Buhari visits Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial in Poland

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, in Oświęcim, Poland, paying tribute to Holocaust victims.

According to a statement issued by Senior Special Assistant to the President (Media & Publicity), Garba Shehu, a guided tour of the Museum, devoted to the memory of the victims who died at both camps during World War II, President Buhari penned a hand-written tribute in the visitor’s book, quoting Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

The statement said that the President also laid a wreath at Block 11 of the museum, known as the ‘‘Death block, explaining that,’’ Here, according to an epitaph in the Block: “Male and female prisoners from all parts of the camp complex where held in this building…following brutal interrogations, they were in most cases sentenced to death by shooting.”

It said later and shortly before leaving the Museum, which includes the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, President Buhari, fielding questions from State House Correspondents travelling with him, described those fanning embers of discord in Nigeria as ”illiterates and ignorant.”

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The President is on day four of his visit to Poland, where he had attended the opening of the UN Climate Change Conference in Katowice, delivered his national address at the 12-day meeting of COP24, met with several world leaders and visited the impressive Nigerian pavilion at the climate summit.

The President had earlier attended a town-hall meeting with Nigerians in Poland, a day after his arrival in the country, the statement recalled.