80 years ago today, my father was liberated from Plattling concentration camp

[Danmel]

By the US Army.
He weighed 89 pounds, had typhus and heard the nuns in the hospital say in German that "nothing would come of him."
He lived to come to New York, raise a family and welcome his first Jewish granddaughter in a baby naming ceremony on hitlers birthday.
I am grateful he did not live to see Trump.
We have to stay vigilant and loud during these perilous times.
Peace dad, I love and miss you.

[chowder66]

1. Thank you for sharing and I'm so glad your dad made it.

[TexLaProgressive]

2. Never forget

That was one of the sub camps of Flossenburg. My Dad was an infantry soldier who helped liberate at least one of the German death camps, maybe Plattling. He was horribly affected by the war and what he saw in the camps.

I'm glad your Grandfather survived and was able to have a family. It's probably good that my Dad and your Grandfather are not witnessing what's happening now.

Before it was liberated by the United States Army in April 1945, 89,964 to 100,000 prisoners passed through Flossenbürg and its subcamps

.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flossenb%C3%BCrg_concentration_camp

[Danmel]

3. It was my dad.

My grandparents, aunts and nephew were all murdered.

[wnylib]

13. .

[TexLaProgressive]

21. Idon't understand antisemitism, well,, prejudice dice in any fashion

Where I grew up, I never met a jewish person until my niid-teens. It was a middle aged couple a few houses from us. They were ever so mice to this Catholic boy. Then I met another Jeewish couple who lived near a friend, oonce again, ever so nice, with a wicked sense of humor.

This was frotunate as there was this asshole in USAF tech school who was a Jew from New Jersey. Because of my experience with those 4 Jewish people I mistakenly assumed it was a New Jersey thing, but I became friends with a young man and woman from New Jersey. I decided that guy in my barracks was just naturally an unpleasant person on his own..

My #3 son married an wonderful woman from Issrael who has given us 2 beautiful Jewish grandchildren.

[Danmel]

6. Thank you to your dad

I feel an enormous debt of gratitude to the soldiers who liberated the camps. My uncle Mendel, the only other immediate family member who survived was liberated by the Russian Red Army.

[mchill]

10. But the Russians were no better - or worse

I can’t remember where I heard that but it was somebody whose father was in World War II and they said they would prefer to be captured by the Germans over the Russians. I know my mother‘s cousins were sent to Siberia by Stalin to die because they were Germans remaining in Ukraine, at the time, Bessarabia, (whose ancestors came at the behest of the Czar at that time in the late 1700’s). Not minimizing what Hitler did at all.

[Richard D]

37. The Russians did not slaughter . . .

. . . half of the world's existing Jewish population.

[yagotme]

41. But Stalin did make Hitler's overall numbers pale in comparison.

Most of those were his own people, but ask the Ukrainians about the Great Famine sometime...

[Richard D]

42. No doubt what Stalin did was horrific

Yet saying that what Hitler did pales in comparison, in my hearing, disrespects the unprecedented horror of Nazisim and what happened in Hitler's death camps.

[TexLaProgressive]

39. I took a look at my Dad's insignia.

He was in the 69th Infantry Division. They liberated Leipzig-Thekla a sub-camp of Buchenwald.

From what I've read it was quite horrible.

[KT2000]

4. What a spirit!

Your father was one strong man. Respect.
What always amazed me, growing up in a Jewish community, was the belief in goodness the survivors had. They were living heroes teaching the gift of fortitude without saying a thing. The grandmas adored all the children is what I remember most. People just do not understand now.

[truddy777]

5. Thanks

He really was a fighter to survive all that and build a life here. Thanks for sharing his memory-and the reminder that we’ve got to keep speaking up against hate.

[joanbarnes]

7. My Dad was a GI Liberator......

I believe it scarred him for life.

[BonnieJW]

25. Mine too

He told me about it when I was in my 40s. It haunted him all his life.

[calimary]

36. My dad flew photo reconnaissance missions.

I remember feeling really moved when he said what he was proudest of, in the service, was “I never raised a gun against my fellow man.”

I still remember how deeply that statement affected me. I thought about it for days and days after he said it.

[Hekate]

8. Thank you for this....

Their children who are now old themselves, remember.

Boomers who were raised right, and are now old themselves — we remember.

We are old, but we will not forget, not as long as we have breath.

[NBachers]

9. As those who grew up in these shadows fade away, the Nazi fist rises anew. We can never stop being vigilant.

[MarcoZandrini]

11. We must.....

…never forget. I have been to Auschwitz’s and Birkenau. It was the most emotional day of my life. I could not finish the tour of the buildings in Auschwitz. I didn’t have the emotional strength to do so.

Never again.

[DingleBerryNW]

12. Thank God your father...

was able to breathe freedom again. Evil people are attempting to rewrite history. Humanity must never forget the evil, inhumane atrocities of the holocaust and those who participated and defended the horror. Those who are living and deny holocaust’s existence must be silenced.

Like you, I am grateful that my very progressive parents are not here to experience this disaster named Trump.

[Cha]

14. Mahalo for sharing your

Dad's history of Horror, Survival and Triumph, Danmel.

💕

[MLAA]

15. Wow! Those nuns couldn't have been more wrong!

[Danmel]

17. They probably didn't think he'd understand

He knew Polish, German, Yiddish and Hebrew. He figured it would improve his odds if he could talk to people.
Obviously he also learned English.
I unfortunately did not inherit the polyglot gene.

[MLAA]

20. What an incredible man you had as a father. Did your dad have any hobbies? I'm just in awe of someone who

not only survived, but went on to build a real life, it sounds like he refused to let anyone, including the worst of humanity, cheat him out of that. ❤️

[FakeNoose]

24. My guess is that the German nuns weren't being cruel

They were probably saying that your Dad couldn't survive, because of the severe damage to his health. (I'm glad they were wrong.) It's not like they wanted him to die, after all they were nurses who were trying to help everyone they could.

