War Series: Liberation of Dachau

80 Years Ago: Liberation of Dachau, April 29, 1945

As told to me by my father, who was there

I remember what my father had told me of his involvement in the liberation of Dachau shortly before he died in 1976.

Some of his war buddies discovered the tribute site I’d created for him and called or emailed me to recount stories I’d not known previously, or only in part.

In 2001, before HBO premiered its miniseries Band of Brothers, it requested historical background for its website to introduce each episode. My father’s story was featured on their website to introduce Episode 9, “Why We Fight,” which recounts the liberation by “Easy Company” of one of the Dachau sub-camps.

Over the two decades since, scores of people have contacted me:

The son of a liberated inmate had seen the pictures on the site, pictured above, and identified his father, Stephen Ross (Rozenthal) — 14 at the time, an orphan from Poland who had survived ten concentration camps in five years — as

“the first striped pajama in the left foreground… your Dad saved my Dad’s life.”

An 89-year-old former inmate emailed me saying,

“Yes, for me it will always be The…