Holocaust survivor, 81, thanks soldier, 86

Sharing the deepest of bonds, the liberated man wrapped his arm around the soldier who helped save him almost seven decades ago.

Maurice Vegh, 81, and Harold Rosen, 86, embraced Friday in Vegh's Long Beach home -- an emotional meeting that marked the United Nations' International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The men are linked by a bittersweet memory.

In the final months of World War II, Rosen's 87th Infantry Division liberated the Nazi concentration camp where Vegh emerged, in 1945, as his immediate family's sole Holocaust survivor.

For Vegh, 15 when Buchenwald was liberated, that day will never lose its power.

"You can never imagine what it felt like, seeing the American soldiers," he said, his eyes watering. "They looked like angels -- angels from heaven. One minute you face death and the next minute you're liberated."

Rosen, an Army private and a Jew, did his best to comfort the emaciated prisoners by speaking to them in Yiddish.

"Mr. Rosen, I thank you for liberating Buchenwald and saving my life," Vegh said Friday.

"I was on the verge of being executed . . . I have generations that will carry on my name, and I thank God for that," said Vegh, who has three sons and seven grandchildren.

There are about 38,000 living Holocaust survivors in New York State, according to Beth Lilach of the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County.

Vegh's family, living in Czechoslovakia at the time of the war, was shattered by the Holocaust. His mother and younger sister were sent to the gas chambers. He became separated from his father and never saw him again.

After the war, Vegh immigrated to the United States, served in the Army and raised a family in New York. The former beautician now lives in a modest older home on East Olive Street in Long Beach.

Last summer, Vegh and Rosen met for the first time at a barbecue in North Woodmere hosted by a Jewish war veterans group. When Vegh mentioned that he was at Buchenwald, the liberator sitting nearby was astonished.

"I said, 'Wow, my division liberated Buchenwald,' " Rosen recalled. "Everyone went ape. Maurice was in tears."

It had been the first time since the liberation that Vegh had met any of the soldiers from the 87th Infantry.

On Friday, Rosen, a retired engineer from North Woodmere, recalled the horrible things he saw after American tanks burst through the camp's electrified fence.

The survivors, he said, asked for food, but he had none to offer.

"They were gaunt skeletons in striped uniforms . . . filthy and raggedy," he said.

Rosen and Vegh have vowed to kindle a friendship that took nearly seven decades to flicker.

"We will continue to be in touch with each other from now on, for the remaining years that we have left," Rosen said.

"I'm 86. Maurice is 81. So there's not much time to spend together."

Facts about Buchenwald