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Obama said planning to visit Buchenwald concentration camp
By Haaretz Service
Tags: Holocaust, Jewish World 

U.S. President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald during his upcoming tour of Europe, official German sources reported Friday.

The U.S. administration has yet to confirm the report, but secret service units have already been sent to Germany to examine the security at places Obama is expected to visit during his trip. The secret service personnel were sent to Dresden, among other places.

Obama is scheduled to visit the concentration camp on June 5, one day before taking part in a ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of the 1944 invasion of Allied forces in Normandy. A German government spokesman said that Obama may "visit historical sites that represent different aspects of World War II - destruction and reconstruction, extermination and the breakdown of civilization."
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If Obama does visit Buchenwald, he will be tracing the footsteps of his great-uncle Charlie Payne who participated in the liberation of the camp. Payne's story was the source of some embarrassment for the American president during his campaign, when he said "I had an uncle who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps. And the story in my family is that when he came home, he went into the attic, and he didn't leave the house for six months." It was later pointed out to him that it was Buchenwald, and not Auschwitz that his mother's uncle had helped liberate, as Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army.

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