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David Dushman, last surviving Auschwitz liberator, dies aged 98

06/07/2021

‘As the “Hero of Auschwitz” he was one of the liberators of the concentration camp and saved countless lives’

David Dushman, the last surviving soldier who took part in the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in 1945, has died at the age of 98.

Dushman, a Red Army soldier who later became an international fencer, died on Saturday, the International Olympic Committee said in a statement.

On January 27, 1945, he used his T-34 Soviet tank to mow down the electric fence of Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland, helping to set prisoners in the death camp free.

“We hardly knew anything about Auschwitz,” he said, recounting that day in an interview in 2015 with Sueddeutsche daily.

Read More: I24