January 21, 2015 – A survivor of the Holocaust recently reunited in Huntington Beach, California, with the G.I. who liberated him from the Dachau Nazi concentration camp nearly 70 years ago. Upon meeting, Joshua Kaufman, now 87, a Jew originally from Hungary, and 89-year-old army veteran Daniel Gillespie saluted each other. Kaufman then took Gillespie’s hand and kissed it, and kneeled down and kissed his feet also and told him, “I have wanted to do this for 70 years. I love you. I love you so much.”
The U.S. Army liberated Dachau (near Munich, Germany) on April 29, 1945. The emaciated Kaufman was hiding in a latrine with other prisoners when Gillespie found him and carried him out into the light. They parted that day with tears in their eyes, never expecting to see each other again. A German version of the History Channel brought them together for a documentary. Kaufman emigrated to America after the war. The men had been unaware that they lived just an hour away from each other in California.
As they parted on the beach, Kaufman said: “I have everything I wanted in life through him. That is the reason for my thankfulness.” At home he sleeps on a thin mattress close to a window so he can gaze out at green grass every day when he wakes up.
Link: Inquisitr
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