Abraham Klausner Abraham Judah Klausner ( April 27 , 1915 – June 28 , 2007 ) was a Reform rabbi and United States Army captain and chaplain who became a “ father figure ” for the more than 30 , 000 emaciated survivors found at Dachau Concentration Camp , northwest of Munich , shortly after it was liberated on April 29 , 1945 . He also cared for thousands more left homeless in camps as the victorious Allied Forces determined where they should go . Early life and career . Abraham Judah Klausner was born in Memphis , Tennessee on April 27 , 1915 , one of five children of Joseph Klausner , a Hungarian immigrant who owned a dry goods store , and Tillie Binstalk Klausner , an Austrian immigrant . He was raised in Denver , Colorado and graduated from the University of Denver in 1938 and was ordained at Hebrew Union College in 1941 . Holocaust . Following ordination , Klausner joined the army and served as a chaplain at the Lawson General Hospital in Atlanta , Georgia . Klausner eventually shipped out to Germany and was assigned to join the 116th Evacuation Hospital , which had just entered Dachau . The 116th Evacuation Hospital arrived at Dachau , which was 10 miles northwest of Munich , in May 1945 , three weeks after the camp had been liberated on April 29 , 1945 . While Rabbi Eli Bohnen was the first Jewish chaplain in the United States Army to arrive at the Dachau concentration camp after its liberation , Bohnen ’ s unit remained only a short time . Rabbi Klausner arrived soon after . During his first days at Dachau , survivors asked him over and over if he knew their family members and if he could provide aid in finding them . Experiences such as these convinced Klausner of the importance of working to reunite families that had been separated by the war . In the several weeks that the 116th Evacuation Hospital was stationed at Dachau , Rabbi Klausner worked to find the 32 , 000 survivors bedding and food , including kosher provisions . He also worked to put together lists of survivors at Dachau and made sure that these lists , which he called shearit ha ’ pleita or surviving remnant , were posted at other camps . Klausner eventually published six volumes of the shearit ha ’ pleita lists and distributed them worldwide . He traveled throughout Bavaria looking for survivors , helping to reunite families and setting up a center for survivors at the Deutsches Museum in Munich . Those who did not find the names of relatives on the shearit ha ’ pleita lists wrote notes and tacked them to the walls at the center , in the hopes that relatives might visit and find them . When the 116th Evacuation Hospital was ordered to move on to an Army rest camp , Klausner initially went with them but surreptitiously returned to Dachau against Army orders and told the commander of the 127th Evacuation Hospital unit at Dachau that he had been reassigned . Eventually the 127th would also depart Dachau , on a day that Klausner was traveling around Bavaria , allowing Klausner to remain behind once again . The conditions in Dachau , as at all the former concentration camps and the Displaced Persons ( DP ) camps , were often quite bad with overcrowding and inadequate food , shelter , clothing , and medical supplies . On July 1 , 1945 at the Feldafing Displaced Persons camp near Dachau , Klausner and Zalman Grinberg , a survivor of Dachau , established the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews in the U . S . Zone of Germany as the official representative body of the Jewish DPs . The purpose of the Central Committee was to champion the interests of the Jewish DPs and to draw attention to their plight . Klausner was horrified by the fact that the survivors were still living in the camps in much the same conditions as they had under the Nazis . He wrote letters of protest including detailed reports about these conditions and sent them up the army chain of command . Klausner also wrote to various Jewish organizations in the United States , which he felt were not doing all that they could to help the survivors . Klausner did whatever he felt was necessary to get the Jewish DPs what they needed including setting up Jewish hospitals and procuring clothes , food and medical supplies and , while he did a great deal of good , his actions often put him at odds with the army , the Red Cross , the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration , and various Jewish organizations . His relations with the Joint Distribution Committee were particularly fraught , with the JDC successfully removing him from Germany , although he soon returned , this time to Kassel , Germany . When Earl Harrison , dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and head of the International Refugee Organization , came to Germany , Klausner was able to meet him in Germany and to convince Harrison to go with him to tour over thirty Displaced Persons camps to investigate the conditions . Harrison ’ s report to President Truman maintained that the living conditions of the DPs under the supervision of the United States ’ Army were not much better than they had been under the Nazis . Harrison also recommended that the Jewish survivors should be sent to Palestine rather than sending them back to their countries of origin , an idea Klausner actively supported . On orders from General Eisenhower and with Harrison as the American representative to the Intergovernmental Commission on Refugees , conditions soon improved in the camps . Klausner noted throughout his life that when he personally met with Harrison and toured him through the DP camps , Harrison made a point of saying that he had not been sent by President Truman . This is an important point for historians who often attribute Harrison ' s trip to Truman . Klausner ' s work on behalf of Holocaust survivors has been included in all major historical records of the period . His own memoir includes experiences unique to his time in Germany . Later career . After the establishment of the State of Israel , Klausner left the military and began recruiting pilots and nurses for the Israeli Defense Forces in the United States . He became Provost of the Hebrew Union College in 1949 and was the Senior Rabbi at Temple Israel in Boston from 1949 - 1953 . During this time , Klausner also earned a Doctorate in Divinity at Harvard University . He was the rabbi at Temple Emanu - El in Yonkers from 1954 until his retirement in 1989 when he moved to Santa Fe , New Mexico . Rabbi Klausner wrote several books , including Weddings : A Complete Guide to All Religious and Interfaith Marriage Services , which provides texts of Protestant , Roman Catholic , Jewish , Russian Orthodox and Muslim wedding services , and suggestions for combining texts of different faiths , A Child ’ s Prayer Book and his memoir , A Letter to My Children : From the Edge of the Holocaust . He was also featured in the 1997 Academy Award - winning documentary about Holocaust survivors in the immediate aftermath of the liberation of the concentration camps , The Long Way Home . In 1966 , Klausner married Judith Steinberg and adopted two children from Steinberg ' s previous marriage ( Robin and Michael ) . He and Steinberg also two children of their own , sons Jeremy and Amos . Abraham Klausner died June 28 , 2007 of complications from Parkinson ’ s disease at the age of 92 . Legacy . Apart from his book about the Holocaust , Klausner wrote four books including " Weddings : A Complete Guide to all Religious and Interfaith Marriage Services " published in 1986 .