Obama, Reagan, Jews and Nazis

As the Great Communicator is canonized with a new statue in Washington, his 21st century counterpart is in Germany dealing with the same thorny issue his predecessor faced there a quarter of a century ago.

On his way to Buchenwald, President Obama speaks feelingly about his great-uncle's trauma in World War II over what the Nazis had done to six million Jews, as skeptics see the trip as a sop to those unnerved by his emphasis on a two-state solution for Palestinians during his Cairo speech and his pressure on Israel to stop expanding settlements.

In 1985, Ronald Reagan took flak for visiting a military cemetery in Bitburg, paying homage to the new Germany at the graves of SS members who headed Hitler's execution squads.

In his authorized biography, Edmund Morris describes Reagan's trip to a death camp soon afterward to placate incensed Jewish groups and his claim that he had witnessed the liberation of such places during the war. Given the Great Communicator's tendency to dramatize, it turned out that all he had actually seen was movie footage at the Army training film unit where he served.

Now Obama is explaining his Buchenwald stop by saying "this one has a personal connection to me," telling reporters that his grandmother's brother came home in shock over what he saw there as a young soldier.

With German Chancellor Angela Merkel and survivor Elie Wiesel at his side, the President today said, "These sights have not lost their horror with the passage of time. More than half a century later, our grief and our outrage over what happened have not diminished. I will not forget what I have seen here today.”

In a world of widespread Holocaust deniers, bearing witness has meaning, whatever the motives.

Obama Says Uncle

On Memorial Day, Barack Obama told a group of veterans, “My grandfather marched in Patton’s army, but I cannot know what it is to walk into battle like so many of you."

He went on to talk about an uncle, "part of the American brigade that helped to liberate Auschwitz" and, returning from the war, spent six months in an attic: “Now obviously, something had really affected him deeply, but at that time there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain.”

Since then, the GOP gaffe police have been gleefully pointing out it was the Russians who freed Auschwitz and that Obama's mother was an only child, causing his campaign to scramble and admit that he should have said "great uncle" and "Buchenwald."

Sloppy as he may been with the words, Obama had the music right, as a Patton army contemporary of his ancestors can attest.

In the spring of 1945, we were sweeping through Germany and Austria. Along the way, we saw stragglers in ragged stripes, dazed gaunt figures wandering the roads and being picked up by Army trucks. We didn't know the names of the places they had come from, but we knew who they were, and the sight of them was an indelible reminder of why we had been fighting.

Most of us didn't spend any time in attics after coming home, but our lives were changed forever by having seen what human savagery can do.

Obama was trying to evoke and honor that pain. What he said might not win any prizes on a quiz show, but it was true to the spirit of Memorial Day and human decency.