A portrait of defiance, Yaakov Michles posed for this photo in his prisoner uniform after being liberated from Dachau.
A portrait of defiance, Yaakov Michles posed for this photo in his prisoner uniform after being liberated from Dachau. The Nazis had killed much of his family in the Holocaust.
Dachau, created 91 years ago in March 1933, was the first regular concentration camp established by the Nazi government. Yaakov was one of the more than 200,000 people who were imprisoned there from 1933 to 1945.
He was sent to Dachau in July 1944 from German-occupied Kovno, where he had been imprisoned in the ghetto along with extended family. His wife, Rosa, disappeared in March 1944. When the remaining Jewish women and children from Kovno (Kaunas, Lithuania) were deported to the Stutthof concentration camp, Yaakov asked Genia Riebman, a Jewish woman in the ghetto, to take care of his daughter, Chasia.
After liberation, Genia found Yaakov and reunited him with his daughter. Yaakov and Genia later married.
Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Moshe Michles

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