Obama Buchenwald Visit Planned For June: Spiegel

Obama Buchenwald Visit Planned For June: Spiegel

President Obama will visit Buchenwald concentration camp in Dresden this summer, Spiegel Online is reporting.

Barack Obama's planned trip to Germany in June is not going to be an official state visit. German diplomatic sources told SPIEGEL ONLINE that the US president is planning a private trip in which he will go on a personal search to places of importance for his family history.

President Obama's great-uncle, Charlie Payne, served in the 89th Infantry Division during World War II and took part in the camp's liberation in 1945.

Last memorial day, Obama mistakenly told a New Mexico crowd his great uncle had participated in the liberation of Auschwitz.

"I had a uncle who was one of the, 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 just went into the attic, and he didn't leave the house for six months. All right? Now, obviously something had affected him deeply, but at the time, there just weren't the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain.'"

As part of the Europe trip, the president is also set to participate in the commemoration the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy in France on June 6, as well as attend a Group of Eight summit in Italy.

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