The Uncle Seems Real

Mr. O'Bama is one of the least informed major candidates to come along in a long while, perhaps even the least informed in my lifetime. The more I see of him, the more I ponder the similarities to Chauncey Gardner from "Being There".

Recall that W was raked over the coals for not knowing -- off the cuff -- the name of the Prime Minister of Ireland. I thought at the time that this was a bizarre demand, inasmuch as I have three degrees from MIT, am a political junkie, and I didn't (and still don't) know the name of the Prime Minister of Ireland.... But the depths of Obama's ignorance are being plumbed daily and we haven't hit bottom. Auschwitz? Buchenwald? What difference does it make? Who cares where it is? Kennedy and Krushchev? Friends, right? That's why relations with the Soviets were so mellow back in the 1960's, right? "How's it going, Sunshine?" Wellesleyan? Where did the other ten states go? Rev Wright a racist? Who knew? Afghanistan is part of are Arabia, right? Hamas is a terrorist group? I thought it was that stuff you eat with pita chips... (okay, I made that last one up).

The sad thing is that I think it really doesn't matter to the electorate. As W figured out a long time ago, most people don't vote for "smarts", they vote for "likeables". And Obama does sound good. I hate to draw the parallel, but Reagan bitterly disgusted the MSM of his day -- it seemed he could never get his facts straight, but no actual voter seemed to care. As the story goes, Reagan would include in his stump speech a story about a welfare queen in Los Angeles who scammed $300,000 a year and owned three Cadillacs. The press would fact-check (what a concept -- MSM fact-checking), and then bemoan the ignorance of the Republican candidate... because it turned out the welfare queen lived in Chicago, not Los Angeles, and it wasn't $300,000, it was $150,000, and dang it, they were Lincoln Town Cars, NOT CADILLACS! THIS GUY IS MADE OF TEFLON! But people understood and bought into Reagan's world view, despite the "gaffes". So I'm afraid that enough people will buy into this Iraq-war-sucks, it's-our-fault, let's try being nice to our enemies, let's share, avoid-the-money-culture... that our next President will be a Chauncey Gardner with Farrakhan clones pulling the strings.

BBB

Furthermore, anyone familiar with that history knows that American troops never advanced past the River Elba, in Germany, and that the Soviet forces advanced all the way across Poland and into eastern Germany, raping and pillaging as they went. Which is why there was an East Germany.

A decent point, but not as strong as you suggest, given that Buchenwald would become part of East Germany, not West.

Unless you're going to accuse the U.S Holocaust Memorial Museum of lying (which, really, you're free to do), I think the assertion of :

"Buchenwald, on the other hand, while atrocious beyond normal human understanding, was merely a slave labor camp, and not historically abnormal in a time of war. The people who died there did so under the stress of work and disease, rather than as a deliberate attempt to wipe them off the planet."

...is disturbing.

"Merely a slave labor camp?"

From the site:

"Beginning in 1941, a number of physicians and scientists carried out a varied program of medical experimentation on prisoners at Buchenwald in special barracks in the northern part of the main camp."

...and...

"Periodically, prisoners throughout the Buchenwald camp system underwent selection. The SS staff sent those too weak or disabled to work to euthanasia facilities such as Bernburg, where euthanasia operatives gassed them as part of Operation 14f13, the extension of euthanasia killing operations to ill and exhausted concentration camp prisoners. Other prisoners unable to work were killed by phenol injections administered by the camp doctor."

I'm not sure that being executed for being too weak to work qualifies as dying "under the stress of work and disease."

Further, reading a history of the camp from the German memorial site (http://www.buchenwald.de/), makes the assertion of it being "merely a slave labor camp" laughable, but in a very sad way.

When the camp was liberated, there were some 21,000 inmates left... in the camp's history, 14,000 had perished. Maybe they just should have worked harder.

To be sure, the horrors of Auschwitz were Buchenwald compounded multiple, multiple times, but to actually type, with all seriousness, "merely a slave labor camp?"

You must be joking; either that or you have some right-wing equivalent to BDS, in which minimizing the horror of human suffering is ok so long as it stops Obama from being President.

(By the way, I'm most likely voting for McCain, despite efforts like yours to make me swing the other way.)

"Buchenwald, on the other hand, while atrocious beyond normal human understanding, was merely a slave labor camp, and not historically abnormal in a time of war. The people who died there did so under the stress of work and disease, rather than as a deliberate attempt to wipe them off the planet."

...is disturbing.

What part of "atrocious beyond human understanding" do you not understand? I wasn't defending Buchenwald. I was simply pointing out that Auschwitz was even worse, and especially to Jewish people.

Minor geographical correction to an otherwise good post:

The river in Germany you mention is actually the ELBE."

The Elbe also holds some notoriety since it's where the cremated ashes of Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun, and the Goebbels Family were reportedly dumped in 1970 by the Soviets after being repeatedly exhumed and moved after the war.

Conversely, there is an ELBA. It's the island off the Italian Tuscan coast where Napoleon was interned after he abdicated in 1814. He subsequently escaped the following year and, as we all know, things didn't turn out so well for him at Waterloo.

The river in Germany you mention is actually the ELBE.

Thanks, fixed.

