OSWIECIM, Poland — Ban Ki-moon, the UN's secretary general, on Monday visited the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz to pay tribute to Holocaust victims.
Ban walked through the infamous ''Arbeit Macht Frei'' (Work Makes You Free) gate to see exhibitions that document the inhumane conditions of the inmates.
Housed in red brick barracks are the hair and belongings of the inmates.
''I stare at the piles of glasses, hair, shoes, prayer shawls, and dolls, and try to imagine the individual Jews and others to whom they belonged,'' Ban said. ''I stand in disbelief before the gas chambers and crematorium — and shudder at the cruelty of those who designed this death factory.''
Ban laid flowers at the executions wall, where thousands of inmates, mostly Polish resistance members, were shot.
''Auschwitz-Birkenau is not simply a register of atrocities. It is also a repository of courage and hope. Today I say loud and clear: Never again,'' Ban said.
Between 1940-1945, some 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, died in gas chambers or from starvation, disease, and forced labor in Auschwitz and the adjacent Birkenau death camp that Nazi Germany built in occupied Poland.