Sidney Shachnow Sidney Shachnow is a Holocaust survivor who attained the rank of Major General in United States Army . He retired in 1994 , after 40 years of active service . Biography . Surviving the concentration camp . Sid Shachnow was born in Kaunas , Lithuania in 1934 . At the age of seven , Shachnow was imprisoned in the brutal Kovno concentration camp during World War II because his family was Jewish . For three years he endured countless brutalities in the camp and was forced to watch helplessly as almost every single one of his extended family were slaughtered . 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 smuggling out of the camp , Shachnow lived in hiding for months , mostly in austere seclusion , where he nearly expired from starvation and malnutrition . Shachnow fled west after the Soviets liberated Kovno from the Nazis and began to implement Communism . His grueling 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 pantyhose and chocolate . A new life in the new world . In 1950 , Shachnow finally obtained a visa and immigrated to Salem , Massachusetts where he attended school for the first time in his life . After working his way through high school he enlisted in the U . S . Army . As a Sergeant First Class he entered Officer Candidate School and received his commission in the U . S . Infantry . Special Forces . 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 , at Vietnam ' s An Long Camp near the Cambodian border along the Mekong River . After Vietnam . In the 1970s he served as Commander of Det - A , Berlin Brigade , a clandestine unit of cold war Green Beret commandos on high alert 24 - hours a day . This covert unit was made up of selectively trained and language qualified members of Special Forces , as well as many Eastern European immigrants who brought much needed culture , geographical and language skills to the assignment . Their missions were classified ; they dressed in civilian clothing made in East and West Germany , and carried appropriate non - American documentation and identification later , many of its members went on to help form Delta Force ( Det A did not itself become Delta Force ) . Shachnow ' s status grew as Special Forces grew , rising to the rank of Major General , receiving both a masters and an honorary doctoral degree along the way . He traveled the world , from Vietnam to the Middle East , Africa , Europe , Korea and back to Germany for the fall of the Berlin Wall . Retirement . Maj . Gen . Shachnow is the author of http : / / www . amazon . com / Hope - Honor - Sidney - Shachnow / dp / 0765312840 / ref = sr _ 1 _ 1 ? ie = UTF8 & qid = 1366199497 & sr = 8 - 1 & keywords = Sidney + Shachnow # _ , an autobiographical account of his childhood experience in the Nazi Kovno concentration camp of Lithuania , his immigration and assimilation to the United States and his 40 year career in the U . S . Army , Special Forces . Service history . Assignments and Commands . Maj . Gen . Shachnow ' s past assignments have been as commander or staff officer with Infantry , Mechanized Infantry , Airmobile , Airborne and Special Forces units . Gen . Shachnow ' s most recent assignments include : Awards and honors . Maj . Gen . Shachnow is the recipient of :