The anniversary of the end of the Nazi era comes at a pivotal time for Germans. The last of the survivors, liberators and perpetrators are dying, as the far right is becoming more established.
Lockered Gahs, known unofficially as Bud, was a 20-year-old soldier in the U.S. Army who had been fighting for a year when he and his unit first entered the Dachau concentration camp just outside Munich in 1945.
His unit — the 42nd Infantry Division — had seen harrowing combat since it began fighting in France. But, he said, liberating the concentration camp was altogether different.
“When we opened the gates to Dachau, it was only then have we truly understood what we had been fighting for,” Mr. Gahs, 100 years old, told a crowd that included survivors, families and dignitaries in Dachau on Sunday.
When he and his unit went through the gates, Mr. Gahs encountered prisoners so malnourished, sick and maltreated that they seemed scarcely alive. On the way there, soldiers had found piles of bodies inside train wagons.
On Sunday, Jean Lafaurie, 101, who survived the camp after he was arrested in his village in France, spoke of the sadistic treatment the prisoners had been forced to endure.
