Sidney Shachnow
| Sidney Shachnow | |
|---|---|
| Born |
March 5, 1934 Kaunas, Lithuania |
| Allegiance | United States of America |
| Service/branch | United States Army |
| Years of service | 1955-1994 |
| Rank | Major General |
| Commands held | U.S. Army Berlin John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School |
| Battles/wars | Vietnam War |
| Awards |
Combat Infantryman Badge Silver Star Purple Heart Bronze Star |
Sidney Shachnow is a Holocaust survivor who attained the rank of Major General in United States Army. He retired in 1994, after 40 years of active service.
Sid Shachnow was born in Kaunas, Lithuania on March 5, 1934. At the age of seven, Shachnow was imprisoned in the Kovno concentration camp during World War II because his family was Jewish. For three years he endured countless brutalities in the camp and was forced to watch helplessly as almost every single one of his extended family were slaughtered. To increase his prospects of survival, young Shachnow performed heavy manual labor under harsh conditions. He narrowly escaped death only days before Kovno's gruesome "Children's Action", of March 27–28, 1944, when Nazi troops rounded up all children in the camp and marched them to The Ninth Fort for execution or to Auschwitz to be gassed. After smuggling out of the camp, Shachnow lived in hiding for months, mostly in austere seclusion, where he nearly expired from starvation and malnutrition. Shachnow fled west after the Soviets liberated Kovno from the Nazis and began to implement Communism. His 2,000 mile, six-month journey across Europe, mostly on foot, took him across Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, and finally to American occupied Nuremberg, Germany where he hoped to obtain a visa to the United States. To make a living in war-torn Nuremberg, Shachnow resorted to pirating black market contraband such as nylon stockings and chocolate.
In 1950, Shachnow obtained a visa and immigrated to Salem, Massachusetts where he attended school for the first time in his life. After working his way through high school he enlisted in the U.S. Army. As a Sergeant First Class he entered Officer Candidate School and received his commission in the U.S. Infantry.
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