Obama may visit (German concentration) camp relative (great uncle) liberated

[sabra]

Source: Chicago Trib

For much of his 84 years, Charles Payne has lived in Chicago in relative obscurity and watched his sister's grandson rise to the presidency.

But now it appears possible that a painful part of Payne's own story will be brought to the forefront, based on German news reports that President Barack Obama is considering a visit to the concentration camp that his great uncle helped liberate in April 1945.

Payne, who spent much of his career working in library science at the University of Chicago, was a private first class in the 89th Infantry Division during World War II when he participated in the liberation of Ohrdruf, a forced-labor camp that was a satellite of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

"I remember seeing a lot of really emaciated people in rags at the point of starvation. People were clutching tin cups for food," he said Thursday in a Tribune interview. "I saw sheds where dead bodies had been stacked up."

But Payne said he had thought little in recent years about the horrors he saw, until German reporters started calling to ask about a possible presidential visit.

Read more: http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2009/05/obama_may_visit_camp_relative.html

[question everything]

1. Compare this to Reagan's visit of a Nazi cemetery (nt)

[Thothmes]

3. It was not a "nazi cemetary". Of the 2,000 military graves in

the Bitburg cemetary 49 belong to members of the waffen SS, the balance (1951 graves) belonged to men that served in the Wehrmach or Luftwaffa.

[Submariner]

2. Coinciding with the D-Day landings visit

this will be a feel good moment for Mr. Payne that should get attention. I hate to bring politics into it, but anything like this about Obama that can be crammed down republitard throats to shut them up is damn fine with me.