David Dushman, the last living soldier to play their part in the liberation of the Nazi Auschwitz death camp has died at the age of 98.
The crimes of the Nazis at Auschwitz were revealed by the Soviet Red Army as they fought their way towards Germany through Poland, where the camp was situated. Over 1 million people, mostly Jews, were executed in the camp during the final years of the Second World War.
Duschman, who himself was of Jewish background, drove a tank through the fence of the camp to reveal the horrors inside. The Nazis had attempted to cover up their crimes as the Soviets closed in.
He told Reuters last year:
"When we arrived we saw the fence and these unfortunate people, we broke through the fence with our tanks. We gave food to the prisoners and continued. They were standing there, all of them in [prisoner] uniforms, only eyes, only eyes, very narrow - that was very terrible, very terrible."
Duschman was unaware for a number of years of what had occurred at Auschwitz and had regarded the camp as just another horrendous Nazi war crime that had occurred in occupied Europe.
Of the 12,000 Soviet soldiers who were part of Dushman's division, only 69 survived, including Duschman, who was seriously injured on a number of occasions.
Duschman returned to the Soviet Union after the war and received many of the Soviet's highest awards for bravery in combat. He went on to become a champion fencer and for 30 years trained the Soviet Union's women's fencing team. He continued fencing until the age of 94.
While at the 1972 Munich Olympics, he witnessed the massacre of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists.
He said:
"We heard the gunshots and the hum of the helicopters above us. We lived right across from the Israeli team. We and all the other athletes were horrified."
One individual who met Duschman in 1970, Thomas Bach, a German who had lived through the war, said:
"When we met in 1970, he immediately offered me friendship and counsel, despite Mr Dushman's personal experience with World War II and Auschwitz, and he being a man of Jewish origin. This was such a deep human gesture that I will never ever forget it."
[h/t: BBC]
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