As suspected, it was his great-uncle he had in mind, not his uncle, and the camp wasn’t Auschwitz but one of the ones Patton’s army liberated, namely, the Ohrdruf subcamp at Buchenwald. Look at the photos at Wikipedia and you’ll understand why he might have needed six months in the attic.

Update (Ed): We talked about this on the show today, and I figured it would turn out to be one of the Western camps instead of a flat-out lie. However, this demonstrates again that Barack Obama has a gaffe problem, especially when speaking extemporaneously. If he’s going to tell personal anecdotes on the campaign trail, he’d better demonstrate a passable knowledge of the subject matter when he does so.

Update: The Washington Post’s Fact Checker isn’t feeling very generous:

Granted, it is getting late in the campaign. The candidates are tired, and prone to making silly mistakes. Many Americans might have problems distinguishing Buchenwald and Ohrdruf from Auschwitz. But should we not expect more from a Harvard-educated presidential candidate? Is it too much to ask that an aspiring commander-in-chief knows (1) that Auschwitz (like many of the other Nazi death camps) is in Poland, and (2) that the eastern advance of the U.S. Army in World War II stopped on the river Elbe? Let me know what you think.

Three Pinocchios … ouch.