12:18 PM CDT on Sunday, May 28, 2006

Associated Press

AP

Pope Benedict XVI walks through the gate of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

OSWIECIM, Poland — German-born Pope Benedict XVI, walking solemnly with his hands clasped, visited the Auschwitz concentration camp Sunday, passing alone under the infamous gate— a solitary figure in white.

Benedict's black-clad entourage kept its distance as he walked under the notorious words, "Arbeit Macht Frei" or, "Work Sets You Free."

Other than a brief greeting to the local bishop, Benedict kept silent, his lips moving in prayer and the wind tossing his white hair as he stopped before the execution wall where the Nazis killed prisoners.

Then, he was handed a lighted candle, which he placed before the wall.

A line of elderly camp survivors awaited him in the courtyard. He moved slowly down the line, stopping to talk with each, taking one woman's face in his hands.

He also visited a underground cell that held Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish priest who traded his life for that of a married man at Auschwitz in 1941. Kolbe was canonized by John Paul in 1982.

The visit, by a pope who was enrolled unwillingly in the Hitler Youth and drafted into the German army, is heavy with significance for Catholic-Jewish relations, a favorite theme for Benedict and predecessor John Paul II.

This was the third time Benedict has visited Auschwitz and the neighboring camp at Birkenau. The first was in 1979, when he accompanied John Paul, and in 1980, when he came with a group of German bishops while he was archbishop of Munich.