washington | Ari Fleischer remembers being advised by a former White House press secretary that despite the demands of the job, he should stop and smell the roses.
He recalled that advice as he toured the Auschwitz concentration camp with President Bush and the first lady in 2003. There were not any roses, but there was plenty to fill the senses.
“I stood there, as an aide and as a Jew, watching the president of the United States visit the spot where my people were almost exterminated,” Fleischer writes in his new book, “Taking Heat.”
“I wondered what my relatives whom I never met would think if they knew I had returned to the place of their death as an aide to the president — a president who had emerged as Israel’s best friend ever in the Oval Office, a president who had profound warmth and respect for the Jewish people,” writes Fleischer.
In the book, which was released by William Morrow this week, Fleischer details his impressions of watching Bush meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and other Middle Eastern leaders on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and of Bush’s decision to isolate the late Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.