
06/08/2025
He Gave His Blanket to a Stranger – Dachau, 1945
In the bitter cold of Dachau’s final days, just before liberation, a prisoner noticed the man beside him trembling violently, barely clinging to life. Without hesitation, he removed his only blanket—his last source of warmth—and gently covered the man. When others questioned why, he simply said, “He won’t last the night. I’d rather he feel warm one more time.”
That act of quiet compassion didn’t go unnoticed. The man with the blanket passed away before sunrise. But the giver survived, haunted yet humbled. For the rest of his life, he carried the weight of that choice—both a blessing and a burden. “That blanket,” he said later, “was the first real thing I gave anyone in years. I needed to feel human again.”