Looking back. Looking ahead. 2020-2025

140   SPEECHES | SURVIVORS AND LIBERATORS Survivors and Liberators ©Dachau Memorial / G. Hassel If you ask any veteran of the 42nd or 45th Infantry Division who participated in the liberation of Dachau on 29, April 1945, to summarize his experience in one word, without needing any time to think, he would respond “corpses.” The common experience that day was coming upon a long train of boxcars and making the horrifying discovery the cars contained totally emaciated human corpses, nothing but skin and bones, still in the remnants of their striped uniforms. It blew the soldiers away – and I remind you these were hard- core infantry troops used to death and destruction – but there was no way to prepare for what we were to find at Dachau. What we had encountered was the Buchenwald-Dachau Death Train, and it set the stage for the horror that was to   unfold inside: piles of naked corpses and a confinement area with over 30,000 wasted prisoners in all stages of ill health. Today, as we close the observance of the 78th anniversary of the liberation, we once again acknowledge that Dachau epito- mized man’s inhumanity to man; but, in the words of survivor John Steiner, survivors and liberators at this observance have gathered “in a spirit of relatedness keeping us mindful of one of the finest hours of our life.” Dan P. Dougherty 78th anniversary  of the liberation of Dachau  30 April 2023 Dan Dougherty (born in 1925) served in the 45th   “Thunderbird” Division of the U.S. Army. He was one of the soldiers who liberated the Dachau concentration camp on 29 April 1945. He died on 6 June 2025 at the age of 100.