He said Obama wanted to move as rapidly as possible.
Obama said Mitchell would follow up with "all the players in the region" in the coming week. State Department officials said Mitchell was considering a stop in Syria, one of the U.S. adversaries with which Obama has pledged talks.
Obama traveled to Buchenwald, outside the city of Weimar, with Merkel and Elie Wiesel, a Nobel laureate and survivor of the camps -- including Buchenwald, where his father died.
Speaking to a hushed crowd standing before the gates of the former camp, Wiesel said the Nazis' attempt to annihilate the Jews was just one genocide of the recent past. He listed Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Darfur.
Beneath a clock tower that perpetually reads 3:15, the hour of the camp's liberation by U.S. soldiers on April 11, 1945, Obama called the site "the ultimate rebuke" to those who would "tell lies about our history."
Obama emphasized personal reasons for his visit to Buchenwald. His great uncle, Charles Payne, as a young Army private helped to liberate a satellite camp at the end of World War II.
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cparsons@tribune.com
richard.boudreaux@ latimes.com
paul.richter@latimes.com
