Obama's Great Uncle Helped Liberate Buchenwald

Today, I learned that Obama's great-uncle was one of the first American soldiers to liberate a concentration camp during WWII. He was part of the 89th infantry, which liberated the camps at Buchenwald. He was a genuine American hero.

I have to give a shot out to the RNC, who made such a big deal out of this. I didn't watch Obama's Memorial Day speech, so I wouldn't have known otherwise. The RNC is apoplectic all because Obama mistakenly said it was Auschwitz instead of Buchenwald. Considering this is an old family story that Obama mentioned off the cuff during an unscripted Q&A, it's easy to see how a mixup could be made. Yet Republicans, who have spent the last 30 years portraying every Democrat as an elitist and a liar, don't want to let it go.

Here's the timeline of how it went down. On Memorial Day, during a Q&A session, Obama was talking about post-traumatic stress disorder and said the following:

"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.”

The RNC went ballistic. They knew that Obama's support with Jewish voters could only benefit from such a story, so they rushed out an urgent memo to the media. From the tone of this memo, they probably thought Obama was making this up out of whole cloth. After all, he'd never mentioned this story before.

Barack Obama’s dubious claim is inconsistent with world history and demands an explanation. It was Soviet troops that liberated Auschwitz, so unless his uncle was serving in the Red Army, there’s no way Obama’s statement yesterday can be true. Obama’s frequent exaggerations and outright distortions raise questions about his judgment and his readiness to lead as commander in chief.

Obama and his people checked his family records, determined that it was Buchenwald, not Auschwitz:

Senator Obama’s family is proud of the service of his grandfather and uncles in World War II – especially the fact that his great uncle was a part of liberating one of the concentration camps at Buchenwald. Yesterday he mistakenly referred to Auschwitz instead of Buchenwald in telling of his personal experience of a soldier in his family who served heroically.

The RNC, still gloating, stepped back their attacks a bit. I'm sure they were pissed that the bulk of Obama's amazing story was true.

At times it appears that Barack Obama inaccurately recalls his own history and American history, so it’s important that we point to the facts. In this case, we’re happy to see that he took the time to set the record straight.

I am sometimes shocked by the crass gotcha games that Republicans like to play. If I was asked to recount where my grandfather went on bombing runs during WWII, I'd probably get the names wrong too. Maybe my grampa bombed France in his P-51 Mustang, maybe it was Germany, maybe it was Austria or Holland. I wasn't alive then, I've forgotten the details of his stories, I just know that he was an ace pilot and a hero who fought the Nazis. The big point that Obama was making, that his great uncle liberated a Nazi concentration camp and saw horrible things, is still true even if Obama mixed up the names.

But I would like to thank the RNC for making a big deal out of this. Now I have yet another anecdote to help assure my Jewish friends that even though Obama might have some Muslims in his family tree, he also has concentration camp liberators in there as well.

[UPDATE] Jake Tapper of ABC weighs in:

No matter where you stand, I guess I just don't particularly care to see Concentration Camp survivors on the same page as cartoon Pinnochios, as whoever does graphics for the Washington Post's great fact-checker Michael Dobbs has done HERE.

And do we really need the headline "Where In the World Is Auschwitz?" This isn't a joke.

I am certainly part of the media world that pounces on politicians when they screw-up. As such, I'm often guilty as charged when it comes to not seeing the forest for the trees. In this instance, the forest is the deliberate extermination of 12 million people. And the sacrifices of the brave Americans who risked and gave their lives to save those people victimized by Nazi barbarism. Not to mention our fighting men and women through the generations who have had to deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a conversation about which prompted Obama to mention his great uncle.

Obama deserved to be called out for his mistake. But it's also worth noting that despite all the talk about Obama's problems with the Jewish community, he's never mentioned before that his great uncle helped liberate a concentration camp until it came up in North Las Vegas in a conversation about PTSD.