Over the weekend, the Los Angeles Times covered former Dems president and current White House staffer Josh Lipsky, CC ’08, and his trip to Buchenwald as part of Obama’s team. Lipsky, who worked on Obama’s advance team during the campaign, did not volunteer just to get out of the Visitor’s Office; rather, he wanted to visit the camp where his grandfather had been a prisoner:

“By the time Lipsky got to the camp last week, its caretakers already knew of his connection from other young staffers already there. Within hours of his arrival, the information began to flow…A guide found a letter from a prisoner, telling of a camp cook in the later years of Buchenwald who used to line his clothing with potatoes and sneak them to the hungriest… Later, someone from the camp’s foundation came to him with his grandfather’s check-in slip, on which the young cook had signed his name — in a manner bearing a striking resemblance to the way Lipsky writes his own signature.

Our modus operandi is to make a snarky comment here, but in this case, just read the whole thing (photo by Chris Usher of the Times).