Leon Malmed with the trophy he won in 2023 for coming in second in the 85-plus category and first as oldest in the 20km World Masters Championship in St Johann Austria.
At the opening ceremony for the Vietnam Moving Wall on May 24, Vietnam veteran Larry K. Dunn asked if there were any World War II veterans in attendance and one hand went up.
Even the youngest soldiers landing at Normandy on June 6, 1944, are now well into their 90s, as observations of the 80th anniversary of the invasion kicked off with paratroopers re-enacting a drop on Sunday, according to the Associated Press.
Lake Tahoe champion bicyclist Leon Malmed and wife Patricia were among several people flown to Paris on a commemorative American Airlines flight in order to attend them 80th anniversary celebration, according to the Tahoe Daily Tribune.
Patricia Malmed posted to social media about the 86-year-old being interviewed by PBS and laying the wreath at the Pointe du Hoc Ranger Monument overlooking Omaha Beach.
Malmed was 6 years old when D-Day occurred, but as a Jewish child hiding from the Nazis in France, the day was critical to him, too.
According to his book “We Survived … At Last I Speak,” Malmed’s parents, Srul, 34, and Chana Malmed, 29, were deported to the infamous concentration camp at Auschwitz, Poland, in 1942 because they were Jews, neither survived the war.
Leon and his sister, Rachel, were hidden by their neighbors, Henri and Suzanne Ribouleau. For three years, Leon and Rachel were shuttled from cellars to chicken coops to forest camps to evade the Nazis.
Malmed will have an opportunity to say thank-you in person thanks to the trip, which will culminate with a June 6 ceremony at the Normandy American Cemetery, where more than 9,000 U.S. service members have been laid to rest, according to the airline.
Another child during the war, 89-year-old Ruth Goshorn said she was a little girl during the Blitz. Born in 1934, she remembers Air Raid Marshals enforcing blackouts.
“Put that light out,” she said was the refrain.
“As a little girl, I was told that if the sirens go off knock on the nearest door,” she said. “The lady let us in, but I was so afraid I wet my pants. ‘Let me get you a pair of knickers from my daughter,’ she said.”
Goshorn said that during the war her school at Wigston Magna was attended by several evacuees.
“I appreciate the sacrifices made by all the boys,” she said.
She married an American stationed at Molesworth Air Force Base and came to the United States in 1955.
