Train yard in Presov, Slovakia with my grandfather, father, uncles, aunts, and a bunch of cousins.
This is the spot where, in 1944, the Auchwitz-bound train carrying my then 11-year old grandfather, his mother, and sisters, along with my then 3-year old grandmother and
her mother and sisters, stopped, waited a day and a half, and then turned back instead of continuing to certain death.
That train instead eneded up taking them to a labor camp in Austria, which was liquidated a few moths later followed by a death march to Mauthausen. My grandfather and his family escaped the march and hid in a bunker in the woods outside Vienna for a few weeks.
Tomorrow marks the 80th anniversary of their liberation when my great-grandmother, out of the bunker foraging for food, came across a line of Russian tanks and realized they were free.
Absolutely unreal experience watching my grandfather say ברוך אתה ה' אלקינו מלך העולם שעשה לי נס במקום הזה and following up with a שעשה נס לאבותינו of my own.