I find it interesting that everyone is getting excited about Obama confusing Auschwitz with Buchenwald. The reason I find it funny is that the actual extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau was at Birkenau not Auschwitz. So you are just as wrong as Obama. He probably didn't hear the story first hand and it is quite posible he was told Auschwitz scince it is the brand name concentration camp. If I had to guess 90 percent of Americans think Auschwitz is in Germany. In the end anyone who lets this be the deciding factor in the 2008 election for them is just sad.

Note well that Buchenwald became more that "a mere slave labor camp". At the end thousands were starved to death, and stacked in warehouses. Even before the end, folks were worked to death, malnourished, etc. -- and the mortality rate was staggering. Not a gas using Auschwitz style extermination camp, but a death camp never-the-less.

I doubt anyone is less a supporter of Obama than I am, but this is a non-issue. Uncle is often a generic term used for varying degrees of sanguinity. I have great uncles and what not and addressed them all as uncle.

To confuse Buchenwald with Auschwitz is not that big of a deal. Both were terrible, and it was more than 60 years ago. One is not historically illiterate simply because they named the wrong camp.

This is the most minor of slips, and is essentially correct for the purpose for which it was used.

The danger with complaining about silly things like this is that it detracts from the really serious problems this man has. If people are going to complain about this, which is obviously unimportant, it will cause people to think that the other issues are equally unimportant.

I have got to say that if this is a faux pas that makes Obama unfit for the Presidency, then McCain should be removed immediately from the Senate for getting fundamental facts wrong about a current war. Whether it was Buchenwald or Auschwitz matters quite a bit less than whether or not the Sunnis or Shiites are trained in Iran.

In other words: double dumbass on you.

Technically Auschwitz and Danzig were not post-39 "renames". Those areas had been German (for want of a better expression) or had had substantial German urban populations for almost 700 years by 1939. Most of the towns from the Oder/Elbe to Transylvania to the Baltics had legitimate German names all through the Middle Ages.

Just a technical correction that does not affect the gist of your post.

It is no coincidence that our first MTV-era president, Ronald Reagan, was fond of telling audiences stories of how he had helped liberate concentration camps at the end of World War II, when his only experience with a Dachau or Treblinka was sitting in a darkened room watching movies of those events. "You believed in it because you wanted to believe it," Reagan once told a reporter who thought he had seen Reagan on the set of a movie which didn't feature him at all. "There's nothing wrong with that. I do it all the time."

the important point of Obama's statement is his assertion that his "uncle" was psychically shattered by the event, so much so that he shut himself up in an attic for months upon his return home. This portrait feeds into the leftist myth that all returning warriors are damaged goods. We, of course, know that is not true. Some, yes, and they deserve all the care and support we can give them. All? No way.

The key thing to check into is whether his uncle went shithouse rat after Buchenwald, or if it is just a lazy stereotype by BO.

What part of "atrocious beyond human understanding" do you not understand? I wasn't defending Buchenwald. I was simply pointing out that Auschwitz was even worse, and especially to Jewish people.

I don't think you were defending Buchenwald. Not at all.

I do think you were intentionally downplaying, or simply ignorant of, the horror in an attempt to make Obama's gaffe look worse than need be.

it makes one wonder what else he doesn't know.

How about the number of states we have? 48? 58? whatever!

After teaching a couple of years in Constitutional Law, he said he wasn't familiar with the Second Amendment.

Obama has so few profound experiences of his own to draw on that its understandable for him to "borrow" stories from others. This is true of most of us. We draw inspiration from other people's lives, from heroism we see on TV or read about in books or hear about from Mom or our teachers or pastors.

Of course, Obama didn't see his uncle as heroic; he saw him as a shattered wreck trapped in the attic and in dire need of a government program. If the information posted above is accurate (the Uncle has apparently lived a long life and has enough money to make political donations), the Uncle managed to find a way out of the attic at some point. How? I guess we'll never know, maybe because it doesn't serve the victim narrative.

come off it, andy. "Atrocious beyond human understanding" can in no rational way be seen as "intentionally downplaying or simply ignorant of" anything. Even if you win this by some exceeding fine semantic scorecard, you are making a fool of yourself.

Also his great uncle did not enlist the day after Pearl Harbor!!

come off it, andy. "Atrocious beyond human understanding" can in no rational way be seen as "intentionally downplaying or simply ignorant of" anything. Even if you win this by some exceeding fine semantic scorecard, you are making a fool of yourself.

Perhaps you and I view the phrase "merely a slave labor camp" differently.

I'm not even interested in the "we hate Obama" aspect of it, being no friend of his anyway. I simply question how anyone can use the word "merely" in the context of a Nazi camp.

But, hey, you go on believing that Buchenwald was summer camp and, really, in light of Stalin's crimes against humanity, Hitler's were merely a drop in the bucket. OK?

Andy, you're an idiot. You find me a real summer camp that is "atrocious beyond all understanding" and you'll sound credible. Merely is entirely appropriate given the context. Jesus told his followers to hate their mothers and fathers too, but unlike you they at least understood the relative comparison being made.

"andy," if you think that "atrocious beyond human understanding" is semantically equivalent to a "summer camp," it's hard to know how anyone can have a rational conversation with you.

mcg -

Thank you for your substantive comment and name-calling.

I recommend you look up the meaning of "merely."

