(photo by Lynn Sweet) JERUSALEM--Wearing a white yarmulke, presumptive Democratic Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) paid his respects when he laid a wreath over the ashes of Holocaust victims at Yad Vashem on Wednesday morning. He was introduced by Dana Porath, who is the content manager for YadVashem.org--and a former resident of West Rogers Park in Chicago. She said the senator's tribute linked him "with the six million of our people who were martyred at the hands of the German Nazis." Obama toured the museum, dedicated to preserving Holocaust history, once before--in 2006--with no fanfare. On Wednesday there were four photo opportunities within the hour or less he spent at the museum, not counting the usual arrival and departure pictures. Walking into the Hall of Remembrance wearing the skull cap, Obama rekindled a memorial flame and laid a wreath, standing silently for about a half minute. At some point during his tour, Obama met with Aml Ganim, according to Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs. Ganim is the Israeli border police officer who shot and killed the Palestinian man who used a bulldozer Tuesday to try and overturn cars outside the King David Hotel. Gibbs didn't say what message Obama passed on to Ganim. Obama, on Yad Vashem's Janusz Korczak Plaza, signed the guest book. Obama accepted from Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev a book on Yad Vashem, which he called an "extraordinary gift." Obama then told a small gathering of U.S. and I ...
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(photo by Lynn Sweet) JERUSALEM--Wearing a white yarmulke, presumptive Democratic Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) paid his respects when he laid a wreath over the ashes of Holocaust victims at Yad Vashem on Wednesday morning. He was introduced by Dana Porath, who is the content manager for YadVashem.org--and a former resident of West Rogers Park in Chicago. She said the senator's tribute linked him "with the six million of our people who were martyred at the hands of the German Nazis." Obama toured the museum, dedicated to preserving Holocaust history, once before--in 2006--with no fanfare. On Wednesday there were four photo opportunities within the hour or less he spent at the museum, not counting the usual arrival and departure pictures. Walking into the Hall of Remembrance wearing the skull cap, Obama rekindled a memorial flame and laid a wreath, standing silently for about a half minute. At some point during his tour, Obama met with Aml Ganim, according to Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs. Ganim is the Israeli border police officer who shot and killed the Palestinian man who used a bulldozer Tuesday to try and overturn cars outside the King David Hotel. Gibbs didn't say what message Obama passed on to Ganim. Obama, on Yad Vashem's Janusz Korczak Plaza, signed the guest book. Obama accepted from Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev a book on Yad Vashem, which he called an "extraordinary gift." Obama then told a small gathering of U.S. and I ...