NY National Guard Leaders Commemorate 80th Anniversary of Dachau Liberation in WWII

The commander of the New York Army National Guard’s 42nd Infantry Division, Maj. Gen. Jack James, joined with surviving U.S. Army liberators and descendants in Dachau, Germany, on May 4, 2025 to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi Germany’s notorious Dachau Concentration Camp.

James, with a contingent of division leaders and the colors of the Army’s famous “Rainbow Division,” joined with representatives and descendants of the 45th Infantry and 20th Armored Divisions for the ceremony.

The three units are credited with liberating the Dachau Concentration Camp on Sunday, April 29, 1945.

“It’s an incredible honor to represent the Rainbow Division on behalf of our division’s veterans,” James said. “The liberators of Dachau!”

The Rainbow Division Memorial Foundation, the association that maintains the legacy of the Army unit with roots dating back to 1917 and World War One, helped coordinate the larger presence of WWII Rainbow Division veterans and their families at the event.

“In total, we have between 50 and 80 family members of liberators from the three divisions coming together in Dachau,” noted retired Army Lt. Col. Robert Giordano, an Iraq War division veteran and memorials officer of the foundation.

The contingent also included Lockered “Bud” Gahs, a 100-year-old WWII division veteran from Perry Hall, Maryland.

The Dachau Concentration Camp was established by Nazi Germany in 1933. Situated on the outskirts of the town of Dachau, about 10 miles northwest of Munich, the camp was designed to hold about 5,000 political prisoners. Nearly 33,000 were present at the camp’s liberation.

“This is likely one of the final opportunities to meet with survivors and liberators,” James said. “I am really looking forward to speaking with and recognizing these heroes their service and sacrifice.”

The multiday ceremony, hosted by KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau, the camp memorial site and museum, included the dedication of a memorial plaque for the 45th Division, ensuring all three divisions have memorials at the Jourhaus gate.

The 42nd Division plaque was installed in 1992.

Other commemorative events included ceremonies at the Dachau subcamps on May 1 and 2, guided tours for relatives of former Dachau prisoners and liberators on May 3, including commemorating the victims of the Dachau Death March, and the central commemorative ceremony on May 4.

“When we opened the gates to Dachau, it was only then have we truly understood what we had been fighting for,” Gahs said at the ceremony.

Most division Soldiers knew Dachau as a political camp, and had no comprehension of the reach of the Holocaust throughout Europe.

"Up until April 29, 1945, the majority of us in my unit were not aware of the Nazi efforts to exterminate the Jews - certainly not its scope, nor its effect on the world; and certainly none of us were aware of the Dachau Concentration Camp,” said Lt. Jack Westbrook, a member of the 222nd Infantry Regiment in the 2015 Sam Dann collection of memories in “Dachau 29 April 1945: The Rainbow Liberation Memoirs.”

A special “Never Again” commemoration was supported by the International Dachau Committee, the original organization of former prisoners. The committee was formed even before liberation in 1945 and includes former prisoners from 37 countries. The group helps oversee the maintenance, upkeep and memorials of the camp grounds and buildings.

What the Rainbow Division Soldiers discovered at Dachau left an impression of a lifetime, wrote division assistant chaplain (Maj.) Eli Bohnen, the division’s Jewish chaplain.

“Nothing you can put in words would adequately describe what I saw there,” Bohnen said in a letter to home on May 1, 1945.

“The human mind refuses to believe what the eyes see. All the stories of Nazi horrors are underestimated rather than exaggerated.”

One survivor’s family only learned of the identity of their loved one’s liberators in recent years.

Aron Krochmalnik's father, Josef Krochmalnik, was a Jewish survivor of the Lodz Ghetto and several concentration camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, Gross-Rosen, Flossenbürg, and Dachau.

It was during Aron’s research of his father’s Holocaust experience that he discovered some 75 years later that the liberators of April 30, 1945, were Soldiers of the Rainbow Division.

Josef Krochmalnik had fled from a death march where SS troops forced concentration camp prisoners from arriving allied forces. Recaptured, Josef and others were at Stadelheim Prison in Munich, when the 42nd Division arrived.

“He was on his way to be killed with his comrades in a bus when these brave American Soldiers stopped the bus and liberated my father, he said in correspondence with the Rainbow Division Memorial Foundation.

The 42nd Division captured Munich on April 30, the day that Hitler took his life in his bunker in Berlin. Just over a week later, on May 8, the war ended in Europe and the Rainbow Division finished duties as an occupation force in Austria.

“In Munich, they liberated my father after five years of Ghetto Lodz, Auschwitz and four other concentration camps,” Krochmalnik said. “His weight? 35 kilos (77 pounds).”

“My father didn’t know who liberated him,” Krochmalnik explained. “I discovered the Rainbow and the fundamental meaning for me as a survivor’s kid. Without them, I would not exist.”

The 80th anniversary ceremonies come when the New York Army National Guard Soldiers of the 42nd Division Headquarters prepare for mobilization and overseas deployment later this spring. It will mark the third time the division headquarters has served overseas since 9/11.

“This commemoration highlights the incredible history of our Rainbow Division – from the trenches of World War I, to defeating the last German offensive of World War II and liberating Dachau, to the Global War on Terror and beyond,” James said.

“It’s an incredible honor to lead such a storied division into its next major chapter as we prepare to deploy again later this year.”