Monday's Memorial Day services brought to the surface a very minor gaffe by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. 

In response to a question at a Memorial Day appearance in New Mexico, Mr. Obama said an uncle helped liberate the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz during World War II.  The problem?  That story didn’t track with history, considering Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet forces.

The correct story is that Mr. Obama’s great uncle, Charlie Payne – his grandmother’s brother – actually helped liberate Ohrdruf, a sub-camp of Buchenwald.  Mr. Payne was a member of the 89th Infantry Division.

So he called a great-uncle his uncle, and said Auschwitz instead of Buchenwald.  The story is still true otherwise, and his great-uncle's service in liberating a Nazi camp remains unquestionable.  Yet that hasn't been enough for many in the right-wing media, as Menachem Rosensaft, head of the International Network of Children of Holocaust Survivors, observed in a devastating column today from HuffPo:

It started yesterday when the RNC put out a statement slamming Obama for referring to Auschwitz as he related a family story on Memorial Day.  Instead of merely asking for clarification, the RNC smeared Obama's "dubious claim," and suggested — tongue in cheek — that perhaps Obama's uncle "was serving in the Red Army."  They went on to say that the story raised questions "about his judgment and his readiness to lead as commander in chief."

It turns out that Obama's great uncle — the brother of the grandmother who largely raised him — served in the 89th Infantry Division of the United States Army, which liberated Ohrdruf, part of Buchenwald.  But astonishingly, that only served to fan the flames for those on the right who saw an attempt to use the heroic service of Obama's uncle against him.  In their breathless attempt to damage Obama, Fox News has stooped to a level that is truly depressing.

This morning on the program Fox and Friends, one of the hosts said: "It wasn't Auschwitz.  It was a labor camp called Buchenwald."  Just in case the point was missed, she repeated.  "It wasn't Auschwitz, it was a labor camp.  You would think you would want to be as specific as possible if you are telling one of these anecdotes."  Meanwhile, a news "crawl" at the bottom of the screen reinforced, in bold letters, that this was "a work camp, rather than an extermination camp."

Not to be outdone, one of the most prominent and widely read pro-Hillary bloggers, Larry Johnson, had this uplifting item regarding the Obama lineage, and the Holocaust:

So here we have Barack apparently inventing more bullshit family history.  Charles T. Payne’s unit did not liberate Buchenwald.  Ohrdruf was a work camp–not a pleasant place–but not a death camp.  You know what Barack, I suspect you did not have a family member anywhere near a Nazi death camp.

"Not a pleasant place-but not a death camp."  Not only does Larry pretend not to understand that Ohrdruf was part of Buchenwald, he also claims no mass killings occurred there.  Why?  Because that piece of history would be inconvenient to his version of Barack as a pathological liar.  No matter that tens of thousands were murdered there.  It's far more important to Johnson to reclaim the news cycle from Assassination-Gate on Hillary's behalf, than to protect the historical record of the Shoah. 

I'll return to Mr. Rosensaft to education Johnson, and right-wing media, on what went on at Buchenwald:

At this "work camp," prisoners were often worked, starved, tortured, or beaten to death.  Sometimes they were simply murdered.  Roughly 250,000 people were imprisoned there between 1937 and 1945, many of them Jews.  Over 50,000 people lost their lives.

At Nuremberg, the world was shocked to learn that some of Buchenwald's victims were skinned, and the human skin was then used to make lampshades, book covers, and other keepsakes.  Buchenwald was also a site for the infamous Nazi "medical experiments" on prisoners, which were often nothing more than crude and horrific forms of torture.

To take just one anecdote about the "work" done at Buchenwald, prisoners had to build the camp road, and camp guards used to shoot those who were not carrying stones that were heavy enough.  In the final days before liberation, some 10,000 prisoners from Auschwitz and Gross-Rossen were marched to Buchenwald, adding to the horrific scene that awaited American troops.

On April 4, 1945, Ohrdruf became the first Nazi concentration camp to be liberated by American forces. U.S. troops — including the 89th Infantry Division — found a scene that was vividly described by the Eisenhower Memorial Commission: "The scene was an indescribable horror even to the combat-hardened troops who captured the camp.  Bodies were piled throughout the camp.  There was evidence everywhere of systematic butchery.  Many of the mounds of dead bodies were still smoldering from failed attempts by the departing SS guards to burn them."

Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley would tour the camp in the days ahead.  Eisenhower was so moved by the atrocities at this "work camp," that he wrote to his wife Mamie that it was "beyond the American mind of comprehend."  He made both his own men and all of the citizens of the German town of Gotha tour the camp. He wanted the Americans to know the evil that they were fighting.  He wanted German citizens to see what had been done in their name.  After this tour, the Mayor of Gotha and his wife hanged themselves.

Larry Johnson is not just some nutjob.  I mean, he is a nutjob, but he is a very popular one.  His website, No Quarter, gets thousands of comments a day, traffic in the likely tens of thousands at least, and is home to the most insane Hillary loyalists you will find ANYWHERE on the web.  Johnson is a former employee of the CIA who made his political bones as an avid defender of Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame—the former of which has also mutated into the most tendentious of Hillary partisans.  

Johnson is regularly featured as the "Hillary supporter" on political talk radio, and is linked to, referenced, and widely admired by almost every pro-Hillary blog I have ever come across, including those that have regular contact with the Hillary campaign, like Taylor Marsh.  Regular readers of No Quarter will find that it's brand of anti-Obamaism has devolved into the hardcore racist, Muslim-baiting efforts typically reserved for Limbaugh-land—or FOX News, for that matter.  This has all occurred at the direction of Larry Johnson himself.

I only bring this up because I think it's important for people to know not just how far gone some of the weirdest of Hillary partisans have become—denying verified Holocaust history, claiming Obama is a Muslim terrorist, switching parties and praising John McCain up and down—but also how many of these so-called "Democrats" there actually are out there.  Visit the comment sections of Taylor Marsh or No Quarter, if you have a strong stomach and some time to waste.  You'll be amazed at what you'll find.  It's not pretty.