As a 21-year-old Red Army soldier, David Dushman used his tank to mow down the camp's electric fence.
David Dushman, the last surviving soldier who took part in the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, has died at 98.As a 21-year-old soldier, he used his tank to mow down the camp's electric fence on 27 January 1945, helping to set its prisoners free."When we arrived we saw the fence and these unfortunate people, we broke through the fence with our tanks.
Dushman has said he was unaware Auschwitz existed during the war, only learning about the atrocities carried out there in the years after.One of just 69 men in his 12,000-strong division to survive the war, Mr Dushman suffered serious injuries during the conflict, But he went on to become the Soviet Union's top fencer, and later one of the world's greatest fencing coaches, the International Olympic Committee said.He trained the Soviet Union's women's fencing team for over 30 years, and witnessed the deadly terror attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
"We heard the gunshots and the hum of the helicopters above us. We lived right across from the Israeli team. We and all the other athletes were horrified,""When we met in 1970, he immediately offered me friendship and counsel, despite Mr Dushman's personal experience with World War II and Auschwitz, and he being a man of Jewish origin," said Mr Bach, who is German.Until the age of 94, he was still going almost daily to his fencing club there to give lessons, the IOC said.
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