From the Kovno Ghetto to the Green Berets

Sidney Shachnow survived the Holocaust and became a highly decorated combat veteran and top officer in the U.S. Army’s Special Forces. He retired from the Army as a Major General in 1994 after 32 years of service. Last month, on September 27, Shachnow died at his home in Southern Pines, North Carolina. He was 83.

In 1941 the Nazis invaded Lithuania, displaced the occupying Soviets, and forced the country’s Jews into ghettos where most were later killed or sent to the camps. Lithuania’s second largest city is now known as Kaunas but it was still called Kovno in the war years and was home to a large Jewish community that dated to the early 15th century. Sidney Shachnow was 7 years old in 1941, when the Nazis arrived and forced him and his family, along with tens of thousands of other Jews, into the Kovno ghetto.

Continue reading "From the Kovno Ghetto to the Green Berets" at...