“Everything I have today, all of my children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, is due to you.”
Those were the life affirming words that Marcel Levy used to greet World War II veteran Sid Shafner in this tear-jerking reunion video.
Colorado-born veteran Sid, now aged 94, played a hand in the liberation of 30,000 prisoners at the Dachau Concentration Camp in 1945. One of the prisoners he helped saved was 19-year-old Marcel, now a great-grandfather aged 90, living in Israel.
At a Holocaust remembrance ceremony held last week, the two men met for the first time in nearly 20 years.
“Sid tells the story that his convoy was stopped by a Jew named Marcel,” Peter Weintraub, president of Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, who sponsored the trip, told in a report to ABC News. “Marcel tells him in Yiddish that, ‘You have to leave your route and divert to help us’, which he did.”
Since then the pair have become firm friends, and stay in contact when they can. In the video of their first physical reunion for nearly two decades, emotions overwhelm both men, who love and respect each other clearly.
Trading photos of their families and friends, the two men reminisce on the good lives they’ve had since the Second World War ended.
“Sid is crying tears of joy,” Weintraub added. “We have done this trip several times but never have we reunited survivors and liberators.”
“For me, you look wonderful”, Marcel tells his friend.
“You look good too”, replies Sid.
The trip was sponsored by Friends of the IDF as part of its “From Holocaust to Independence” delegation to Poland and Israel.
Watch the reunion video here:
