By LONA O'CONNOR
The Associated Press
DELRAY BEACH, Fla. — Daniel Fischer was a 15-year-old, 56-pound, typhus-ridden prisoner in the Dachau concentration camp when he first saw the soldiers of the U.S. 42nd Infantry "Rainbow" Division.
The Rainbow Division's historic moment was knocking down the gates of Dachau on April 29, 1945, liberating the 32,000 surviving prisoners in the Nazi death camp.
This is a story of war and devotion, and an unbreakable bond between two men who almost never met.
One man is Fischer the survivor, who lives in Boca Raton.
The other is Morris Eisenstein of Delray Beach — the liberator.
"He was there when the chips were down for me," Fischer said of Eisenstein, embracing the older man.
Under hail of enemy fire
Eisenstein, a sergeant, and his comrades in the Rainbow Division had to fight for their lives, all the way from Strasbourg to Munich.
The citation for one of his two Silver Stars says it all: "... with utter disregard for the hail of enemy machine gun fire ..."
When the Germans had attacked Eisenstein's infantry group, he crawled out of the hole where he lay and fired a machine gun to cover the other soldiers, who were then able to outflank and capture 150 German soldiers.
About his World War II exploits, Eisenstein is simultaneously self-effacing and still clearly relishing the moment as if it were yesterday:
"The only reason I didn't get killed is that the Krauts were bad shots," he said. "I was so scared, but I said, 'Those ... Krauts are not gonna get this Jew boy.'"
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