Buchenwald was not simply a slave labor camp, as has been pointed out by others.

Rand -

The use of "summer camp" was clearly hyperbole to mirror the errant use of "merely" in describing Buchenwald as nothing more than a slave labor camp. That this was lost on you makes me wonder why I bother.

Oh for cryin' jimminy cricket. I'm not even entirely sure who my biological granddad is on either side. My legal granddads served in the Battle of the Bulge on my Dad's side, and in the Pacific on my Mom's side. That's about as much as I can tell you because they never talked about it when they were alive, which was a while ago. What my Dad did in the Air Force he wasn't allowed to tell me. Should I not ever run for office because I might get the story about the buttons wrong?

It's amazing that anyone even half-way intelligent bothers to run for office anymore. This kind of nonsense is why we end up with the kinds of candidates we do. I need to dig up a copy of Umberto Eco's 'Foucault's Pendulum'. He had a word for splitting hairs four ways.

My political calculus is easy:

Ron Paul = ideal candidate (because the man gives more than a passing nod to the Constitution)
Bob Barr = not acceptable Libertarian substitute
Ralph Nader = just not my style, man
John McCain = status quo
Hillary Clinton = status quo
Barack Obama = not status quo

Since I apparently can't vote for my preferred candidate, I have no choice but to vote for the not status quo. We've got serious issues to deal with in this country, and what we're doing right now is not working. Put that in your poll and smoke it.

As W says, this is really sad. I can't believe it's even on memeorandum. You all need something else to do with your lives. Could I suggest painting my house? I'll take bids now.

Rand - The use of "summer camp" was clearly hyperbole to mirror the errant use of "merely" in describing Buchenwald as nothing more than a slave labor camp. That this was lost on you makes me wonder why I bother.

Apparently, the phrase "slave labor camp" is lost on you. Are you familiar with any colors other than black and white?

It is an accurate description of the ongoing nightmare that was Buchenwald. But as bad as it was, it is not as bad as a site for the deliberate extermination of peoples, as Auschwitz and the others I mentioned were.

The phrase "anyone familiar with the history of World War II" assumes a lot. My U.S. history course did all it could to lump in the Americans and Russians as one big happy family that liberated the hell out of Europe and isn't that grand while downplaying that while the U.S. liberated, the Russians conquered. So I won't fault Obama for not knowing the Russians liberate Auschwitz.

What rankles here is not that Obama doesn't know history, but that he doesn't even seem to know much about those family members who he claims inform his views. Let's summarize Obama's statement in the context in which all this came up:

Says Obama, "John McCain thinks he knows what veterans need just because he was a naval aviator and POW, grew up in a military family, was the son and grandson of admirals and has a son in Iraq. Friends, I know a lot more about what our veterans need because... because someone in my family was involved in something unpleasant in World War II and they say he had a real hard time of it and didn't want to talk about it."

What's scary about Obama, though, is not that he's mixed political opportunism and bad history. What's scary is the picture he's painting of how he thinks. It's Memorial Day, the day we honor those who gave their lives in our country's cause. He tells us about his great uncle, who helped liberate Buchenwald. So does he tell us how proud he is that a family member helped make a freer, better world, and that he wants to lead the kind of Armed Forces that makes that happen? Does he tell us how fortunate it was that if those people had been brought under the forces of evil that created Buchenwald, the forces of good embodied in America put an end to it? No, he tells us that the whole thing was really rough on his great uncle.

One of the duties of the Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces is to send our brave men and women into harm's way to keep us safe and free, and to carry the load that places on the conscience. Whether you're a former soldier or not, it's not a job for sissies. There are hard choices to be made, and to be lived with. How can we count on Obama to make those hard choices in more ambiguous times when he looks, for God's sake, at the liberation of a Nazi slave camp, and his first thought is not pride that America liberated those people, but shame that we don't have better government programs for veterans? I'm all for helping veterans; we owe them a lot. But that starts with honoring and respecting the work they've done to keep our country free. And I don't think Obama gets that.

The author's comments defending his downplaying of Buchenwald is pathetic and deplorable. That's quite a bit of yourself to sell off to try and make a small political point, Mr. Simberg.

"Buchenwald, on the other hand, while atrocious beyond normal human understanding, was *merely a slave labor camp*, and not historically abnormal in a time of war. *The people who died there did so under the stress of work and disease, rather than as a deliberate attempt to wipe them off the planet*. Which, of course, says much more about human nature and history than it does about the Nazis."

Historically inaccurate and moreover morally repugnant. Really? Downplaying the severity of a Nazi concentration camp to take a swipe at a candidate? Take a look at this picture, then take a look at yourself in the mirror, Mr. Simburg.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Buchenwald-J-Rouard-10.jpg

Geoff, you are clearly the winner.

When you start rationalizing about whether one camp was worse than another, well, you qualify to paint my house.

How much weight to you give to Salaspils? Was it worse or better than other camps?

I think Andy aptly made the point that Buchenwald was part of the Nazi's genocide. One aspect of the Holocaust that people find particularly horrifying was its methodical and pre-meditated nature. Using some of the victims as slave labor (under the conditions that Andy illustrated) before killing them (one way or another) was just part of that methodical genocide. Had the Nazis had won (or, more plausibly, had the war had gone on longer), everyone at the labor camps would have been killed, one way or another. "Merely" was an inartful choice of words at best, and offensive at worst, but more importantly, you are making a false distinction.

