Yesterday, twelve-year-old Dani Milner visited Yad Vashem with her class from the Levine Academy in Dallas, Texas, where they saw the tree Dani's grandmother planted in 1989 in honor of her rescuers. Irena Steinfeld
Yesterday, twelve-year-old Dani Milner visited Yad Vashem with her class from the Levine Academy in Dallas, Texas, where they saw the tree Dani's grandmother planted in 1989 in honor of her rescuers. Irena Steinfeldt, Director of the Department of the Righteous Among the Nations showed Rigler and her classmates the tree planted in honor of Righteous among the Nations Stan Wells, George Hammond, Tommy Noble, Alan Edwards, Roger Letchford, Bill Keeble, Bert Hambling, Bill Scruton, Jack Buckley and Will Fisher.
Towards the end of the war, as the Soviet army was nearing the Stutthof concentration camp, its prisoners were taken on the long death march. Sarah Matuson and her mother Gita were marching with the rest of the inmates, starved and desperate. Gita was determined to help her daughter survive, and eventually forced her out of the ranks. Sarah ran away to find refuge in a barn nearby, where she collapsed.
It was there that she was found by British POW Stan Wells. He and nine other British soldiers had been captured in 1940 in France and were transferred to the east. They were interned in a camp close to the Baltic coast, and were then forced to work on German farms in the area. Upon finding Sarah in the barn, starved and totally exhausted, Wells first gave her some food and then brought her to the other prisoners wrapped in an old army coat. Shocked by her poor physical condition, they decided to help her. They smuggled Sarah into their prisoner of war camp – Stalag 20B in Gross-Golmkau, whe