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Obama links slavery, Holocaust memory

July 12, 2009

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- President Obama stressed the importance of remembering slavery to the importance of remembering the Holocaust, according to the CNN Web site.

"It's one of those things that you don't forget about," Obama told CNN in an interview scheduled to air Monday on "Anderson Cooper 360," according to a report on the Web site.

Obama gave the interview over the weekend while visiting the African country of Ghana, once a major slave trading center.

"I think it's important that the way we think about it, the way it's taught, is not one in which there's simply a victim and a victimizer, and that's the end of the story," the president said. "I think the way it has to be thought about, the reason it's relevant, is whether it's what's happening in Darfur or what's happening in the Congo or what's happening in too many places around the world, the capacity for cruelty still exists."

Obama called his visit to Cape Coast Castle, a slavery dungeon, "reminiscent of the trip I took to Buchenwald," a German Nazi death camp. "It reminds us of the capacity of human beings to commit great evil," he said.

Obama said he hoped his daughters, Malia and Sasha, who accompanied him on the trip, learned about the history of slavery during the visit.

"And hopefully, one of the things that was imparted to them during this trip is their sense of obligation to fight oppression and cruelty wherever it appears," he said.

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