U.S. President Barack Obama is in France for ceremonies marking the 65th anniversary of D-Day, the allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France during World War II.

The president arrived in Paris late Friday and he is expected to travel to Normandy on Saturday.

Mr. Obama will have a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and will travel with him to an American cemetery in Normandy, next to one of the D-Day landing sites.

More than 150,000 U.S., Canadian, and British Commonwealth troops landed on the beaches of northern France on June 6, 1944 to liberate Europe from the Nazis.

On Friday, Mr. Obama was in Germany, where he toured the Buchenwald concentration camp with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, who was imprisoned at the camp as a child. Mr. Obama called the camp, where 56,000 people died, the “ultimate rebuke” for those who deny the Holocaust.

The president said he saw the crematorium ovens and the barracks where prisoners were kept in what he called the most “unimaginable conditions.” He said the sites have not lost their “horror” with the passage of time, and that grief and outrage over what happened have not diminished.

Earlier Friday, in Dresden, Mr. Obama focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying the “moment is now” to press for a peace agreement. He said serious progress can be made this year.

Both he and Chancellor Merkel pledged support for the creation of a Palestinian state.

The U.S. president’s trip began earlier in the week in Riyadh. He then traveled on to Cairo, where he called for a “new beginning” in relations between the United States and Muslims around the world.

Mr. Obama’s wife, Michelle, and his two daughters are joining him in France. They arrived in Paris Friday and visited the Eiffel Tower.