April 29, 2023: Dachau’s Liberators and Survivors
Max Lütgens, Joseph Alexander, Erin Faith Allen, Abba Naor, Lockered ‘Bud’ Gahs and Dr. Christoph Thonfeld at the 78th anniversary of the liberation of Dachau.
On the 78th anniversary of the liberation of Dachau, I stood in a room with two men who survived it and one man who helped liberate it.
Joseph Alexander survived twelve concentration camps. He is one hundred years old. Max is pointing to his hat in this photograph because the hat says: not everyone looks this good at 100. Joseph is smiling because he knows it is true and because after everything he has lived through he has earned the right to wear that hat and mean it.
Abba Naor survived a sub-camp of Dachau. He is standing beside Joseph with the particular stillness of a man who has spent decades speaking his truth, staring darkness in the face, and has not stopped yet.
Bud Gahs is on the right with his cane. He was nineteen years old when he arrived at Dachau on April 29, 1945 as a private in the Anti-Tank Company, 222nd Infantry Regiment, 42nd ‘Rainbow’ Division. He is in his late nineties now and he came back, and was one of two liberators at this commemoration.
Also in this photograph: Max Lütgens of the Education Department at the KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau, and Dr. Christoph Thonfeld, Head of Research at the memorial. And me, in awe of what all that it means to stand in a room like this one.
I have been thinking about what these three men represent ever since.
The endurance of the human spirit is real but it is not a guarantee. These men made it. Millions did not. The difference between survival and death in those years was often luck, the specific random cruelty of which train you were put on, which guard was on duty, which day the Americans arrived, which bullet whizzed over your head instead of into your body.
Joseph survived twelve camps. Twelve. The odds against that are incalculable.
We never know what is coming for us or whether we will make it through. All we can do is try. These men tried and they are still here and they came back to the place where it happened to make sure it is not forgotten.
I am so honored to have been in this room.
Erin Faith Allen is an investigative war historian and the founder of Fortitude Research, specializing in WWII archival research, wartime reconstruction, Holocaust documentation, and the recovery of women's wartime histories. She is a leading authority on the 42nd "Rainbow" Infantry Division and the liberation of Dachau concentration camp. Her forthcoming book, One Day Over the Rhine, is in active development.
All original photographs and written work published on this site are copyright Erin Faith Allen. Historical and archival images are used where they exist in the public domain.
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