Sidney Shachnow ((1934-11-23)November 23, 1934 – (2018-09-27)September 27, 2018) was a Jewish American Holocaust survivor who attained the rank of major general in United States Army.

His 2,000-mile, six-month journey across Europe, mostly on foot, took him across Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, and finally to American-occupied Nuremberg, Germany, where he hoped to obtain a visa to the United States.

To make a living in war-torn Nuremberg, Shachnow resorted to pirating black market contraband such as nylon stockings and chocolate.

After joining Special Forces, Shachnow was promoted to captain and assigned as commander of Detachment A-121, his group was deployed to Vietnam's An Long Camp near the Cambodian border along the Mekong River.

The army assigned Shachnow to the 101st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles, where he earned his second Silver Star for gallantry in action after escaping death several times.

In the 1970s he served as commander of Det-A, Berlin Brigade, a clandestine unit of Cold War Special Forces soldiers on high alert 24-hours a day.

Their missions were classified; they dressed in civilian clothing made in East and West Germany and carried appropriate non-American documentation and identification.

He traveled the world, from Vietnam to the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Korea and back to Germany for the fall of the Berlin Wall.

[4] In 2004, Shachnow authored Hope and Honor, an autobiographical account of his childhood experience in the Nazi Kovno concentration camp of Lithuania, his immigration and assimilation to the United States and his 40-year career in the U.S. Army, Special Forces.