(29 May 2006) SHOTLIST
AP Television
Birkenau
1. Wide Pope Benedict XVI approaching Birkenau memorial
2. Benedict in front of memorial
3. Wide crowd with rainbow in the sky
4. Crowd near train track
5. SOUNBITE (Polish): Henryk Nowacki, Holocaust Survivor:
"These are mixed feelings but you know when the war ended he (the Pope) became a priest."
6. Cutaway Henryk Nowacki
7. SOUNDBITE (Polish): Michal Habas, Holocaust Survivor:
"It doesn't bother me that he is German - what can we expect after an experience like that from who and who for? Pray for those who lost their lives, what else can we expect?"
8. Close-up of badge Habas is wearing
9. Wide shot ceremony
10. SOUNDBITE (Italian): Pope Benedict XVI:
"To speak in this place of horror, in this place where unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man, is almost impossible and it is particularly difficult and troubling for a Christian, for a pope from Germany."
11. Pull focus from wire fence to close up Benedict
12. Benedict walking and waving to crowd
STORYLINE
German-born Pope Benedict XVI, walking solemnly with his hands clasped, visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland on 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 on the gate saying "Arbeit Macht Frei", or "Work Sets You Free".
Other than a brief greeting to the local bishop, Benedict kept silent as he entered, his lips moving in prayer and the wind tossing his white hair as he stopped for a full minute before the Wall of Death, where the Nazis killed thousands of prisoners.
Then he was handed a lighted candle, which he placed before the wall.
The Nazi occupiers who built the camp near the town of Oswiecim - or Auschwitz in German - killed as many as one and a half (m) million people there, most of them Jews.
Others included Poles, Roma or Gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war and political opponents of Germany's Nazi regime.
A line of 32 elderly camp survivors waited to meet the pontiff, most of them Catholic.
The pope moved slowly down the line, stopping to talk with each, taking one woman's face in his hands and kissing one of the men on both cheeks.
Benedict then visited the dark cell in the basement of one of the buildings, the place where St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Roman Catholic priest, starved to death after voluntarily taking the place of a condemned prisoner with a large family.
Benedict stopped to pray again in the cell, standing before a candle placed there by John Paul II during his 1979 visit.
The visit was fraught with significance for Catholic-Jewish relations, a favourite theme for Benedict and predecessor John Paul.
It was the third time Benedict visited Auschwitz and the neighbouring camp at Birkenau, but his first as pontiff.
As Benedict stopped to pray at the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex's memorial, a light rain stopped and a brilliant rainbow suddenly appeared over the camp.
Addressing those gathered, Benedict said: "To speak in this place of horror, in this place where unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man, is almost impossible and it is particularly difficult and troubling for a Christian, for a pope from Germany."
Benedict's words touched a chord with Polish Holocaust survivor Michal Habas, who said: "It doesn't bother me that he is German - what can we expect after an experience like that from who and who for? Pray for those who lost their lives, what else can we expect?"
people."
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