AUSCHWITZ, POLAND - Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister, paid his respects on Saturday at Auschwitz, where Nazi Germany implemented its "final solution" with ruthless efficiency, killing about 1.5 million people, most of them Jews.

As he emerged from the small, dark-red brick building that once housed an early version of the Nazi gas chambers and crematoriums, Mr. Harper chose not to reflect publicly on what the tour had meant to him, bypassing the journalists who accompanied him here before heading off to the scene of the nearby Birkenau camp.

But the Prime Minister did leave his impressions behind, handwritten in blue ink in a guest book kept by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

It read: "We are witness here to the vestiges of unspeakable cruelty, horror and death. Let us never forget these things and work always to prevent their repetition.

"Lord, bless the souls of those who suffered and perished here, and deliver us from evil. Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, April 5, 2008"

Mr. Harper became the second Canadian prime minister after Jean Chretien in 1999 to visit Auschwitz, one of the worst killing grounds of the Holocaust.

Mr. Harper walked slowly onto the grounds of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, accompanied by the museum's director, Piotr Cywinski, and Wladyslaw Lizon, president of the Polish Canadian Congress.

The group made its way to a rear courtyard where the Prime Minister walked alone to the Death Wall Memorial, a grey slate monument in a section of the camp where several thousand people were executed.

Mr. Harper knelt at the foot of the wall for about 20 seconds before a floral wreath with "Canada" emblazoned in gold letters on a white ribbon. Visibly moved, Mr. Harper turned and walked slowly out of the courtyard, swallowing hard. He did not say a word before beginning a private tour of the grounds.

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