviet cameramen immediately after liberation. She also saw the crematorium and gas chamber building and block 11, which housed the camp jail. President Patil placed a floral tribute at the Death Wall in the courtyard of that block and paid homage to the people murdered there.
Next, the Indian delegation drove to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau site. She laid a wreath of flowers at the monument to the victims of the camp.
In the guest book, the President of India wrote: "In a place like this, words fail. My head bows in prayers for the peace of souls of countless men and women, old and young alike and the children who were tortured with hard labour and then gassed to death at these camps. May this be a chilling reminder that such crimes of genocide shall never go unpunished."
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum historian Teresa Wantor-Cichy acted as Patil's guide, and said that the Indian president was moved by the vastness of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp and the great number of visitors. "President Patil said that this is a tragic place that has made a great impression on her, and that she sees the great need for commemorating this place and, at the same time, remembering the victims so that similar tragedies never occur again," said Wontor-Cichy.
During her visit to Poland, aside from the visit to Oświęcim, President Patil met in Warsaw with the president and prime minister of the Polish Republic. Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński, the director of the Oświęcim museum, attended a state dinner given for President Patil by the President of the Polish Republic, Lech Kaczyński. In Małopolska, the Indian president also visited the Jagiellonian University, Wawel Castle, and the Wieliczka salt mine.
Elected in July 2007, Pratibha Devisingh Patil is India's first woman president.
