New York Rabbi Who Helped Liberate Buchenwald Dies

Rabbi Herschel Schacter, a Jewish chaplain in the U.S. army who in 1945 raced through the Buchenwald concentration camp to announce that prisoners were free, has died in New York at the age of 95, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.

Schacter was the first Jewish chaplain to arrive in the Nazi death camp Buchenwald with the American army, and held services for the survivors to provide comfort in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust.

Known for his role in the liberation, Schacter went on to become an influential Modern Orthodox Jewish leader in the U.S. Schacter died last Thursday.

Speaking at a conference organized by the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, Schacter once recalled the April afternoon when he first drove through the gates of the Buchenwald concentration camp. His first sight fell on the crematories from which the smoke of burning bodies was still rising.

Read More: @ haaretz.com

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