I think Skyler and Andy got it right.

Rand -

I think if you simply said something like "my use of the word 'merely' in reference to Buchenwald as a slave labor camp was in error, a poorly chosen word in the midst of writing a lengthy blog post," everyone who has taken exception would - whether they believed you or not (and I, for one, would accept you at your word) - let it go.

Instead, you choose the self-righteous path of indignation (don't feel bad, I did the same from time to time when blogging, much to my dismay these days).

It was NOT "merely a slave labor camp," as has been pointed out.

Further, I fail to see how running a camp designed to purposefully extract labor, until death, in support of a war machine that was partially dedicated to genocide in other camps, is morally separable from the devoted death camps themselves.

If I make you hold a gun to an innocent man's head while I squeeze the trigger, am I "merely" a witness to the crime?

Just admit your word choice was poor and move along.

I am - goodnight!

I agree the confusion would not ordinarily be regarded as major. There were differences between Obama's story and the truth, but each individual miss is the sort that people make all the time.

However.
There were multiple unfacts in the same story,

He is making similar mistakes repeatedly, and

Obama brought it up himself.

I wouldn't base my presidential vote entirely on the one issue, but it is precisely the sort of thing voters should keep track of.

I think that maybe the point you've overlooked is that, while others may have used straight out assassination, your camp in question used slave labor and disease AS A MEANS OF murder. Soaking their heads in acids would not have made the Merely A Hair Salon. Performing horrific medical experiments would not have made them Merely a Bad Surgery Unit. They were Merely an Extermination site, who used labour as a means to an end.

The argument here is embarrassing. People in Europe can read it and see that Americans use something like what happened in WWII so frivolously . . . it's shameful. . . utterly shameful.

But you are getting hits and God loves capitalists and popular people, no?

@ Geoff

"How can we count on Obama to make those hard choices in more ambiguous times when he looks, for God's sake, at the liberation of a Nazi slave camp, and his first thought is not pride that America liberated those people, but shame that we don't have better government programs for veterans? I'm all for helping veterans; we owe them a lot. But that starts with honoring and respecting the work they've done to keep our country free."

That's the most twisted logic I've seen in a while. How you got shame from Obama's statements is beyond me. What better way to show appreciation to our troops than to recognize how hard their job is, how much they sacrifice, and demanding better treatment for them? It seems like what *you* don't get is that paying lip service to our previous military accomplishments does nothing to actually help our troops in any substantial way. A different speech may have made you feel warm and fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure our men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan would prefer someone honor and respect them by advocating real programs that will help them financially and otherwise when they get home.

The distinction between a slave labor camp and an extermination camp is not false at all. It is one thing, horrific as it is, to use humans as beasts, and then dispose of them when they are useless for such purposes because they have been worked almost literally to death. but it is no new thing in human events. It is another thing entirely to deliberately wipe them out simply because of their ancestry, religion, or sexual orientation.

I'm not sure what to make of people who cannot make such a distinction. Except to think them moral midgets.

The Polish name of Danzig is Gdańsk.

Confusing Auschwitz with Buchenwald, or any of the other 50-odd camps, is not a trivial error. Obama isn't some 20-year-old fresh out of indoctrination camp (that is, modern liberal-arts college). He's a middle-aged man who has had plenty of opportunity to read some history. His general ignorance of 20th century affairs is turning out to be quite remarkable.

Personally, I think he's dumb as a post. His boosters keep telling us how smart he is, but there's precious little evidence for it.

Rand, who got selected for the slave labor camps? Why were they selected? Jews were sent to the labor camps as part of a genocide. People in other groups were sent to labor camps for the same reason they were sent to extermination camps. If I'm wrong about this, I hope someone will correct me, ideally by using the resources of the US Holocaust Museum.

"It is no coincidence that our first MTV-era president, Ronald Reagan, was fond of telling audiences stories of how he had helped liberate concentration camps at the end of World War II,"

Uh, no. He did say he was part of a film crew that shot footage of the camps AFTER they were liberated. This was untrue. I find nothing that suggests Reagan ever told anyone he helped liberate concentration camps.

The problem with the Auschwitz/Buchenwald gaffe, to me, is that if Obama is really "proud" of his uncle's service, why the hell didn't he know the truth? This is a stupid mistake and DOES show a tremendous ignorance of what really should be, amongst the educated, an elementary point. But the fact that someone would claim to be proud of their uncle liberating a Nazi camp and not even know which freakin' camp? Come on - that's lame. If I could remotely attach myself to one of those men who defeated the Nazis I'd have a shrine in my home. Apparently Obama really isn't that impressed. Doesn't that say something about him?

@Simburg

Look all, the man who downplayed the severity of a Nazi concentration camp to make a quick point on his political blog has called us moral midgets. Pot, kettle, black. Some advice Simburg - when you've dug yourself into a hole, stop digging.

Andy, I'm frankly not above name calling. What can I say, I'm juvenile. You're still an idiot.

"Merely" means "and nothing more." That is, he was saying that Buchenwald was a slave labor camp "and nothing more"; i.e., not an extermination camp like Auschwitz. It is an entirely appropriate construction in context, a context he made quite clear by his further description of it as ""atrocious beyond human understanding."

