Looking back. Looking ahead. 2020-2025

144   SPEECHES | SURVIVORS AND LIBERATORS Survivors and Liberators Video message from 29 April, 2021 ©Dachau Memorial Hello! My name is George Legmann.   I am the son of Iosif and Elisabeta Legmann. I was born in the Kaufering subcamp of Dachau on 8 Decem- ber 1944. My mother had been deported from Cluj-Napoca / Kolozsvár / Klausenburg while she was expecting me.   Following the Vienna Arbitration of August 1940, when   Hungary joined the German Axis, the borders were redrawn and Cluj-Napoca, formerly Romanian territory, became part of Hungary. The deportation was carried out by Hungarian soldiers under the command of Admiral Miklós Horthy. My mother was sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp with her mother (my grandmother Regina), her father (my grandfather Moïse) and my 16-year-old uncle Alexandre.   When they arrived, the Nazi soldiers ordered the older and pregnant women to go left. The others were told to go right. My grandfather and uncle had already been separated from the rest of the family and were sent straight to the gas   chambers. My mother turned to my grandmother and said: “You’re not old, and I’m not pregnant.We’ll go with the   majority”. Thanks to their intuition and foresight, they won the first battle, while those who went left were sent straight to the gas chambers. They were deported to a forced labour camp in Landsberg and then transferred to Kaufering, where   I was born. My mother helped six other mothers to deliver their babies. I am one of only seven Jewish children to have been born in a concentration camp and survived – a unique case in Holocaust history. During the war, 1.5 million Jewish children were   murdered by the Nazis. Soviet troops entered Berlin on   27 January 1945, and Allied forces – under the command of General Eisenhower – liberated the world’s first concentration camp, Dachau, on 29 April 1945. The war was finally over. In September 1945, we returned to Cluj-Napoca, now Roma- nian territory again.We made the journey via Vienna, where George Legmann 76th anniversary  of the liberation of Dachau  29 April 2021 we found my father, who had been captured by the Soviets while trying to escape the Nazis. My uncle had settled in São Paulo back in 1946 and helped us come to Brazil. Romania established a communist regime in 1947, and Brazil severed its diplomatic relations with the country until 1960. As a gesture of goodwill, Brazil invited 50 families to come and live there. I was 16 when I arrived in Brazil with my parents and my sister. I married Irene Schindler, and we have built a wonderful family with two children, Ariel and Alexandre, daughters-in-law, and   a grandchild on the way.We survived! And now I am here as one of the youngest survivors and a living witness to the out- rageous barbarity of the Holocaust.We must never forget. Let us uphold democracy and peace! Am Israel Chai!   (Long live the people of Israel!). May God bless you all! (Translated transcript of video greeting) George Legmann was born in the Kaufering I subcamp of Dachau on 8 December 1944. His mother was subjected to forced labour in the Kaufering subcamp complex. He is one of seven children who were born in the Kaufering I subcamp and survived. Today, he lives in Brazil.