It all began January 30, 1933 when the Nazi party came to power. Twelve years of nationalistic, socialistic dictatorship. Immediately, Hitler imprisoned anyone who opposed him.
On March 21, 1933, The Munich Press announced the opening of a concentration camp,
near Dachau, to accommodate the overpopulation of prisoners. Soon, life for Jews in Germany and anywhere where the German hand was felt, had forever changed.
Eventually, camps in Germany and Poland were designed with one thing in mind: to exterminate the Jews. One-third of the Jewish population, six million, met an untimely and cruel death.
As the war in Europe was coming to a close, the American army servicemen came upon a startling discovery, the Dachau concentration camp. One of these G.I.’s was a local resident by the name of Sid Shafner. Here is his story:
Sid Shafner, like many men after World War Two had started, began enlisting into the army. The army selected about 20,000 men to study engineering or medicine. Sid was one of about 2,000 men who were sent to Regis College to study engineering. After a year and a half, the army needed him for Europe.
After Regis, he was sent to Camp Gruber, which is located 18 miles east of Muskogee, Oklahoma. Camp Gruber only came into being in late May of 1942. Sid was assigned to the 42nd Infantry Division, which came to be known as the Rainbow Division. The Rainbow Division was originally formed from a recommendation of then Major Douglas MacArthur, who later became a five-star general and who played a prominent role in the Pacific Theatre during WW II. After a year at Camp Gruber, Sid was sent oversees to Europe, landing in Marseilles, France around December 1944. He was selected to be in a very small unit that did reconnaissance. Their unit was moved to Strasbourg, France and after getting their equipment, their mission began. This unit was comprised of only 28 men in 7 Jeeps. Sid sat in the back over the rear wheel with one leg out, just in case they needed to jump out. Each Jeep had a 50 caliber machine gun attached.
Very quickly, their mission of locating mines and snipers turned offensive where their first battle was in Schweinfurt, Germany in January 1945. I asked him how prepared he was at this point. Sid felt his training was adequate and saved his life more than once. In this part of Germany, the mountains are high and steep. The war became an engineering’s war as much as it was an infantry’s war. This is where his education at Regis paid off.
Their mission from this point was to check out the road to Munich. On the way to Munich this convoy came upon two gaunt young men who pleaded with Sid and his unit to stop in the town of Dachau. In Yiddish, they told them there was a concentration camp there. Sid’s unit took the two men with them and before reaching Munich, they came upon this “hole in the wall” town called Dachau. The village was deserted. Based on previous experiences with snipers in church steeple’s, they took out the steeple. Immediately, people came out from buildings and speaking in German said, “Thank you liberators”. Most of the people were from Poland. The Germans knew that the Americans were close, so apparently they released some of the people that were in the camp. The same two men again pleaded with them to continue to the camp which was only a mile away. What Sid and the others saw was forever burned into their brain, that of the Dachau concentration camp. No training had prepared them for what they saw on April 29, 1945. As the 42nd Infantry Division liberated the camp, the over 30,000 inmates went wild with joy. There was still about 30-40 guards in the camp, who were soon attacked by the inmates. Sid was disgusted by what he saw that day: men, who then were barely more than bones, with distended stomachs. Twelve years after the founding of the Nazi party, Dachau was now a destroyed village.
Almost to the exact date, seventy-one years later, Sid went to Poland and Israel, sponsored by Friends of the IDF, the Israel Defense Force. In Israel, he saw Marcel Levy,
one of the two young men who flagged down their unit as they neared Munich. Since that day in April 1945, Sid and Marcel have stayed in touch, a friendship that has lasted for decades. In Israel, Marcel showed Sid what he helped make possible: children, six grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren! Marcel’s family was there at an Air Force Base in Israel to meet Sid and thank him for saving Marcel and the thousands of inmates of Dachau.
At the end of the interview, I said to Sid: “You’ve seen things that no person should have ever seen, but yet you did”. Sid retorted: “I can’t believe I saw it myself.” After a pause, he reiterated: “Can’t believe it.”
Just a side note: Regis bestowed an honorary degree on Sid a year ago for engineering.
I’m extremely appreciative for Sid to take the time to speak with me. I wish my Uncle Harry Glaser, of blessed memory, was around for me to talk to him. He was a survivor of both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.
After 71 years, there is still so much hate in the world. We haven’t progressed much.