A True Story

In the spring of 1945, in a Nazi slave labor camp 50 miles from Dachau, convict number B-1713 heard powerful explosions pierce the silence of the night air. The German guards said the "enemy" was advancing and herded the prisoners together to be marched back to Dachau.

They marched for most of three days. At dawn on the third day, a squadron of Allied fighter planes, coming upon what they thought was a column of Nazi troops, swooped low to strafe them.

As the SS-troops hit the dirt and began firing their machine guns, one of the prisoners shouted "run for it!" A group of them ran towards the forest for the trees. The attack caught most of them, but six, including convict number B-1713, made it into the trees alive.

He hid in the hayloft of an abandoned barn. Days passed. And then one afternoon he peaked through a crack in the wooden slats and saw a huge tank leading an armored column heading toward him.

He looked for the German insignia on its side. Instead, he saw a white five-pointed star. He ran from the barn, charging toward the tank, screaming and waving his arms.

From the tank's hatch emerged CPL Bill Ellington, of the all-Black 761st Tank Battalion, son of a man who'd been born a slave. Prisoner B-1713, who had lost his family and survived four years in the camps, fell to his knees as Ellington approached and repeated the few English words he knew: "God Bless America! God Bless America!"

Ellington lifted him into the hatch - into freedom. Convict number B-1713 was a teenager in 1945, born in Poland, and named Samuel Pisar. He eventually became an American citizen, and a successful lawyer.

Mr Pisar's stepson - Tony Blinken - is going to be America's next Secretary of State.

Indeed - God Bless America.