NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. - The Barack Obama campaign said yesterday the candidate mistakenly referred to the wrong Nazi death camp when relating the story of a great uncle who helped liberate the camps in World War II.
The Democratic presidential candidate said the story is accurate except that the camp 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," campaign spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement. "Yesterday he mistakenly referred to Auschwitz instead of Buchenwald in telling of his personal experience of a soldier in his family who served heroically."
Aides said yesterday that his grandmother's brother, Charlie Payne, helped liberate a Buchenwald sub-camp in April 1945 as part of the 89th Infantry Division.
In a meeting Monday with veterans, Obama discussed the importance of improving treatment for soldiers suffering post-traumatic stress. To illustrate his point, he talked about his own family.
"I had an uncle who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps. The story in our family was that when he came home, he just went up into the attic and he didn't leave the house for six months," Obama said. "Now, obviously something had really affected him, but at that time there just weren't the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain."
Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet forces as they marched across Poland in January 1945. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum says Americans liberated several death camps in Germany, including Buchenwald, Dachau and Mauthausen.
Obama's mistaken mention of the camp on Monday quickly generated Internet chatter, ranging from puzzlement to outrage. The Republican Party demanded 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," said Alex Conant, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.
Meanwhile, in Montana yesterday, Hillary Rodham Clinton pledged her commitment to tribal sovereignty and Indian healthcare.
"I want to be a strong partner with Indian country," the Democratic presidential candidate told several hundred people at Salish Kootenai College on the sprawling Flathead Indian reservation. Among other things, she promised to name a representative of the American Indian community to work alongside her in the White House.
Clinton's visit came a week before primaries in Montana and South Dakota are expected to feature a sizable representation of American Indian voters.
Americans Indians are expected to make up as much as 20 percent of Tuesday's Democratic primary voters in Montana, and more than 10 percent in South Dakota, where Clinton was headed today. She planned to visit the Pine Ridge Reservation, home to several thousand members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.
Obama also has paid heed to American Indian concerns, even as he has begun to focus on the likely general election contest against Republican John McCain. Earlier this month, he visited Montana's Crow Indian reservation and was adopted into the Crow Nation during a private ceremony.
McCain also has ties to American Indians. He is from Arizona and a former chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.