On the other hand, it's understandable that your father would have assumed the worst about anyone who spoke German, by the time the war ended.

I'm happy that American soldiers were there to help save as many Jewish prisoners as possible. The Russian "liberators" weren't so generous towards their Holocaust survivors.

[enigmania]

16. My great-uncle was tortured by those bastards

when his bomber went down and he was captured.

[Boomerproud]

19. So sorry to hear about your heroic great uncle.

The horrors of war go on and on as if it's normal. Thank you and the OP for honoring these amazing men.

[mucholderthandirt]

18. What an inspiring story! And how wonderful that his survival brought you into the world.

[Meowmee]

22. I'm glad he survived 🤗

My relatives who did not leave were murdered in the beginning except for my great uncle who escaped to Russia after his family and town were slaughtered. Otherwise we would not be here.

[SheltieLover]

27. All of my family was murdered by hitler, except the 2 that came to the US

Maternal grandma & paternal grandpa...

I hate nazis!

[Meowmee]

29. So sorry 😢

My great grandfather and one son were shot in the back of the head by their neighbor of 24 years in what was Poland/Ukraine as the war broke out. My great uncle who had escaped to Russia after his town, wife and 3 year old daughter were bayoneted by German soldiers not long before that tried to warn them but they didn't want to go to Russia. My grandmother and 3 sisters had already left after WW1 with nothing, and that is why we are here. She told me it was an awful life because the Germans had taken their house in WW1 and they traveled in a cart digging potatoes to survive. Half her family including her mother died in an epidemic then.

[SheltieLover]

30. So sorry for your family's trauma, Meowmee.

I never got the story on how my ancestors were slaughtered. Perhaps there was no one left to share their stories? Not sure.

I never got to meet my grandparents. The rotten robber barons worked them to death at very early ages. Theirs were truly lives of sacrifice so that we could live in a better circumstance. And now we have shitler 2.

[Meowmee]

33. Truly tragic I wish you could have met them..... ty 🤗

You may be better off not knowing but it leaves a question in your mind. My family found out from my great uncle who came back to the town where his father and brother were to try to help them escape and people in that town who weren't nazis who knew his family told him what happened. Eventually he wrote letters and told everyone what happened in his town as well.

My grandmother came with 2 sisters to Canada and had an Uncle there. She worked in his laundry and then got married and had a family. My grandfather's family was from Romania and I think they had been there for at least a generation or two.

At one point I was researching the town online and genealogy with my grandmother's last name. But the town doesn't seem to exist anymore and only one person had relatives with her last name(maiden name), she could not help much. So I gave up at that point.

[electric_blue68]

23. Wow. I saw photos of some of the camps on liberation days, back in the '60s; so I know what the imprisoned looked....

...like.
Glad he made it.

Living in 2/3rds Jewish neighborhood growing up my Jewish friends had missing portions of their families.

[SheltieLover]

26. ...

[Martin68]

28. My wife's uncle and his family were imprisoned in concentration camps for Japanese-American citizens.

They lived in California, and were incarcerated in the Manzanar Camp.

[DFW]

31. I cannot fathom what it must have taken to have endured that.

I had a Dutch friend who passed several years ago. He was an "alumnus" of Auschwitz, still had the number tattooed on his arm. A soccer fanatic, he once traveled to Poland with the Dutch national soccer team, and made a side trip to Auschwitz, the first time back since the liberation. I asked him why in the world he would ever want to go back there. He said he wanted top stand before the gate and say out loud, "I'm still here, and you are not."

My father and my wife's father were both drafted into the armies of opposing sides. My dad had to graduate early from college to go to basic training, and his ship across the English Channel was torpedoed on the way to France. He saw next to no combat duty (that he ever told us of, anyway). My wife's father was drafted off his farm at age 17. He was sent to Stalingrad, where a Soviet artillery shell blew off part of one of his legs. What was left of him was recognized as "still alive," and he was brought back to field hospitals. Gangrene had set in, and they barely saved him, having to amputate most of what was left of his leg. At age 19, in 1943, he was returned to his farm, but useless as a farmer. He did his best to recover what had previously been described as his "sunny nature," though more than once, I saw him watching TV when a documentary of WWII came on, and his face grew cold, his jaw rippling with anger whenever an image of Hitler came on. He made no secret of his wish that if he had grandchildren, that they would all be girls, since West Germany had no compulsory military service for girls. Fate was to grant him that wish. We were very relieved when they met, before our wedding, and there was not even a hint of awkwardness or animosity. Of course, my wife's dad never blamed the Allies for anything, only the Nazis, so that helped.

[róisín_dubh]

32. May his memory be a blessing

The parents of my uncle (through marriage) survived the camps. He was born in Israel and eventually met and married my aunt. She converted, so I grew up Catholic, but with a healthy understanding of Judaism through celebrating family events with my aunt, uncle and eventually cousins.

[Behind the Aegis]

34. Thank you for sharing.

It is important we remember, especially in these dangerous and trying times of Holocaust denial, revisionism and inversion. With each passing year, we lose more and more victims, eyewitnesses to the horrors of the Nazi regime and the injustices that followed, including the three years many spent in concentration camps following the war.

Thank you for honoring us with this memory of your father. It is a blessing.

[littlemissmartypants]

35. ❤️

[Niagara]

38. Thank you for sharing your dad's story with us, Danmel

[Ilsa]

40. Zikhro l'bracha. May his descendants

always remember the covenant their ancestors have had with G_d and honor it.

Thank you for sharing. Many of us will draw strength and live more compassionately because you are retelling his story.