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Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which comes on the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camps. Leon Schagrin was there.
He was an 18-year old man, weighing all of 80 pounds, on this day back in 1945 when the Soviet army came through and liberated the prisoners. Leon was just 12 or 13 when the Nazis invaded his homeland of Poland and his long holocaust nightmare began. That he lived to tell about it is a miracle.
Leon settled down in South Florida, where he and his wife would spend many Passover dinners at a neighbor’s welcoming table. The neighbors happened to be the in-laws of someone with whom I went to high school, many years ago.
It turns out that my old friend Stephen Shooster wrote Leon’s story. It’s immortalized in a book titled THE HORSE ADJUTANT: HOW ONE YOUNG BOY SURVIVED THE HOLOCAUST.
Leon is now 96 years and still tells his story, as it’s one directive among the Jewish people — Never forget, never again.
So, today, I’m joined by both my old high school friend Stephen Shooster and holocaust survivor Leon Schagrin.
Never forget. Never again.
