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Convoy Celebrates Holocaust Survivor 75 Years After Liberation

Williamsburg - As a teenager, Leibish Rubinstein survived months of torturous life in several concentration camps and death marches. On May 4, 1945, he was liberated when U.S. troops burst through the barbed wires.

On May 4, 2020, exactly 75 years later, Mr. Rubinstein was greeted by a veritable army of a different kind. A convoy of Hatzolah, NYPD, FDNY and Shomrim vehicles, their sirens blaring, passed slowly past his house in Williamsburg.

A visibly emotional Mr. Rubinstein, with a broad smile on his face, stood on the porch of his house on Hewes Street in keeping with distancing guidelines and waved the entire time.

Leibish Rubinstein was born in the Hungarian town of Makava. His parents and siblings were killed in Auschwitz and he was taken to the Mauthausen concentration camp, one of the deadliest of the Holocaust. He later was transferred in the infamous death marches to the Gunskirchen concentration camp.

Mr. Rubinstein, along with his fellow inmates, were liberated by the American army’s 71st Infantry Division. The sole survivor of his family, he moved to the United States after the war and rebuilt a beautiful family on these shores.


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