APRIL 28, 2025 – The commander of the New York Army National Guard’s Troy-based 42nd Infantry Division will attend the April 29 event commemorating the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp.
The 42nd is one of three U.S. Army divisions credited with liberating the camp, established near Munich by Adolph Hitler in 1933.
Maj. Gen. Jack James, the division commander, and Command Sgt. Maj. Arnold Reyes, the division command sergeant major, will represent the division.
The division will be recognized with an award named after a French resistance fighter who was imprisoned at Dachau and liberated by American Soldiers.
“It’s an incredible honor to represent the Rainbow Division and accept the Andre Delpeche Award on behalf of our division’s veterans – the liberators of Dachau,” James said.
“This commemoration highlights the incredible history of our Rainbow Division – from the trenches of World War I, to defeating the last German offensive of World War II; to liberating Dachau; to the Global War on Terror and beyond,” he said.
“It’s an incredible honor to lead such a storied division into its next major chapter as we prepare to deploy again later this year,” James added.
The 42nd Infantry Division has been nicknamed “the Rainbow Division” since World War I.
The 42nd Infantry Division, as well as the 45th Infantry Division and the 20th Armored Division, are credited with liberating more than 30,000 survivors of the camp.
The Rainbow Division Veterans Foundation, a group that includes surviving veterans, their descendants and current division members and veterans, is coordinating a trip to participate in the memorial events.
Retired Lt. Col. Robert Giordano, a capital region resident who is an Iraq War veteran of the 42nd Division and memorials officer for the Rainbow Division Veterans Foundation, is coordinating the event with the Army National Guard leadership in Troy.
“This is the first time we’ve ever had all three divisions, the 42nd, 45th and 20th, all involved in the planning for the Dachau liberation ceremonies,” Giordano said.
The 45th Infantry Division reorganized into a brigade of the Oklahoma Army National Guard in 1968.
Commemorative events for survivors of the camp and its liberators, including their descendants, are scheduled from April 29, marking the camp’s 80th anniversary of its liberation, through Sunday, May 4.
“This is likely one of the final opportunities to meet with survivors and liberators,” James said. “I am really looking forward to speaking with and recognizing these heroes, their service and sacrifice.”
Located on the outskirts of the town of Dachau, about 10 miles northwest of Munich, the camp was designed to hold about 5,000 political prisoners. Nearly 33,000 were present at the camp’s liberation in 1945.
The multiday ceremony will be hosted by KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau, the camp memorial site and museum.
The ceremonies will include the dedication of memorial plaques for the 45th Division on April 29. Memorial plaques for the 42nd Division and the 20th Armored Division already exist at the camp.
Dachau included subcamps along with the main camp, and there will be events there on May 1 and May 2. There also will be guided tours for relatives of former Dachau prisoners and liberators on May 3, including commemorating the victims of the Dachau Death March, and the central commemorative ceremony on May 4.
During World War II, the division Soldiers knew Dachau as a political camp and had no comprehension of the reach of the Holocaust throughout Europe.
“Up until April 29, 1945, the majority of us in my unit were not aware of the Nazi efforts to exterminate the Jews – certainly not its scope, nor its effect on the world; and certainly, none of us were aware of the Dachau Concentration Camp,” wrote Lt. Jack Westbrook, a member of the 222nd Infantry Regiment.
His remembrances were collected in the 2015 Sam Dann collection of memories in “Dachau 29 April 1945: The Rainbow Liberation Memoirs.”
A special “Never Again” commemoration is scheduled for May 3, supported by the International Dachau Committee, which is the original organization of former prisoners.
The committee was formed even before liberation in 1945 and includes former prisoners from 37 countries. The group helps oversee the maintenance, upkeep and memorials of the campgrounds and buildings.
What the Rainbow Division Soldiers discovered at Dachau left an impression of a lifetime, wrote Division Assistant Chaplain (Maj.) Eli Bohnen, the division’s Jewish chaplain.
“Nothing you can put in words would adequately describe what I saw there,” Bohnen said in a letter to home on May 1, 1945.
“The human mind refuses to believe what the eyes see. All the stories of Nazi horrors are underestimated rather than exaggerated,” Bohnen remembered.
By Richard Goldenberg, New York National Guard