Riverside, California (CNN) Two dozen veterans held US flags and stood at attention as they and dozens of family and friends bid farewell to one of the nation's great war heroes. 
 
 Anthony C. Acevedo's four children and two grandchildren escorted his flag-draped coffin as he came to rest at Riverside National Cemetery before the Prisoner of War Missing in Action Memorial. 
 
 Acevedo was a World War II medic and one of 350 US soldiers held in a Nazi slave labor camp. His journal proved critical in documenting the deaths and atrocities inside the camp. 
 
 He would become the first Mexican-American ever recognized as a Holocaust survivor. He kept one brutality secret, though, until the final months of his life. 
 
 At 93, his final words were: "How life tells a story." 
 
 Anthony C. Acevedo documented the horrors inside a Nazi slave camp. 
 
 "Not only is he a great American, but he's also an icon," Col. Dan Forden, a chaplain at the VA Hospital in Loma Linda, told the crowd. "He's the real measure of a man -- this is the man we want to be." 
 
 Three rifle volleys echoed across the hushed crowd. A bugler played "Taps" as veterans gave Acevedo one final salute. Each of Acevedo's children were presented with folded flags, including the one from his coffin, before a bagpiper played "Amazing Grace." 
 
 "If I can describe my father with one word, it would be heart," Acevedo's daughter, Rebeca Acevedo-Carlin, said at an earlier memorial service. 
 
 "What an incredible, genuine man he was," said his son, Fernando Acevedo. "He would always say have faith, care for others and, more importantly, love one another. I saw my father act with love toward everyone." 
 
 His story is one of bravery, honor and heroism -- one forever etched in American history. 
 
 Among the 'undesirables' 
 
 Anthony Claude Acevedo was born July 31, 1924, in San Bernardino, California, to parents who had entered the country illegally from Mexico. The young family moved to nearby Pasadena, where Acevedo attended segregated schools with blacks, Asians and other Latinos. When his parents were deported back to Mexico in 1937, he went with them. 
 
 Acevedo said he had an undying love for his country beginning at an early age, and that he was determined to serve his homeland after Pearl Harbor. 
 
 But his love for America never wavered. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Acevedo was determined to defend his homeland. At age 17, he crossed back into the United States and enlisted in the Army. He received medical training in Illinois and eventually landed in the European theater in October 1944, where he served as a medic. 
 
 "Was captured the 6th of January 1945," he wrote in his first journal entry after being taken prisoner at the Battle of the Bulge. 
 
 The next month, 350 US soldiers -- Jews and "undesirables," including Acevedo -- were separated from other prisoners of war. They were told they were going to a beautiful camp with live shows and a theater. Instead, they were put on cattle cars and transported to Berga, a slave labor subcamp of the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany where tens of thousands of Jews died. 
 
 The US soldiers worked 12-hour days in the final weeks of the war, digging tunnels for a sophisticated V-2 rocket factory. Soldiers were starved and brutalized with rubber hoses and bayonets. Some were fatally shot in the head with wooden bullets. The Nazis forced Acevedo to fill the holes in the heads of his fellow soldiers with wax to cover up the killings. 
 
 Acevedo used a fountain pen to record the atrocities in a diary, noting every US soldier's death that he saw. About half of the soldiers sent to Berga survived, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 
 
 Acevedo kept his medic's band, cross and prayer book after the war. He donated the items to the US National Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2010. 
 
 During the next six decades, the US government never acknowledged its soldiers were held in a slave labor camp. But after Acevedo shared his account with CNN in 2008, the story went viral and the public demanded answers. Then-US Reps. Joe Baca of California and Spencer Bachus of Alabama pressed then-Army Secretary Pete Geren to recognize the soldiers. 
 
 Within months, Army Maj. Gen. Vincent Boles met with six Berga survivors at a POW event in Orlando, presenting them with flags flown over the Pentagon and honoring them for their sacrifice. One soldier received the Bronze Star, one of the nation's highest medals. 
 
 "It wasn't a prison camp. It was a slave labor camp," Boles told them. "You were good soldiers and you were there for your nation." 
 
