Obama’s great-uncle to help mark D-Day anniversary
President Obama’s great-uncle, who helped liberate a German concentration camp in 1945, plans to travel to France this week to take part in a weekend event to commemorate the 65th anniversary of D-day.
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 K. Shinseki. The group will also include former Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and Susan Eisenhower, President Eisenhower’s granddaughter and a Republican who backed Obama from early in the campaign.
Payne landed at Le Havre in the Normandy region of France in January 1945 -- well after D-day. His journey across Europe eventually took him to a concentration camp where more than 50,000 people had been killed.
Obama will visit the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany on Friday as part of an itinerary that also includes stops in Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Payne, the younger brother of Obama’s grandmother Madelyn Dunham, was a private first class in the Army’s 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 was 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.”
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