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The last soldier to survive the liberation of Auschwitz died at the age of 98
David Dushman was one of 69 soldiers out of the 12,000 Red Army soldiers who participated in the liberation of the extermination camp and survived the war.
"They were standing there, just very narrow eyes, it was awful," he described the sights in Auschwitz. Despite the serious injuries he suffered, he developed an impressive Olympic fencing career.
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Auschwitz
World War II
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Monday, 07 June 2021, 09:33
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David Dushman, the last surviving soldier from the liberation of the Nazi extermination camp, died at the age of 98. The Jewish Dushman fought in the Red Army and later became an Olympic fencer, died on Saturday in Germany.
At the age of 21, he trampled the camp's electric fence with his tank on January 27, 1945, helping to free the inmates of the camp where 1.1 million people were killed, most of them Jews.
"When we defended and saw the fence and these poor people, we broke it with our tanks. We gave the prisoners food and we continued," he told Reuters in an interview last year.
"They were standing there, all in uniform, just eyes, eyes, very narrow. It was awful, awful."
He said he did not know of the existence of the camp during World War II, and learned of the atrocities committed there only years later.
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Continued to engage in fencing until the age of 94. Dushman in an interview with Reuters last year (Photo: Reuters)
Dushman was one of only 69 soldiers out of the 12,000-strong division that survived the war, and he suffered serious injuries. However, he overcame them and became the leading fencer of the Soviet Union and later, according to the International Olympic Committee, one of the best fencing coaches in the world.
He coached the fencing of women in the Soviet Union for more than 30 years, and witnessed the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics. "We heard shots and the helicopters hovering above us. He is really close to the Israeli team. We and all the other athletes were shocked," he said in an interview he gave in 2018.
His friend Thomas Bach, chairman of the Olympic Committee and his fencing colleague, paid tribute to him. She is so deeply human that I will never forget her. "
According to the International Olympic Committee, until four years ago, when he was 94, he would still go to his fencing group almost daily and teach classes there.
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