 Acevedo boycotted the ceremony, saying he felt it should have been held in Washington. 
 
 A 'moral obligation' 
 
 In 2010, Acevedo became the first Mexican-American to register as a Holocaust survivor at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, out of 225,000 registered there. Acevedo donated his diary, Red Cross medic's band, cross and prayer book to the museum. 
 
 The museum recorded his oral history in English and Spanish. After Acevedo came forward, other Berga survivors did the same, recording their testimonies and donating historical artifacts. Previously, the museum only had a handful of testimonies from Berga; now it could add their stories to its permanent collection. 
 
 "We were able to finally tell their story in our exhibition for the first time because we now had physical evidence that we could show our visitors," said Kyra Schuster, a museum curator. 
 
 Acevedo's story also allowed Mexican-Americans to connect to the Holocaust in a way they never had before. Schuster still travels the country telling the story of Berga, and she says it's always incredible when Latinos learn of Acevedo's survival and courage. 
 
 When asked why he put his own life at risk by keeping a diary of every US soldier's death he witnessed, Acevedo told the museum, "It was my moral obligation to do so." 
 
 "That's always stuck with me," Schuster says, "because I think that defines who he is. 
 
 "He was this man who, despite the odds against him, despite what he was going through and experiencing, it was still important for him to take care of others, to document what was happening, to make sure the world knew what had happened to them. 
 
 "That's why he spoke out later in life. He was always putting other people ahead of himself. That's how I see him, and that is so admirable." 
 
 Curator Kyra Schuster said Acevedo's story allowed Mexican-Americans to connect to the Holocaust in ways they never had before. 
 
 Proud of his heritage, Acevedo listened with dismay over the last year as the nation's leaders took a hardened stance toward immigrants. 
 
 "They don't know shit from Shinola," Fernando Acevedo recalled his father saying. 
 
 His son said Acevedo, a lifelong conservative, would shake his head and change the TV channel from politics to Westerns. He'd then tell Fernando: "Always remember: Never repay evil with evil. Remember what my buddies and I went through. Never treat anybody like they're below you. We can't turn a blind eye." 
 
 After the war, Acevedo, then 20, returned home and worked as a surgical technician in an ear, nose and throat clinic in Pasadena. Around that time, he took a trip to Durango, Mexico to visit his father -- who didn't believe his account of being held in a slave labor camp. "You're a coward for allowing yourself to be captured," his father told him. "You should've killed yourself." 
 
 Acevedo left his father's home the next day with only a duffel bag and set off on his own. The two didn't speak for years. On the train ride back to California he met the woman of his dreams. Eight months later, he and Amparo Martinez were married. Together, they had four children: Tony, Rebeca, Fernando and Ernesto. 
 
 Acevedo settled into a successful aerospace engineering career, working for North American Aviation, McDonnell Douglas and Hughes Space and Communications, where he retired in 1987 after 35 years as a design engineer. 
 
 In retirement, the demons of war resurfaced. He would break into a sweat four to five times a day, shaking and trembling as he relived his captivity. At night, he was haunted by nightmares so intense his muscles would constrict and he'd wake up screaming. 
 
 He'd relive seeing a fellow medic killed by machine gun fire. Germans would shove him with bayonets. A dead comrade would suddenly flash into his mind. 
 
 To help cope, he volunteered at the VA hospital in Loma Linda. He said he liked spending time with the veterans there because so many died alone. He would share his story with local high school students and was buoyed by his work with the Holocaust museum. 
 
 "He was the epitome of kindness," Fernando said. "We should all be that way for fellow man -- this power of strength yet gentleness to give to others. That was my dad's mission." 
 
 'Many of our men died' 
 
 A corporal, Acevedo served as a medic for the 275th Infantry Regiment of the 70th Infantry Division. Surrounded by Nazis at the Battle of the Bulge, he was captured after days of brutal firefights. He saw one of his fellow medics, Murray Pruzan, gunned down. 
 
 Acevedo said it was his moral obligation to keep a diary cataloguing the atrocities against US soldiers. 
 
