to be joined by two of our cnn, colleagues and friends themselves, children and grandchildren or survivor, cnn s wolf blitzer and dana bash on the ground at auschwitz in poland. friends very nice to see you there today. why don t you just tell me where you are exactly? and what is happening there today? i m just starting to start its holocaust remembrance day, and people all over the world are remembering the holocaust, especially here at auschwitz birkenau right now we re birkenau. this is where the main gas chambers the crematorium. the death chambers were at birkenau. we were just at auschwitz and people from all over the world, especially tens of thousands of young people. have come here from so many countries around the world to do the march from auschwitz to birkenau, mama and down and i just did it and it was so moving to see what happened, then to
finally tonight, imagine a world of global threats and chilling fears, where actions and reactions can mean life or death. the action by the united states government to deny refuge to jews fleeing hitler s persecution, turning a boatload away in 1939, meant they had to return. many to the death chambers. fearmongering is classic political populism, and too often it clouds individual conscience. so tonight, we end with the eloquent and piercing call to conscience by pastor martin nemolay, written a year after he was liberated from a concentration camp where he had been sent for opposing the nazis control of churches.
alive into gutters, death camp ss, melkania thousands dead not bury buried. mass graves, murder pregnant women, stop jews naked dragged into death chambers. gustapo men quicker killing, stop thousands killed throughout poland. stop. believe the unbelievable. stop. six years later, on may 14th, 1948 david benguren issued the declaration that issued the state of israel. for generations jews dreamed of being a free nation in their own land. a vision articulated by theodore hertzel in 1987 at the first
execution, we find ourselves in the company of china, iran, iraq, saudi arabia and somalia, the countries, the top six for executions among we are on that list as well. it seems that it is to brian s point, the american public seems to be distancing itself from the procedure. if they want to keep it available, perhaps with increasing not with frequency but with huge amounts of time perhaps between these executions. i think that your point is right about what does it mean for the u.s. to be the top five one of the top five executioners in the world. i think what we re seeing is that the american people are uncomfortable with the idea that something like a clayton lockette and what happened in oklahoma s death chamber could happen again. the more the american people learn what happens in the death chambers, when they hear about the correction officer that passed out three minutes before