Merkel to accompany Obama on visit to concentration camp in Germany

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will accompany U.S. President Barack Obama on a visit to the former Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald later this week, a German government spokesman said Sunday.

Obama will also tour the cultural attractions of the German city of Dresden and visit the U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, where soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan are undergoing treatment.

Berlin is not on the president's itinerary for the June 4-5 visit, which will also include political talks with Merkel, followed by a news conference.

U.S. officials proposed the visit to Buchenwald, where 56,000 prisoners died through execution or maltreatment before the camp was liberated by US forces in April 1945. A great uncle of Obama was in the U.S. infantry regiment that liberated a sub-camp of Buchenwald named Ohrdruf.

The idea for the visit is believed to have come about from a meeting Obama had with Jewish writer Elie Wiesel, a survivor of Buchenwald.

Wiesel, a Nobel laureate who has written extensively about the Holocaust, is expected to join Merkel and the U.S. president when they tour the camp, located near the city of Weimar in Thuringia province. The two leaders also plan to meet other Holocaust survivors there.

Obama is flying to Germany from the Egyptian capital of Cairo, where he is due to deliver an address to the Muslim world. Despite Egypt's proximity to Israel, the U.S. leader won't be going to the Jewish state.

Analysts said this was because of differences with the new administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on what steps should be taken to promote the Mideast peace process.

With his visit to Buchenwald, Obama nevertheless wanted to stress his solidarity with Jews worldwide, the analysts said.

Obama's first presidential visit to Germany was for a NATO summit in April. In mid-summer 2008, during his election campaign, Obama had visited Berlin where his keynote speech drew a crowd of 200,000.

From Germany, the U.S. president travels to France where he will attend ceremonies in Normandy marking the 65th anniversary of the Allied D-Day landings, which brought about the end of World War II in Europe.