Becca_smashley

I took care of a gentleman who was in Dachau. He was taken home to the swine farm of one of the guards and forced to work. He was 16 when the other guards of the camp would come by every night and attempt to bring him back to kill him. The guard told them that he "wasn't done with him yet". He was forced to sleep in the pig pens. He was liberated by a group of american soldiers who happened by him and rescued him. He would get tears in his eyes when he spoke of the men who saved his life.

He reunited with his childhood sweetheart on the boat to America. Some of the very few who survived from their town, none of their family survived. They were married for 60+ years. He became EXTREMELY successful in kosher foods. After all that time, the dementia, the sadness of it all, he STILL remembered those soldiers, his saviors.

Tell your grandpa thank you. What he did was truly an act of heroism.

I also want to clarify that a lot of what I learned of his time there was told to me by his son and daughter. They were very proud of their parents. He would recall his past in his (rare) moments of clarity and he would share them with me. He had some PTSD associated with his experience, coupled with dementia, it was very hard. He was wary of people, would try to "escape" often and was easily frightened towards the end of it all. He was a very sweet man though and I miss him very much. When his wife passed, he followed a month later.

From the way I understood it, the guard was just looking for free labor. He was young and just needed someone to clean the stalls and whatever else. He wasn't doing it to be kind or take mercy on him. But it is sort of ironic that in the end he was saving him.. I mean eventually he probably planned on handing him back over to the camp so he would be killed.