Karl Pauzar

(Liberator)

Born in 1923 in Dayton, Karl was an All-City football player at Chaminade High School before he was drafted into the Army in 1943. He was sent to Europe in the fall of 1944 and served as a combat infantryman in the 14th Armored Division. He saw action in Alsace, the Ardennes and in Bavaria, where his division accidentally stumbled upon and liberated the small concentration camp at Ampfing, near Munich. He still vividly remembers the starved, emotionless prisoners they found there. After the war he continued in the Army Reserve, and was called to active duty during the Berlin Wall crisis in 1961. He eventually retired as a lieutenant-colonel. He has been married more than fifty years and has no children. Karl is also still active in the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Ampfing, a small satellite camp of Dachau, was very primitive – the inmates lived in covered ditches and worked as slave laborers.