U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, participating in ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, said today (Thursday, Jan. 27) that the Holocaust teaches that "evil is real, and must be called by its  name, and must be confronted. 

"We are reminded that anti-Semitism may begin with words, but rarely stops with words ... and the message of  intolerance and hatred must be opposed before it turns into acts of horror," Cheney said at a "Let My People Live" Forum in Krakow, Poland.

Cheney, in remarks distributed by the White House press office, told his audience: 

"The Holocaust occupies a single period in history, but it is not a single event. It represents millions of  individual acts of murder. Each prisoner who arrived had a name, and a home, and dreams for tomorrow. Each, like you and me, was a child of God who wanted to live ... who had every right to live ... who no man had any right to harm. 

"Gathered in this place we are reminded that such immense cruelty did not happen in a far-away, uncivilized corner of the world, but rather in the very heart of the civilized world. The death camps were created by men with a high opinion of themselves - some of them well educated, and possessed of refined manners - but without conscience. And where there is no conscience, there is no tolerance toward others ... no defense against evil ... and no limit to the crimes that follow." 
—Donald H. Harrison