From the GENERATIONS OF BROOKLYN series:

A 1837/DAVID'S STORY -
From Mukachevo, Czechoslovakia to Williamsburg, Brooklyn

"My life was destroyed." After my father-in-law, David Rand was liberated from Auschwitz in 1945, the ss officers ran their Jewish prisoners through the woods, hoping to kill more of them before the American soldiers reached them to safety. It was during this run, that David's brother was shot point blank to the ground. David did not know how he could continue to run following his brother being shot, and leave him there on the ground. David fell down, hoping to be left for dead. Luckily, he was passed over. David hid in the woods for several days.

While in a d.p. camp, David met his future wife, Eva. They came to New York in 1947, and raised a family of five children. David ran a shoe store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. My husband Mark Rand, also a father of five children, ran the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington DC in October of 1994. When he came home, he cried, thinking of his father running through the woods in Germany with his Nazi captors, and realized he needed to run the marathon for joy in his father's honor.