 "When I saw him stretched out there in the snow, frozen, God, that's the only time I cried," Acevedo once told CNN. "He was stretched out, just massacred by a machine gun with his Red Cross band. 
 
 "You see all of them dying out there in the fields. You have to build a thick wall." 
 
 Acevedo was first taken to a prison camp known as Stalag IX-B in Bad Orb, Germany, where thousands of American, French, Italian and Russian soldiers were held as prisoners of war. He would be known by the Germans as Prisoner No. 27016. 
 
 One day, he said, a German commander gathered the US prisoners and asked all Jews "to take one step forward." Few willingly did so. Jewish soldiers wearing Star of David necklaces began yanking them off. 
 
 About 90 Jewish soldiers and another 260 US soldiers deemed "undesirables" -- those who "looked like Jews" -- were selected. Acevedo, who was Catholic, was among them. 
 
 "They put us on a train, and we traveled six days and six nights. It was a boxcar that would fit heads of cattle," he said. "They had us 80 to a boxcar." 
 
 Acevedo toured the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2010. He broke down after stepping into this train car, saying it brought back memories of being shipped to Berga. 
 
 It was February 8, 1945, when they arrived. The camp was known as Berga an der Elster. The soldiers, Acevedo said, were given 100 grams of bread per week made of redwood sawdust, ground glass and barley. Soup was made from cats and rats. 
 
 If soldiers tried to escape, they would be shot and killed. Any who were captured alive would be executed with gunshots to their foreheads, Acevedo said. 
 
 "Many of our men died, and I tried keeping track of who they were and how they died," he said. "I'm glad I did it." 
 
 The names and dates of death were logged in his diary as the days wore on. 
 
 32. Hamilton 4-5-45 
 
 33. Young 4-5-45 
 
 34. Smith 4-9-45 
 
 35. Vogel 4-9-45 
 
 36. Wagner 4-9-45 
 
 The main Buchenwald camp was officially liberated on April 11, 1945. But as US troops neared, Nazis emptied the camp and its subcamps of tens of thousands of prisoners and forced them to march. The soldiers held at Berga were no exception. 
 
 "Very definite that we are moving away from here and on foot," Acevedo wrote in his diary on April 4, 1945. "This isn't very good for our sick men. No drinking water and no latrines." 
 
 The soldiers' death march would last three weeks and stretch 217 miles. Acevedo pushed a wooden cart with the bodies of the dead and sick stacked on top of each other. Toward the end of the march, there were as many as 20 bodies on the cart. 
 
 "We saw massacres of people being slaughtered off the highway. Women, children," he said. "You could see people of all ages hanging on barbed wire." 
 
 On April 13, 1945, Acevedo wrote of the soldiers' patriotism, even as they were being marched to their graves. "Bad news for us. President Roosevelt's death. We all felt bad about it. We held a prayer service for the repose of his soul." 
 
 His entry that day ended with: "Burdeski died today." 
 
 Acevedo said it was worth the risk to document what he witnessed, saying, "I'm glad I did it." 
 
 Acevedo kept his diary hidden in his pants. He mixed snow or urine with the ink in his fountain pen to make it last. 
 
 US troops liberated Acevedo and the remaining prisoners from the Nazis on April 23, 1945. Before returning home, Acevedo signed a US government document that haunted him for decades: 
 
 "You must give no account of your experience in books, newspapers, periodicals, or in broadcasts or in lectures," it said. "I understand that disclosure to anyone else will make me liable to disciplinary action." 
 
 He had shared his story with students locally for years and had spoken to a couple of authors who wrote books on the Berga soldiers. He decided to speak with CNN in 2008 to make sure the story was preserved in the internet age. "Let it be known," he said. "People have to know what happened." 
 
 The government said the document wasn't meant to keep the men silent -- that it was meant to protect sources in Germany who helped aid liberating troops. Acevedo had a one-word response to that explanation: "Hullabaloo." 
 
 'This is how low man can get' 
 
 The Nazi camp commanders at Berga -- Erwin Metz and his superior, Hauptmann Ludwig Merz -- were tried for war crimes in Germany in 1946. 
 
