Barack Obamas great-uncle to commemorate D-Day — chicagotribune.com

Barack Obamas great-uncle to commemorate D-Day — chicagotribune.com.

Charles Payne to travel separately, will not visit concentration camp

By John McCormick | Tribune reporter

June 3, 2009

Charles Payne, great uncle of President Barack Obama, poses at his home in Chicago. In 1945, Payne was one of the U.S soldiers who helped liberate a German concentration camp near Buchenwald, where Obama is scheduled to visit. (Tribune photo by Kuni Takahashi / May 7, 2009)

 

President Barack Obama’s great-uncle, a Chicagoan who helped liberate a German concentration camp in 1945, plans to travel to France late this week to take part in a weekend event to commemorate the 65th anniversary of D-Day, the Tribune has learned.

Charles Payne, 84, is expected to travel to Normandy with a delegation led by the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs, retired Army Gen. Eric Shinseki. The group will include former Sen. Bob Dole and Susan Eisenhower, President Dwight Eisenhower’s granddaughter and a Republican whose support of Obama started early in the campaign.

Payne, who is the brother of Obama’s late grandmother, landed at Le Havre in the Normandy region of France in January 1945 — well after D-Day — to start an often confusing and cold journey across Europe that eventually took him to a concentration camp where more than 50,000 people had been killed.

Obama will visit that concentration camp Friday as part of an itinerary that includes stops in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, ahead of the Normandy ceremony Saturday. Obama’s tour of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Dresden, Germany, will come in the middle of his trip.

Related links

• Barack Obama’s great uncle, Charles Payne Photos

Payne, who spent much of his career working in library science at the University of Chicago, was a private first class in the 89th Infantry Division during World War II when he participated in the liberation of Ohrdruf, a forced-labor camp that was a satellite of Buchenwald. He said he had prepared his emotions for returning to the camp, but is somewhat relieved to be going to Normandy instead. “I’m not sure that I want to go through that,” he said Tuesday. “This is an anniversary of a heroic event and I think this can be enjoyable. I don’t think visiting a concentration camp can ever be enjoyable.”

Payne said he has been so busy packing that he has not had much time to think about what it will be like to return to Normandy. “It’s pretty exciting,” he said. “I can’t comprehend that it was 65 years ago.”

Payne said he has not spoken to Obama about the trip and was not informed that he was going until Monday. He was still learning details Tuesday, but said he has been told he will be attending a formal event Friday in Paris.

On Saturday, Payne said, plans call for him to travel by train to the Normandy area, a route he took several times in the back of a truck during the war. His wife, Melanie, also is expected to make the trip.

Payne’s involvement in the European portion of Obama’s trip is something of a reversal for the White House. On Friday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Payne had been invited to go along on the trip but declined the invitation.

In a Tribune interview last month, Payne said he saw images he will never forget when he arrived at the concentration camp. “I remember seeing a lot of really emaciated people in rags at the point of starvation. People were clutching tin cups for food,” he said. “I saw sheds where dead bodies had been stacked up.”

Payne said he has no World War II mementos and had not thought much about his time overseas until Obama began mentioning him during the campaign. “Until the whole thing came up with Barack’s misspeaking about the prison camp, I hadn’t thought about this for so long,” he said.

A year ago, Obama incorrectly said Payne had been part of the liberation force at the Auschwitz concentration camp. He also has repeatedly suggested Payne “went up into the attic” of a family home for six months after his return from the war because of the horrors he had seen.

Last month, Payne acknowledged he may have been moody after his return to Kansas but suspects family members exaggerated a bit.

“We didn’t have an attic. But I wasn’t the easiest person to get along with during that period.”

Payne moved to Chicago in 1960, after receiving a degree in engineering from Kansas State University following the war. He lived in Hyde Park most of those years, moving to a Gold Coast condominium after his retirement in 1995.

Obama was scheduled to be in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday and plans to deliver a speech Thursday in Egypt before traveling Europe.

mccormickj@tribune.com

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Barack Obama’s great uncle criticises him over Buchenwald visit – Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/5407590/Barack-Obamas-great-uncle-criticises-him-over-Buchenwald-visit.html

Barack Obama faced unprecedented public criticism from a member of his own family when his great uncle said he was only visiting a concentration camp next week for ‘political reasons’.

No wonder we haven’t heard anything from the U.S. media from any of Obama’s white relatives.  They may tell the truth!  In this story, his great uncle says that his sister and her husband, “were both great story tellers and sometimes made up the details to go along with it.”  I wonder what he thinks about all that his great nephew is doing to the country?

By Alex Spillius in Washington
Published: 7:29PM BST 29 May 2009

Barack Obama’s great uncle Charles Payne Photo: AP

Charles Payne, 84, was among the American infantrymen who liberated Ohrdruf, a subdivision of the Buchenwald camp, in April 1945.

Mr Obama will next week attend a memorial ceremony at the former camp with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, before heading to Normandy to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

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Asked if his great nephew was following in his footsteps, which the White House has suggested as a reason for the trip, Mr Payne told the German magazine Der Spiegel: “I don’t buy that. This is a trip that he chose, not because of me I’m sure, but for political reasons.”

Denting the normally smooth-running presidential public relations machine, he added: “Perhaps his visit also has something to do with improving his standing with Angela Merkel. She gave him a hard time during his campaign and also afterwards.”

Exposing the haste with which political biographies can be formed, Mr Payne expressed surprise at how his great-nephew had used his wartime experiences on the campaign trail. As a candidate, Mr Obama used the wartime service of his white mother’s parents and family to allay concerns about his heritage.

“I was quite surprised when the whole thing came up and Barack talked about my war experiences in Nazi Germany. We had never talked about that before,” he said, adding that he enjoyed a “warm and friendly relationship” with his great nephew, though he was not part of his inner circle.

The first time they discussed his participation in the war was when Mr Obama wrongly said during the campaign that Mr Payne had “liberated” Auschwitz. Opponents swiftly pointed out that had been done by the Red Army.

“He couldn’t have gotten it from me since we had never talked about this particular episode in the war,” he said. “My sister and her husband were both great storytellers and sometimes made up the details to go along with it. They told him about my deployment with the 89th Infantry Division and apparently they mixed up a few details.”

Mr Obama soon called Mr Payne to check the details of his war experience, he said. “He wanted to know where this camp was that I had helped liberate. I told him that it was Ohrdruf and that it was a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp. I described a little bit of what I had seen,” he said.

Raised in Kansas, Mr Payne was the brother of Mr Obama’s late grandmother Madelyn Dunham, and joined the army as soon as he had finished school. He was among the first US soldiers to discover the horrors of the Holocaust first hand.

He appeared at the 2008 Democratic national convention, when Mr Obama was formally nominated as the party’s candidate, and attended the inauguration in January. He has not however been invited on the trip to Europe, but “if he invites me on Air Force One, I’ll be there”, he said.