That there were significant differences between Buchenwald and Auschwitz is undisputed. Even in the rarified air of unspeakable evil, it is possible to draw comparisons and distinctions. So indeed, you might quibble with the assertion that Buchenwald was a slave labor camp "and nothing more." FIne. It doesn't make it a poor word choice, or an attempt to minimize the horrific nature of the camp. And it doesn't change the fact that extermination camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau earned particular infamy that it does not share.

Moral Midgets? Because we can see that working people to death is MURDERING THEM? Wow.

Andy, I'm frankly not above name calling. What can I say, I'm juvenile. You're still an idiot.

Well, you're right about one thing: you ARE juvenile.

"Merely" means "and nothing more."

Very good, you win a cookie. It was more than a slave labor camp (even my 70+ yr old father can Google with great success, so I wish you the best in your endeavor).

The rest I leave to you and your questioning mind to resolve.

You're trying to build a case against Obama becoming president based on THIS?

My god, what is wrong with you???

Buzz, Regarding Reagan's false claim to have visited newly liberated concentration camps, the story is cited in mainstream biographies and is addressed on countless websites. My problem is that I can't figure out which sources a skeptic like you might find convincing. Here are some sources - I wonder if any of these will satisfy you?

One reference I've found comes from Edmund Morris' "Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan". I don't have the text from the book, but wikipedia article on Regan's presidency says "In 1983, he told prominent Jews � notably Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of Israel, Simon Wiesenthal, and Rabbi Marvin Hier of Los Angeles � of his personal experience vis-�-vis the Holocaust, saying "I was there," and that he had assisted at the liberation of Nazi death camps. The wikipedia article then cites "Morris, Edmund (1999), p. 113."

Other references:
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2004/08/so-i-guess-john-kerry-has-been-dining.html
(The above reference has the most detail - it extensively quotes "President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime", by Lou Cannon)

Here's a review of Lou Cannon's book
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEFDD1E38F937A15757C0A967958260

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20000327/alterman
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0309.mendacity-index.html
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,98224,00.html

Jesus, this is pathetic. So the latest right-wing meme is: Obama transposes the names of two notorious concentration camps, thereby proving he is too ignorant to be president. (This is particularly rich when coming from those who've spent the last seven-plus years swooning over the greatness of George W. Bush, a man who can barely assemble a coherent sentence... but that's politics, I suppose.) Surely it's possible that Obama could possess a modicum of intelligence in spite of not knowing the placement of Nazi prison facilities, even the famous ones.

Meanwhile... the GOP has graced us with a candidate who still can't distinguish the Sunni from the Shia (you know, the people involved in THE WAR WE'RE ACTUALLY FIGHTING THIS VERY MINUTE), even after getting it repeatedly wrong over the last few months. Won't somebody (a bright high school student, say) sit McCain down with a pencil and notepad and gently explain the most basic details of Mideast politics?

But you guys keep pushing that "Obama's too dumb to be president" line, by all means. That'll go down a treat with the Joe Sixpacks out there come November. Oh well, I suppose it's less predictable than playing the "Uppity Negro" card...

"Obama didn't see his uncle as heroic; he saw him as a shattered wreck trapped in the attic . . .."

Where did he say he didn't view him as a hero? Or did you just make that up? Most grownups can hold handle the notion that someone who goes through a war can be a hero even if they were injured or suffer from PTSD.

Frankly, if I were a veteran reading this, I would be pretty pissed off at the idea that unless I was totally unaffected by my experiences, I couldn't be a "hero" in your eyes.

"It is no coincidence that our first MTV-era president, Ronald Reagan, was fond of telling audiences stories of how he had helped liberate concentration camps at the end of World War II, when his only experience with a Dachau or Treblinka was sitting in a darkened room watching movies of those events."

Well, kinda sorta:

"Under the headline "Reagan's Real Feelings," the newsletter carried an approving account of an article in Ma'ariv, an Israeli newspaper close to the government. The article said that Reagan had told Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, during his November 29, 1983, visit to the White House, that the roots of his concern for Israel could be traced to World War II when he photographed the Nazi death camps. Afterward, Reagan said, he had saved a copy of the death camp films for himself because he believed that the day would come when people would no longer believe that six million Jews had been exterminated. Years later, said the article, Reagan was asked by a member of his own family if such an event had really occurred. "That moment, I thought this is the time for which I saved the film and I showed it to a group of people who couldn't believe their eyes," Ma'ariv quoted Reagan as saying. "From then on, I was concerned for the Jewish people."

That seemed odd to the reporter, and eventually he quizzed the White House:

"...I told him that his answer wasn't good enough and that I needed to know Reagan's personal response to what he was alleged to have said. Pretty soon, I received a call from James Baker, who preferred to talk to reporters on background. Not this time, I said. Baker was a great douser of fires, particularly in an election year. He went to Reagan immediately and called me back, saying that the president had told him he "never left the country" during World War II and "never told anyone that he did." Baker said Reagan had told him he kept a copy of the film on the death camps after he left the service because he remembered that World War I atrocities had been questioned and "didn't want atrocities against the Jewish people to be forgotten." Reagan had told Baker that "a Jewish friend" had questioned him about the accuracy of the death camp reports a year or two later. Reagan had shown him a copy of the film. I put this in a column that concluded with the reservations that I hold today:

"How could Shamir and Wiesenthal, fluent in English and known for their grasp of detail, have misunderstood so completely what Reagan said to them in two different meetings more than two months apart? What Jew would doubt the existence of the Holocaust?"

