The author, filmmaker and TV journalist Georg Stefan Troller still goes on book tours, where he read the story of his life with his subtle self-irony and Viennese humor. The above photo shows him at the Cologne Literaturhaus in February 2020. Shortly before his 100th birthday, he had a reading event in Vienna.

For the Jewish young man born in Vienna on December 10, 1921, the US was the promised land to flee the Nazis. He was lucky to get a visa in Marseille in 1941, which saved him from deportation. But he was shocked when the immigration authorities told him to write "Hebrew" in the category "race" on his entrance form upon his arrival in New York.

Troller studied at the University of California and in the early 1950s at the Sorbonne in Paris, thanks to a Fulbright scholarship. The young Austrian enjoyed the French way of life, and stayed to work first as a radio journalist and later a TV reporter. The photo shows Troller in 1960.

He loved to stroll along the streets of the French capital, peering into backyards, sitting in cafes for hours and enjoying himself in the bars and restaurants of the Parisian entertainment districts. At the time, he took photographs with a Leica camera he had used when he was a GI in postwar Germany. This shot is from 1963.

From 1962-1971, Troller's "Paris Journal" wrote German TV history. In his reports, Troller explored everyday life in the French capital, introducing the Germans to aspects of Paris they were probably didn't know, since they needed a visa to travel there at the time. He won a Grimme Prize, Germany's top TV award, in 1973 (photo above with German caricaturist and filmmaker Loriot, left).

Troller interviewed celebrities, from Picasso to Woody Allen, for television, and also wrote books and literary essays. He took an active stance against Marine Le Pen and the racist policies of the Front National. He, an emigrated Jew, owes that much to himself, he said at the 2009 Leipzig Book Fair.

At the age of 100, Georg Stefan Troller is truly a legend: He escaped the Nazis, emigrated to the US, and returned to Europe where he made a career reporting for German television, his specialty being celebrity interviews. In Berlin, he was honored with a star on the Boulevard of Stars, his name among the stars dedicated to popular German actors, musicians and directors.

On Sunday, April 29, 1945 Colonel Sparks gave the marching orders to the 3rd battalion of his infantry regiment. The US troops came from the West, advancing towards Munich. They didn't know exactly where Dachau, the concentration camp the Nazis set up in 1933, was located. When they discovered it, the troops encountered gruesome sights.

Just a few days prior, SS guards had hurriedly fled the camp. In the meantime, a railway train carrying concentration camp prisoners from the East had arrived. Most of its passengers had died of thirst or suffocated in the locked cars, while others were shot and killed in cold blood by the SS men. When they arrived, US soldiers found 2,300 human corpses in the cars.

After arriving, the US soldiers took over command of the camp with little gunfire. Yet, tragic incidents still occurred during the liberation of the prisoners. Some were accidentally electrocuted when they ran to the fences in joy to greet the US soldiers. Approximately 32,000 prisoners were found alive, most requiring medical care.

The hygienic conditions in Dachau were catastrophic. Many prisoners were infected with typhoid and had scabies. Their striped concentration camp clothing, which would later become a symbol for the misery in Nazi camps, often hung on them in rags. Many prisoners did not have shoes. The prisoner pictured, Jean Voste from Belgian Congo, is shown wearing his uniform during liberation.

On April 14, 1945, Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler (pictured here during an inspection during the camp's construction) ordered the immediate "complete evacuation" of the concentration camp. The SS camp administration forced about 7,000 inmates to embark on a so-called death march towards the south. Most did not survive.

The gate of the main entrance to the Dachau concentration camp bore the inscription "Arbeit macht frei," or "work sets you free." This cynical Nazi slogan was later used in almost all National Socialist concentration camps. The motto was invented by Theodor Eicke, the first SS camp leader of Dachau. His "Dachau School" was also attended by Auschwitz commanders Rudolf Höss and Richard Baer.

When the rumor spread throughout the concentration camp that the US soldiers were right in front of the Bavarian town of Dachau, some prisoners joined together to form a resistance committee. They used the chaos in the overcrowded camp to deliberately sabotage the orders of the last remaining SS guards to join the death marches.

After the US army took over the administration of the liberated concentration camp in April 1945, army photographers staged pictures of cheering concentration camp prisoners and used them as a propaganda tool to depict US success. The photos depicted seemingly healthy children and young people, who were a minority at the camp. Most of the survivors could hardly stand on their feet.

Years after the Second World War, former US soldiers who were present during the liberation of the concentration camp in 1945 met with former prisoners. Donald Greenbaum (right), who was among those who liberated Dachau at the time, met former Dachau prisoner Ernest Gross (left) at the memorial in Liberty State Park, New Jersey in 2015.