Holocaust survivor and US general Sidney Shachnow dies

Sidney Shachnow, who survived the Holocaust as a child and fought in Vietnam as a Green Beret before becoming a major general, has died. He was 83.

General Shachnow’s wife, Arlene, said her husband died on September 27 at a hospital in Pinehurst, North Carolina. They lived in nearby Southern Pines.

He was involved in some of the biggest events of the 20th century, from enduring the horrors of Nazi-controlled Europe to leading US Army troops in Berlin during the fall of the Berlin Wall.

He served in the US Army Special Forces for more than 30 years, a career that was informed by a childhood spent avoiding death.

It came full circle when he lived in a house in Berlin that was once owned by Adolf Hitler’s finance minister.

“He was a really, really tough guy,” said LeeAnne Shachnow Keister, one of General Shachnow’s three daughters.

“The odds were against him,” she said. “But he had a really strong work ethic. And I think that’s what got him through to where he was in the military.”

Read the article in The Australian (AP).