The story of how Sid Shafner, 94, came to spearhead a mission that saved thousands of lives in liberating about 30,000 prisoners at the Dachau Concentration Camp in southern Germany started with one serendipitous encounter with a man named Marcel Levy — now 90 — in 1945, who was behind held by the Nazis at the camp.

Levy flagged down Shafner and his fellow troops and, in Yiddish, that they needed their help.

Shafner, now a Colorado resident, took a recent trip to Israel and Poland where he was honored in a Holocaust remembrance for his role in the liberation more than 70 years ago. More importantly, however, he got to reunited with an old friend for the first time in years.

That man was Marcel Levy.

See the incredible embrace in the video below where Shafner is wearing a blue baseball cap.

It doesn’t get any more touching than this …

 

“Everything I have today, all of my children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, is due to you, Sid,” Levy told his buddy, according to the original ABC News story.