Oldest surviving Dachau concentration camp survivor dies at 100

[rug]

Polish priest said it was time for reconciliation in his liberation speech. He came face to face with Nazi evil at its most concentrated but used his faith to call for reconciliation afterwards. Polish priest Leon Stepniak, the oldest surviving inmate of the Dachau concentration camp has died at the age of 100.

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
4/9/2013

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Stepniak's ordeal began when he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1940 in the village of Klebowiec. He spent the next five years in Dachau, the infamous concentration camp in southeast Germany. The camp was the first concentration camp to be opened by the Nazi government. KZ-Dachau was established near the town of Dachau in Bavaria in March 1933.

Heinrich Himmler, then Munich's chief of police, described the site as "the first concentration camp for political prisoners."

After being released at the end of the Second World War, he returned to Poznan in Poland. He died over the weekend.

Stepniak became well-known for a speech he made at a commemoration to mark the liberation of Dachau, telling the audience that the camp's legacy should not be as a demand for revenge or recrimination, but as a sign of reconciliation.

http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=50446

[William769]

1. I hope this sad part of history is never forgotten or ever repeated.

[rug]

2. We can only hope and be vigilant.

[joeybee12]

3. Sad...but I'm glad he lived a long time after...

Safe journey.

[Skittles]

4. it's just something that is so hard for me to comprehend

if you read the real history behind the holocaust it is just so - there are no words -

[Mnemosyne]

5. ...

[Behind the Aegis]

6. Soon, they all be gone.

There is a show on HBO called "50 Children" about a couple who smuggled children out of Austria during (prior to) the Holocaust.

[rug]

7. It's astounding to think what they lived through yet survived for more than 60 years.

As long as some still live it is not mere history.

[Behind the Aegis]

8. Apparently to some, it is not impressive.

It is not only not history, it didn't happen! I have seen some of the most repulsive things in regards to Holocaust denial and revisionism and the survivors aren't even dead. Each year I see more and more stories like this, and it makes my blood run cold. I also see how the Holocaust is used to bludgeon the Jews and Israel, including a recent thread in GD, with an anti-Semitic post getting a pass in a thread about the Holocaust. In 100 years, will Jews even be the victims? Will people even know the depths of the Holocaust, or will it be a footnote in the history books?

But, I do agree, surviving something like that to live another lifetime after the fact..amazing.