There are patriots — and then there are patriots that put their money (or their entire fortune) where their mouth is.

Peter and Joan Petrasek, a Seattle couple who found refuge in America after surviving the Holocaust, left their estate all to the United States government — a value of about $850,000, according to the Seattle Times.

To be exact the total was $847,215.57, and it came in the form of a cashier’s check.

“He [Peter] wanted to make a statement about how much it meant to him to be an American citizen,” said Peter Winn, the assistant U.S. attorney in Seattle who worked on the estate, to the Times.

“As a refugee from World War II, he was very grateful to his adopted country,” said Winn. “He grew up with a lot of people in Eastern Europe who would have been happy to change places with him.”

More from the New York Daily News:

Peter, originally of the Czech Republic, died at age 85 from heart failure on May 5, 2012. Joan died 13 years earlier from breast cancer at age 79.

They had no next of kin, and it took three years to get their estate settled.

Peter was 12 years old when the Nazis invaded his hometown of Prague, neighbor Ron Wright said. He was sent to a Nazi work for children for work associated with the German Air Force. There, he learned to fly.

He managed to escape the Holocaust when his plane was shot down, allowing him to hike into Switzerland, Wright said. It’s unclear what his mission was.

Peter’s sister was killed in an Allied bombing of Dresden, where she was sent to work at a factory. His mother was left behind in Prague. His father had been sent to a concentration camp. All of their belongings were confiscated by the Nazis.

In 1949, Peter was certified as a refugee at a U.S. airfield in Germany. His home country was already in the hands of communist leaders.

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