SO who knows what Reagan actually said? Does the White House version, in which Reagan said something like "I put together a film of German atrocities" and was misunderstood to have taken the film in Germany, not merely edited it back in Hollywood, defy belief?

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/916

conumbdrum:

"Pathetic"? How about, "Co, sweetie, can you read directions? DON'T RESUBMIT IT IF/WHEN IT HANGS UP AND GIVES YOU A '500' PAGE".... Mistakes like this kinda undercut your scintillating diatribe....

BBB

I don't doubt that BHO is a reasonably bright guy, he graduated from Columbia and Harvard after all. I couldn't do that. The real story here is the lack of MSM fact checking and follow-up. They would not have allowed McCain to get away with such claims. I expect though that I will be use to this double standard by November and stop cussing under my breath.

A labor camp is not in the same ballpark of evil as an extermination camp.

I think the operative phrase here is, 'a distinction without a difference.'

A labor camp is not in the same ballpark of evil as an extermination camp.

Really? Is that your final answer? I propose you try that one out on a Holocaust survivor and report back on how many teeth you have left.

Wikiepedia articles on the Holocaust make the distinction between Nazi "forced labor" and the Nazi practice of "extinction through labor". Forced labor might be what TallDave is thinking of, while "extinction through labor" was a method of genocide.

Leo, I'm not the one trivializing the need for traumatized vets to receive proper care, Obama did that. We know nothing about the uncle except he served in the military and then lived in the attic for 6 months, supposedly because he was burdened by his military experience. Who knows if that's true?

Who knows anything about the uncle except that soundbite? And for Obama it doesn't matter. It sounded good. It fit the narrative. Vets aren't to be honored for their service, they're to be pitied for their sacrifice. They are just another special interest group for Obama to pander to on a particular holiday. Another group of deprived Americans who can be promised a program.

In the same speech he said women military are sexually harrassed. And they need a government program too according to Obama. I'm surprised he didn't bring up a female neighbor or a female school friend who served in the military and got pestered by some hormonally charged corporal just to illustrate his point. But then he probably doesn't know any. He had to reach back 60 years just to find any personal connection to someone who served in the military.

If Uncle Charles hadn't gone up to the attic when he got home from WWII, we never would have heard about him. And now that the story has been challenged, we probably won't hear about him again.

Wingnut Logic 101: Anne Frank died at Bergen-Belsen -- therefore her death was less tragic than if she'd died at Auschwitz.

"Buchenwald, on the other hand, while atrocious beyond normal human understanding, was merely a slave labor camp"

Wow. Just wow. Quote of the campaign for sure. Heck, you ought to do like the purple bandaid BS and make "Party at Buchenwald, dudes!" pins.

Fun Fact: Tens of thousands of people were shot, poisoned (or both), and stacked like cordwood and dissolved with quicklime at Buchenwald.

I'm not the first to say this, but please, if you think Obama has some kind of Jew problem, by all means, alleviate it with your death camp hagiography. And spare us the sophistry about what you "really meant". My god.

By the way, we get the point. The point is that if you'd been imprisoned at Buchenwald while the Nazis poisoned you and then shot you in the head after X hours so that they could chart its effects on your internal organs after a given amount of time, you'd have smiled with the satisfaction that comes with knowing that you weren't slaughtered at an "A-list" genocide facility.

Seriously, I recommend you invite all your Jewish friends over for dinner and then explain this "reasoning" to them. It couldn't be any more painful than the "Schindler's List" episode of Seinfeld.

Please, in the name of all that's holy, take a look in the mirror, get someone else to read your sophistry, and admit you have a serious problem.

Hey, Drudge is reporting that Obama's just made a *MAJOR* gaffe!

He just said that Auschwitz was a death camp but Buchenwald was "merely a slave labor camp"!

When questioned further, he pointed out that "plenty of people die in wars".

Oooh, now the news programs are reporting that he said something like "I apologize if anyone was offended by something they read into something that I didn't say."

Is this really someone you want making decisions for you, I ask?

Here's what the veterans of the 89th Infantry Division think of your 'a work camp is not as bad as a death camp' bullshit:

Concerning the service of Mr. Charles Payne: C.T. Payne was a soldier in the 89th Infantry Division. He served in the 355th Infantry Regiment, Company K. The 355th Infantry Regiment was the unit to liberate Ohrdruf. Mr. Payne was there.

For those who seek to minimize the horrors of Ohrdruf since it was a 'work' camp and not a 'death' camp, we have but one word: shame. Ironically, this argument has been made to us time and time again by various Holocaust-deniers and other pro-Nazi groups.

Would you like to reconsider what you wrote?

A labor camp is not in the same ballpark of evil as an extermination camp.

A labor camp IS and extermination camp. Seriously, people.

