The following is a true story. It's an American story. Maybe the most American story.

Stick around to the end.

In the spring of 1945, in a Nazi slave labor camp 50 miles from Dachau, convict No. B-1713 heard powerful explosions pierce the night air.

The 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 explosions caught most of them, but six, including convict No. B-1713, made made it into the forest alive.

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

He looked for the swastika on its side. Instead, he saw a five-pointed white 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, son of a slave.

B-1713, who had lost his family and survived four years in the camps, fell to his knees before Ellington and repeated the few English words he knew: God Bless America! God Bless America!

Ellington lifted him into the hatch--and into freedom.

Convict No. B-173 was named Samuel Pisar. He became an American citizen, a successful lawyer.

His stepson, Tony Blinken ( @ABlinken), will become America's next Secretary of State.

God Bless America! God Bless America!