'Boxcars full of dead bodies:' American soldier, Holocaust survivor share story of liberation

At 15 years old, Ernie Gross, a Romanian Jew, and his family were forced from their home in Hungary.

“We had to follow orders,” Gross said.

They were eventually taken to Auschwitz concentration camp, where Jews were sent to work or to their death.

Gross said he and his two older brothers were moved to labor camps, but his parents and younger brother and sister were not.

“They are going to tell them to get undressed, they are going to take a shower. Instead of a shower, gas came. They died immediately and they are going in the next building to the crematorium,” Gross said.

After nearly a year of hard labor, Gross was moved to Dachau, another concentration camp, where he knew he would soon be killed. Weak, hungry and unable to walk, he said he was actually happy it would soon all be over, but that was not the end.

“All of a sudden, something unusual happens. I never believed it. The guard near me threw down his weapon and he ran away. I don’t know what it means. I turned around and there was an American Jeep, four soldiers,” Gross recalled.

One of those American soldiers was Don Greenbaum. He said the Americans first thought they were approaching a German supply depot, but there was a smell Greenbaum said he will never forget.

“As we got closer, we came across about 16 boxcars full of dead bodies. They were thrown in like pieces of wood. It was the odor from their bodies that was the tremendous thing that we were inhaling,” Greenbaum said.

Word spread through the concentration camp that the prisoners were being liberated, but it was clear there was already so much devastation.

“Thousands and thousands of men walking around half dead, not knowing what it was,” Greenbaum recalled of the scene he witnessed upon arrival.

For the past ten years, the Holocaust survivor and American liberator have traveled, sharing their story. They say there is a message they want people to take away from it.

“You have to be nice to each other, everybody counts. We all come from the same source, so we have to try to get along and make a better world,” Gross said.

Greenbaum, now 93, was wounded in World War II and awarded a Purple Heart. Gross, 88, now lives in the United States.

After the war, both eventually became business owners with their families.