Dachau survivor, liberator meet after 67 years

There are no "feel good" stories about the Holocaust. There cannot be; like a black hole, the facts swallow them up. There are only "feel-not-quite-so-bad" stories, those that can, very briefly, reflect the light.

Dachau survivor and liberator meet in Pennsylvania for the first time, nearly 67 years later (Daily Mail)

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At the urging of a man next to him as they waited in line to be processed, he lied and told the SS officer he was 17.

Any younger and he'd be deemed incapable of hard labor and, he was told, immediately killed.

'The same guy who told me to lie said to me, 'Do you see that smoke in the sky where the sun cannot get through? This is going to be your parents in about two hours,' he recalled. 'My parents and younger brother and younger sister ... that's the last time I saw them.'
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The rest of the story, as headlined, at Daily Mail link above. The Mail - the most visited newspaper site online, which still enjoys running what amounts to a "Hitler: the human side" story every week or ten days, also in the '30s was the chief in-print promoter of the fascist Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts, England's homegrown anti-Semitic terror brigade.

And, in a related matter,

'The blackest lie in history': Republican congressional candidate says the Holocaust never happened

DM ran this story a couple days back. God save us all.

'When you are bitter, it takes energy,' he said. Constantly smiling and a consummate joke-teller, he says he tries to make one person laugh every day. Usually, he succeeds.

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Both men are amazing to come through the horrors of Dachau and still be able to say such a thing is in my book amazing.

As for The Holocaust never happened story, it makes me so mad! :banghead:

Thanks..
Goz

Lilachaze said:

Both men are amazing to come through the horrors of Dachau and still be able to say such a thing is in my book amazing.

As for The Holocaust never happened story, it makes me so mad! :banghead:

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ITA, my friend Lilachaze, on both points!

I hope this news will encourage more such survivors to share their stories or at least record them privately for posterity, even if with caveat that they can be revealed later. The key to NOT forgetting is to know from those who experienced the horrors firsthand just how evil, just how indescribably awful, the situation was. The more that humankind can see/read to learn, the better.

Kudos to those who, despite their understandable reticence, choose to share.

As for the Holocaust deniers, I put them in the category of 'an alien stole my baby' and such. Instant negation, total disconnect, utter BS.

~jmo~