Sidney Shachnow ( – ) was a Jewish American Holocaust survivor who attained the rank of major general in United States Army. He retired in 1994, after almost 40 years of active service. Biography Surviving the Holocaust, a concentration camp, and anti-Semitism Sid Shachnow was born in Kaunas, Lithuania, on November 23, 1934. At the age of seven, Shachnow was imprisoned in the Kovno Ghetto during World War II because his family was Jewish. For three years, he endured brutalities and lost almost every single one of his extended family members. 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 escaping the ghetto, Shachnow lived in hiding for months, almost dying from starvation and malnutrition. Shachnow fled west after the Soviets invaded Kaunas 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. It was during this time that he learned to speak German. Visa and immigration In 1950, Shachnow obtained a visa and immigrated to Salem, Massachusetts, where he attended school for the first time in his life. He took English lessons and worked in the evenings after school to help support the family financially. Just before graduation, he enlisted in the U.S. Army on January 10, 1955. As a sergeant first class, he entered Officer Candidate School and received his commission in the U.S. Army Infantry on April 12, 1960. Special Forces and Vietnam In 1962 he volunteered for the United States Army Special Forces, also known as the "Green Berets", where he served for the next thirty-two years. After joining Special Forces, Shachnow was promoted to captain and assigned as commander of Detachment A-121, his group was deployed to Vietnam's An Long Camp near the Cambodian border along the Mekong River. Shachnow earned his first Silver Star for combat action there as well as a Purple Heart. He