Maj. Gen. Sidney Shachnow has died at age 83.
Shachnow was born in Lithuania in 1934. When he was 7, he was among thousands of Jews held prisoner at the Kovno concentration camp near Kaunus, where he lived for more than 3 years.
He immigrated to America in 1950, enlisted in the military in 1955, and served for more than 39 years, including 32 in the Special Forces, including two deployments as a Green Beret commander in the jungles of Vietnam. “He came up through the ranks from private to major general through hard work and selfless service to this nation,” said officials at the Special Warfare Center and School, which he commanded from 1991 until 1994.
In 1990, Maj. Gen. Shachnow was the commander of all American forces in Berlin when the Berlin Wall was toppled. He told the Fayetteville Observer, “Here it is the very capital of fascism and the Third Reich. The very buildings and streets where they were goose-stepping and heil-Hitlering and the very system that put me in the camp and killed many people…and I come back to be commander of American forces in that city and a Jew on top of that.” (Fayetteville Observer-Military.com-New York Times)
{Matzav.com}
