Last surviving Auschwitz liberator David Dushman dies aged 98
Dushman, a Jewish Red Army veteran who later became an Olympic fencer, died in Germany on Saturday
David Dushman, the last surviving soldier who took part in the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, has died at 98.
Dushman, a Jewish Red Army veteran who later became an Olympic fencer, died in Germany on Saturday, reports the BBC.
As a 21-year-old soldier, he used his tank to mow down the camp's electric fence on 27 January 1945, helping to set its prisoners free.
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About 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz, most of them Jews.
"When we arrived we saw the fence and these unfortunate people, we broke through the fence with our tanks. We gave food to the prisoners and continued," Dushman told Reuters last year.
"They were standing there, all of them in [prisoner] uniforms, only eyes, only eyes, very narrow - that was very terrible, very terrible," he said.
Dushman has said he was unaware Auschwitz existed during the war, only learning about the atrocities carried out there in the years after.One of just 69 men in his 12,000-strong division to survive the war, Mr Dushman suffered serious injuries during the conflict,
But he went on to become the Soviet Union's top fencer, and later one of the world's greatest fencing coaches, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said.
