Hope and honor

"Major General Sidney Shachnow is more than a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran with two silver and three bronze stares with V for valor. He survived a crucible far crueler than the jungles of Vietnam: Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, spending three years in the notorious Kovno concentration camp as a child. At age ten, with nothing but rags on his back, he was finally able to flee that hellhole. Most of those he left behind died." "After returning to his home in Lithuania, now occupied by the Soviets, and finding it unbearable, Shachnow and his family decided to head west, often on foot, across Europe to the U.S. zone in Germany, where they found refuge. To earn a living in the grim aftermath of war, he smuggled black market contraband for American GIs. His next journey was to America, where he worked his way throught school and enlisted in the U.S. Army, volunteering for U.S. Special Forces, where he served for 32 years. His primary goal was to save others from the indignities he had endured and the deadly fate he so narrowly escaped."—BOOK JACKET.