 They gave a much different account of treatment at Berga. They said US prisoners ate better than the guards, had comfortable accommodations and that the Nazis tried to help the Americans as best they could. Surviving US soldiers were not called to testify. 
 
 Merz described inspecting the soldiers on April 19, 1945, two weeks into the death march. "Roughly 200 prisoners were there, all of whom gave the appearance of being well-rested," Merz told the court. "I noticed one sick, who was sitting on the ground, because he could not stand up the entire time it took me to make my inspection." 
 
 US soldiers had been starved and abused by Nazis inside the slave labor camp known as Berga. 
 
 Pressed further, he said, "Among those that I saw, there were no sick except the one I mentioned." 
 
 Acevedo's diary entry from that same day painted a different picture: "More of our men died today, so fast that you couldn't keep track of their numbers." 
 
 Merz and Metz were found guilty and sentenced to die by hanging. But in 1948, the US government commuted their death sentences, and in the 1950s, the men were set free. 
 
 In explaining its decision, the War Department said, "Metz, though guilty of a generally cruel course of conduct toward prisoners, was not directly responsible for the death of any prisoners except one who was killed during the course of an attempt to escape." 
 
 I once asked Acevedo about his feelings toward Metz. He wept for 10 minutes as his muscles tightened and his breathing grew strained, the throes of post-traumatic stress overtaking him. I held him in my arms and told him how much his country loved him. 
 
 "I'm sorry," he said, gasping. "I'm sorry. I want to say more, but I can't." 
 
 This past December, Acevedo was hospitalized with heart problems. His son, Fernando, was searching through his father's military records when he found a psychiatric evaluation from 1996. Fernando's heart sank as he read through the file. Suddenly, everything made sense -- his father's tremors, his waking in the middle of the night, his screams. 
 
 The evaluation detailed a war crime his father could not speak about with his son: 
 
 "He was raped while the Germans laughed and became sexually aroused," the file said. "He was humiliated and felt violated and infinitesimal, like a toy, not a human being. Veteran had extremely traumatic experiences in combat and in the hands of the Gestapo who were ruthless in their methods." 
 
 When his father returned from the hospital, Fernando sat him down and showed him the file. 
 
 "Oh," his father said. "I'm glad you found it." 
 
 Fernando said his father paused before continuing: "I want you to tell everyone what I went through and how I struggled with the nightmares. I want you to tell everybody." 
 
 Acevedo told his son to include the rape in his obituary so the world can understand: "This is how low man can get." 
 
 Filled hallways and one final salute 
 
 Acevedo took his final breath at 6:28 p.m. on February 11, in the same VA hospital where he'd spent the last two decades volunteering. 
 
 Acevedo spent his final years preaching a message of peace and love: "You only live once. Let's keep trucking." 
 
 His body was draped in a US flag and prepared for a traditional honor walk, a way to treat a veteran's death with dignity. Word spread throughout the hospital that the beloved Acevedo -- whose warmth and love cheered up veterans, doctors and nurses alike -- was gone. 
 
 Hallways overflowed with people standing at attention as Acevedo was accompanied by his four children. 
 
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 "They saluted my dad all the way up and down the hallway as we were walking. Four floors like that," Fernando said. "Nurses, doctors, patients who were able to stand -- everyone was standing at attention saluting my dad." 
 
 "I tell you, that was really heavy." 
 
 Acevedo died with a clear conscience, having told the world about the treatment he and his fellow soldiers at Berga faced. His message was one of love and peace. 
 
 As he was put to rest Thursday, I couldn't help but think of his giant smile and gentle voice. "You only live once. Let's keep trucking. If we don't do that, who's going to do it for us? We have to be happy. Why hate?" he once told me. 
 
 A true national treasure. 

