Charles T. Payne

Common card · No. 348723

Charles Thomas Payne (February 16, 1925 – August 1, 2014) was an American librarian and soldier. A member of the Obama family, he was the brother of Madelyn Payne Dunham and granduncle of former U.S. president Barack Obama. During World War II, Payne served as a member of the U.S. Army's 89th Infantry Division that liberated Ohrdruf, a sub-camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp. His military service was often mentioned in Obama's speeches, including the one given in 2009 commemorating the anniversary of D-Day. During the 2008 presidential election, there was brief media attention when Obama mistakenly identified the camp he helped liberate as Auschwitz instead of Ohrdruf. In 2009, Payne spoke about this experience: Ohrdruf was in that string of towns going across, south of Gotha and Erfurt. Our division was the first one in there. When we arrived there were no German soldiers anywhere around that I knew about. There was no fighting against the Germans, no camp guards. The whole area...

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