John Rosenthal argues that Obama flunked history again

“Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald,” Obama said in Cairo, “which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed – more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today.” Buchenwald was indeed part of the network of concentration camps established by Nazi Germany, both in Germany proper and the occupied territories. And it is indeed true that some Jews were interred at Buchenwald and that many of those that were died there. According to the estimate of the Buchwald Memorial, from 1937 when the camp was established until its liberation in 1945, altogether some 11,000 Jews died at Buchenwald. 11,000. That’s roughly the number of Jews that were killed at Auschwitz in a single week. In total, not 11,000, but over one million Jews are estimated to have been killed at Auschwitz.

Rosenthal explains the discrepancy and concludes:

Analyzing the political purpose of Obama’s Buchenwald visit, Peter Frey of Germany’s ZDF television writes:

In Buchenwald, Obama wants to send a signal to the Jewish community in the USA and to the Israelis: we may be involved at the moment in a political conflict over the [Israeli] settlement policy, but we are well aware of the history of the Jewish people and of the origins of the Israeli state.

But in fact the Buchenwald visit demonstrates precisely the contrary. It shows that Obama knows precious little about the Holocaust and even less about the full scope of Nazi Germany’s crimes.