Joshua Kaufman will never forget the moment he was rescued from the Dachau concentration camp 70 years ago. But that moment came rushing back clearer than ever when he was finally reunited with Daniel Gillespie, one of the American soldiers that secured his freedom.
“I have wanted to do this for 70 years. I love you. I love you so much,” said the 87-year-old Kaufman before prostrating himself before Gillespie’s feet.
Brought back together after all these years with the help of a German documentary crew, the two men discovered that they in fact live only an hour apart from each other in Huntington Beach, California.
Gillespie, who is now 89, recalled the moment he and his fellow soldiers broke down the doors of the concentration camp and he laid his eyes upon Kaufman who looked like a “walking corpse.”
“It was the most profound shock of my life. It’s liberation changed my life forever,” Gillespie said.
“We could not understand it. I grew up in California where we had everything in abundance. We didn’t get how people could let other people starve. They murdered them or just let them die. Again and again the questions moved through my head. And at the same time I was just incredibly angry.”
The History Channel will air the program showing their reunion on May 31.
