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Holocaust Survivors Meet Their Liberators In Farmingdale

FARMINGDALE, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) - The liberation of Nazi death camps was commemorated on Long Island on Monday.

WCBS 880 Long Island Bureau Chief Mike Xirinachs On The Story

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Thea Rumstein and her husband Jack are Holocaust survivors who have many many reasons to never forget.

Today, they were among those who commemorated their liberation by meeting some of their liberators at Republic Airport. It was an emotional and powerful anniversary for them.

"I was liberated on May 5th, 1945, but it's not easy. It's not easy to talk about it," said Thea, who was in a death camp in Austria when she was 15-years-old. "All of a sudden, somebody came in... and I saw a tank going by... It meant life."

"Jack wrote a postcard to Vienna, to his mother, who didn't survive. My father didn't survive. My grandparents didn't survive. I mean most of the people got killed who were older," Thea told WCBS 880 Long Island Bureau Chief Mike Xirinachs.

Though she lost her parents and grandparents in the Holocaust, she refuses to live with anger.

"And you cannot hate in the fourth generation or the third generation. If you have that in your heart, you cannot go on living," she said.

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