U.S. Vice President Mike Pence paid homage Thursday to the suffering of the Jewish and Polish people under German occupation during World War II with visits to memorials honoring their suffering and heroism.
The heavily symbolic visits to a city destroyed by Adolf Hitler's forces were gestures of friendship to two of America's closest allies, Israel and Poland. They came a day before Pence will make his first visit to Auschwitz, the memorial site where Nazi forces killed 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, in what was then occupied Poland.
Pence first joined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in honoring the wartime Jewish insurgents who rose up against Nazi German forces in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943.
Joined by their wives, the three took part in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising memorial. A cantor recited a prayer in Hebrew as the three couples faced the dark memorial, with representatives of Poland's small surviving Jewish community in attendance.
Pence and Netanyahu then held talks in the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, located on the same square in the heart of the former ghetto, which tells the story of 1,000 years of Jewish life in Polish lands.
Netanyahu wrote in a museum guest book: "May the spirit and heroism of the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish resistance fighters who staged the first organized uprising against Nazi occupation in all of occupied Europe be an eternal reminder of the dangers of powerlessness in the face of tyranny."
In remarks in front of journalists ahead of the meeting, Pence, a conservative Christian, told Netanyahu that it was "very humbling for me to be here with you in this very special place on this sacred ground. To hear a prayer sung, and to remember the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto."
The revolt ended in death for most of the fighters, yet left behind an enduring symbol of resistance.
Netanyahu said their resistance saved the honor of the Jewish people.
Pence was later accompanied by Morawiecki to visit a memorial to the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, an important site for Poles where U.S. President Donald Trump gave a speech in 2017.
In that revolt, Polish insurgents took up arms against the powerful German forces, holding out for 63 days before the Germans crushed it. In retaliation, the Germans murdered some 200,000 Poles and razed Warsaw to the ground.
Pence and Netanyahu were in Warsaw for a conference on the Middle East co-hosted by the U.S. and Poland that focused heavily on confronting Iran.
In a speech to the conference earlier Thursday, Pence drew a line from the war that began 80 years ago to the Middle East of today, saying "the Iranian regime openly advocates another Holocaust."
Pence accused European powers on Thursday of undermining Washington's crackdown on Iran by trying to break U.S. sanctions against Tehran, in remarks that were likely to further strain transatlantic relations.
European powers, who oppose the Trump administration's decision to pull out of a nuclear deal with Iran, were openly skeptical of a conference excluding Tehran. France and Germany declined to send their top diplomats, while British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt left before Thursday's main events.
"Sadly, some of our leading European partners have not been nearly as cooperative," Pence said. "In fact, they have led the effort to create mechanisms to break up our sanctions."
European countries say they share Washington's concerns about Iran's regional behavior but believe withdrawing from the nuclear deal was a mistake, and have promised to try to salvage the deal as long as Iran continues to abide by it. In practice, European companies have accepted new U.S. sanctions on Iran and abandoned plans to invest there.
Pence called on the Europeans to follow Washington and exit the agreement: "The time has come for our European partners to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and join with us."
He said a new European scheme to trade with Iran, known as the Special Purpose Vehicle, was "an effort to break American sanctions against Iran's murderous revolutionary regime."
"It is an ill-advised step that will only strengthen Iran, weaken the EU and create still more distance between Europe and the United States," he said.
European diplomats at the conference rejected Pence's accusations: "We strongly disagree," a diplomat from a major European power said. "We want to push Iran to good results and don't want to push Iran outside of its nuclear commitment."
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday met in Brussels with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who didn't attend the Warsaw summit citing a scheduling conflict at NATO.
Pompeo told a news conference on Thursday that there were differences during the summit meeting over how to get Iran to change its ways, but there was unanimity, including from Europeans, that Tehran posed a global threat.
"We make no bones about it, we need more sanctions, more pressure on Iran," Pompeo said in closing remarks. "There was not a defender of Iran in the room. No country. No country spoke out and denied any of the basic facts that we have all laid out about Iran, the threat it poses, the nature of regime."
The summit was notable because of the presence of Israel alongside wealthy Arab states Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Washington aims to narrow differences between its Israeli and Arab allies to isolate Iran.
