Under attack from Republicans who have challenged his credential to become the Commander-in-Chief, Democratic Presidential frontrunner Barack Obama provided fresh fodder to his critics after he made a gaffe about his great uncle helping to liberate the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
Within 24 hours, the African American Senator corrected himself saying he meant Buchenwald and not Auschwitz, but by then the Republicans were all over him for the comments, which were quickly snapped by the media.
Addressing a Memorial Day campaign rally on Monday, when the country paid tributes to its fallen soldiers, Obama had said he had not been in the military as by the time he reached the age of draft, Vietnam war had already ended.
But he said his great-uncle Charlie Payne had helped to liberate the Auschwitz concentration camp.
"I had an uncle who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps. The story in our family was that when he came home, he just went up into the attic and he didn't leave the house for six months," Obama said.
The Republicans promptly pointed out that Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet Army in 1945 and not by Americans.
"The Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz, so unless his uncle was serving in the Red Army, there's no way Obama's statement can be true," said Alex Conant, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.
The Obama campaign admitted that he had committed a mistake in mentioning Auschwitz instead of Buchenwald camp.
Presumptive Republican candidate John McCain, who has been a Navy pilot and spent five and half year as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam, has been saying that Obama lacks experience in the military, which would make him a poor commander in chief.
Charlie was with the American 89th division, which liberated Ohrdruf, a sub camp of Buchenwald concentration camp.
But there was a difference between the two as Auschwitz was an extermination camp in Poland where more than one million people, mostly Jews, were systematically killed. Buchenwald was a labour camp in Germany where some 56,000 people died.
"Senator Obama's family is proud of the service of his grandfather and uncles in World War II - especially the fact that his great uncle played a part in liberating one of the concentration camps at Buchenwald," Obama's campaign spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement.
"He mistakenly referred to Auschwitz instead of Buchenwald in telling of his personal experience of a soldier in his family who served heroically," he said.