Without attempting to split hairs too finely, one further distinguish between Buchenwald and the subcamp that involved the 89th - Ohrdruf.

http://www.89infdivww2.org/ohrdruf/ohrdrufintro.htm

Looks like this particular blog posting is being discussed at length here:

http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=10482

And elsewhere (via links in the above link). This posting really struck a nerve.

There were distinctions to be made between the extinction and concentration/slave labor camps. Nevertheless, you overstate the commonality of German brutality in the latter. Concentration camps are not extraordinarily rare in ethnic-based conflicts, but I wouldn't call them common. In addition, their degree can vary greatly.

In the Boer War, of course, the British gave them their name. Although many died, most deaths were unintentional and due to disease and starvation, making it more a matter of negligence than outright murder. The same could be said, for example, for Algerian internees of the French during their war of Independence.

In other instances, such relocation camps have been created without significant deaths. Both us and the British, for example, created "strategic hamlets" in Vietnam and Malaya to seperate vulnerable/hostile populations from insurgents. There were logistical screw ups, particularly in the former effort, but very few, if any deaths were involved.

The German concentration/work, in addition to the extermination camps, were of a much deadlier degree than those in most other wars. Tens of thousands of deaths - mostly intentional - and institutionalized sadism. This stuff isn't unique to the Nazis by far, but neither is it necessarily a common occurrance. That said, there's still a distinction to be made between outright death camps and their cousins.

And oh yeah, for some of the idiots above...my (non-Jewish and Jewish) family was at both Aushwitz and some of the various slave labor camps. There's your supposed moral superiority card. But then again, that's completely fucking meaningless. The facts are the facts, or not, no matter who says them.

There is a simple distinction between labor camps and death camps.

Many people, including my father, survived labor camps. Few people survived death camps.

About 60% of the those that went through Buchenwald complex lived. Less than 1% of those that went through Auschwitz lived.

Buchenwald was profitable for the Nazis. They were in the middle of a war, they needed all the production they could. Buchenwald used people like coal, destroying them to make things that were useful to the war. It was evil.

Auschwitz was not profitable. It used resources on an industrial scale that the Nazis desperately needed elsewhere, simply to kill on an industrial scale. It was beyond evil. We do not have a word for what it was.

It is, I know, too simple a comparison for the brilliant minds of the left to contemplate. For my deep stupidity, thinking that such monstrosity must not happen again, I humbly apologize. I am proud that the United States emptied Saddam's prisons full of children, ended the shreddings of living prisoners by him and his Nazi Bath party. I understand that you believe that makes me a fascist myself, and beneath your contempt.

I will live with your scorn.

MIR, I think you missed Rand's point. Rand was clearly trying to highlight that the extermination camps were for genocide - the intentional destruction of an entire people. As I commented above, I think Rand is mistaken because he does not seem to be acknowledging that the Nazis used labor as a means of genocide. But you are obscuring the genocide distinction when you only talk about the brutality of the German camps, and certainly when you make comparisons to the Boer war or Algeria. I'm not suggesting any moral calculus and I'm not diminishing anyone's suffering - I'm just trying to clarify Rand's position (as I understand it). To sum up: Rand's point is that it isn't about brutality, it is about genocide.

Michelle wrote:
"The argument here is embarrassing. People in Europe can read it and see that Americans use something like what happened in WWII so frivolously . . . it's shameful. . . utterly shameful."

Europe here, Norway to be precise.

Not going to speak for all over here (no one can) but I find it interesting to see how much is made up over making a distinction between camps that were different. If I didn't know better I would think this all touched a very raw nerve for Obama supporters, but you're not all Obama supporters right?

Mere slave labor (camps or elsewhere) and industrial genocide (camps or elsewhere) are different. Since a lot of commenters here don't seem to see the difference I'll try to illuminate it: granted a lot of people suffered horribly and died in both but if there is no difference between the two then why did the National Socialists send primarily Jews from all over Europe to the extermination camps rather than to the forced labor camps?

Anyone who knows anything at all about the motivations should be able to understand that there's a fundamental difference in play between a camp created for the purpose of killing people in the most efficient manner as quickly and effortlessly as possible so as to just be rid of them and on the other hand camps made to make use of people as slave labor.

Yes among those who arrived at the extermination camps some of the fit youngsters and adults were used as slave labor to operate the extermination until they became unfit. The distinction is still there regardless. Also since the camps filled up fast not everyone ended up where they would have if there had been spare extermination capacity. The distinction is still there regardless. The National Socialists also had an oversupply of slaves and as such didn't treat their "animals" like "responsible" slaveholders would. The distinction is still there regardless.

Still don't get it? The extermination of what in their view was the lowest sub-human classes was their gospel while the use of slave labor was simply putting resources to use.

Habitat Hermit, since the targets of genocide, the Jews and the Roma people, did get sent to Buchenwald, I don't see why it matters in the context of Rand's argument.

Also, I think the distinction you are making involves only who would die first. The Nazis planned to kill 30 million Slavs, Slavs who the Nazis were first sending to forced labor camps, but ultimately to their deaths if the labor didn't kill them. The war ended before this phase of the plan was carried out.

I don't see this as a useful story. Rand doesn't indicate why Obama should know the location and specific nature of Nazi concentration camps. Second, I find claiming one camp is less evil than another based on slightly different purpose is foolish. My limited understanding of the Buchenwald complex is that it was not a straightforward part of the genocide-based industry. Parts were POW camps with relatively humane conditions while others were gateways to the deathcamps where German industry got some work out of the victims before they died or were sent away to die. How does the outcome become less evil, if you toil under hellish conditions for a few years until you're too weak to work before getting sent to places like Auschwitz? Is it better quality of life? I don't see it.

As I wrote Does Barack Have an Uncle and Did He Liberate Auschwitz?

I agree with Rand that there was probably an "uncle" and that he was in the Army during WW2 and he probably participated in the liberation of a labor camp called Ohrdruf.
But here is what I look away from watching the video of his speech:

So what we appear to have is something that�s commonly known as �resume inflation.� And that�s what you get when you have a man who has no real experience. When what you have is an empty suit who is trying to pretend that there is substance there.

But what was the point of the fable? The point was really to try to connect with the American people by telling them how callous the government is about the emotional problems of its soldiers. The �uncle� is supposed to have spent six months in the attic, having experienced the sights he encountered in the liberation of Ohrdruf, an experience that may have lasted less than three hours.

The punch line is that Obama will make sure that America�s fighting men and will get all the mental care they deserve.

That�s it. That�s the punch line. That�s the reason for the fable. That�s what American fighting men are good for: a story line for a health care pitch. And the combat vet is cast in the eternal role that the Liberals have created for him: the crazy uncle in the attic. Just wait until Barack discovers another uncle whose wartime experiences drove him to drink and living in the street when he isn�t shooting up a beer hall on Saturday nights.

Robert I think Rand's argument was the difference between the different types of camps and what they represent. And while there was some overlap between the camps it was for practical reasons rather than ideological ones.

One won't see the difference from the perspective of the dead but one should see the difference from the perspective of the National Socialists. I really think the almost supreme importance they gave to Judenfrei should be enough on its own to peer into their abyss and establish the difference. Some argue that it was even more important to them than winning the war (certainly most of the SS saw it that way).

That is the reason for the differences already pointed out by others both in regard to the disparity in survival rate and the reason why it was acceptable to lose money on not just operating the extermination camps but also all the additional work involved in "cleansing".

I think it's wrong to say that it's all the same, and even if for the sake of argument one postulated that exactly the same groups of people were sent both places the difference between the camps would still remain: one kind was targeted at industrial level speedy extermination at any cost while the other wasn't. Such "kill factories" processing live humans into dead had never been seen before and haven't really been seen afterwards either, at least not in the same industrial high-volume fashion. That is what Auschwitz symbolizes, it is the symbol of the Holocaust.

This has to be the most pathologically stupid post I have ever read. The extreme dead ender wing of the GOP has sunk to the point where they try to parse the difference between a concentration camp and a slave labor camp. Good job idiots! Thankfully you morons have demnostrated to most of America that everything you touch turns to sh!t. So Mission accomplished. Now you and Michelle Malkin go sniff out the hidden jihadi meaning in the Starbucks logo.

Sir:

I'm a 42-year old Jewish male living in New York state. Two close family relatives are survivors of the Holocaust, both still living.

I'm not affiliated with any political campaign or candidate, and, if anything, lean more to the Republicans these days, mostly as a result for their stronger support of Israel.

I've read your post carefully, including the updates, and think you should probably reconsider your position. I'd actually suggest you apologize.

I think there a plenty of reasons to think that John McCain would be a plenty President than Barack Obama, but a inaccurate reference to the death camp his great-uncle helped liberate just isn't one.

What's most disturbing -- and I've really tried to understand why you would do this -- is your attempt to minimize the efforts of soldiers who were part of liberating those camps that didn't happen to have active gas chambers and crematoria.

As any even casual student of the Holocaust knows, all of these facilities were in fact death camps -- no Jew or other undesirable was ever intended to live for long within its fences, even when their labor was deemed valuable to the Nazi regime.

The idea that Obama glorified his uncle's service by referring to Auschwitz as opposed to the nearly-as-famous and equally-horrifying Buchenwald is so ridiculous that it requires my response.

I have never written in to any blog before, and I'm not inclined to do so in the future. So please take my words in the spirit in which they are given -- which is as someone who might otherwise agree with you -- but in this case, you're wrong. And it's offensive.

Jonathan Simon
Tribeca, New York
10007

What's most disturbing -- and I've really tried to understand why you would do this -- is your attempt to minimize the efforts of soldiers who were part of liberating those camps that didn't happen to have active gas chambers and crematoria.

I made no such attempt. I did no such thing.

The idea that Obama glorified his uncle's service by referring to Auschwitz as opposed to the nearly-as-famous and equally-horrifying Buchenwald is so ridiculous that it requires my response.

Thank you for your opinion. I continue to disagree.

I don't get how the distinction between the camps is relevant- it was a simple misstatement- Buchenwald instead of Auschwitz.

Wow.

You're an idiot.

What's most disturbing -- and I've really tried to understand why you would do this -- is your attempt to minimize the efforts of soldiers who were part of liberating those camps that didn't happen to have active gas chambers and crematoria.

I made no such attempt. I did no such thing.

Then I simply have to ask: what is the point of this post? Why bother to draw a distinction between the two camps? Why did you use the word "merely"?

Why did you write this?