 Family and friends hug before funeral services for Anthony Acevedo, of Yucaipa, at Transformation Calvary in Rancho Cucamonga, CA., Thursday, March 8, 2018. Acevedo was a WWII veteran who had been held in two German P.O.W. camps after being captured during the Battle of the Bulge. (Staff photo by Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 Anthony Acevedo’s sons, Fernando, left, Ernesto and daughter Rebeca speak during Acevedo’s funeral services at Transformation Calvary in Rancho Cucamonga, CA., Thursday, March 8, 2018. Acevedo was a WWII veteran who had been held in two German P.O.W. camps after being captured during the Battle of the Bulge. (Staff photo by Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
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 Sr. Pastor Jim Orate welcomes family and friends during funeral services for Anthony Acevedo, of Yucaipa, at Transformation Calvary in Rancho Cucamonga, CA., Thursday, March 8, 2018. Acevedo was a WWII veteran who had been held in two German P.O.W. camps after being captured during the Battle of the Bulge. (Staff photo by Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 Family and friends attend funeral services for Anthony Acevedo, of Yucaipa, at Transformation Calvary in Rancho Cucamonga, CA., Thursday, March 8, 2018. Acevedo was a WWII veteran who had been held in two German P.O.W. camps after being captured during the Battle of the Bulge. (Staff photo by Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 Anthony Acevedo’s sons, Fernando, left, Ernesto and daughter Rebeca speak during Acevedo’s funeral services at Transformation Calvary in Rancho Cucamonga, CA., Thursday, March 8, 2018. Acevedo was a WWII veteran who had been held in two German P.O.W. camps after being captured during the Battle of the Bulge. (Staff photo by Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 
 
 Family and friends attend funeral services for Anthony Acevedo, of Yucaipa, at Transformation Calvary in Rancho Cucamonga, CA., Thursday, March 8, 2018. Acevedo was a WWII veteran who had been held in two German P.O.W. camps after being captured during the Battle of the Bulge. (Staff photo by Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 Family and friends attend funeral services for Anthony Acevedo, of Yucaipa, at Transformation Calvary in Rancho Cucamonga, CA., Thursday, March 8, 2018. Acevedo was a WWII veteran who had been held in two German P.O.W. camps after being captured during the Battle of the Bulge. (Staff photo by Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 Family and friends attend funeral services for Anthony Acevedo, of Yucaipa, at Transformation Calvary in Rancho Cucamonga, CA., Thursday, March 8, 2018. Acevedo was a WWII veteran who had been held in two German P.O.W. camps after being captured during the Battle of the Bulge. (Staff photo by Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 Family and friends attend funeral services for Anthony Acevedo, of Yucaipa, at Transformation Calvary in Rancho Cucamonga, CA., Thursday, March 8, 2018. Acevedo was a WWII veteran who had been held in two German P.O.W. camps after being captured during the Battle of the Bulge. (Staff photo by Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 Family members carry the casket of Anthony Acevedo, of Yucaipa, after his funeral services at Transformation Calvary in Rancho Cucamonga, CA., Thursday, March 8, 2018. Acevedo was a WWII veteran who had been held in two German P.O.W. camps after being captured during the Battle of the Bulge. (Staff photo by Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 
 
 A rose and mums wreath for the Army medic Anthony Acevedo, 93, who was a father of four and grandfather six times over. Acevedo was a 30-year Yucaipa resident, who was held in two German POW camps. The burial service was held at Riverside National Cemetery, Calif. on Thursday, Mar. 8, 2018. Acevedo spent his last year in Rancho Cucamonga. Joaquin Ceja, funeral director, heads towards the POW area. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 Family members carry the casket of Anthony Acevedo, of Yucaipa, after his funeral services at Transformation Calvary in Rancho Cucamonga, CA., Thursday, March 8, 2018. Acevedo was a WWII veteran who had been held in two German P.O.W. camps after being captured during the Battle of the Bulge. (Staff photo by Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 Siblings Fernando Acevedo of Rancho Cucamonga, from left, Ernesto Acevedo of Lake Elsinore and Rebecca Acevedo of Cerritos attend the burial service of their dad WWII veteran Army medic Anthony Acevedo, a 30-year Yucaipa resident, who was held in two German POW camps. The service was held at Riverside National Cemetery, Calif. on Thursday, Mar. 8, 2018. Acevedo, 93, spent his last year in Rancho Cucamonga. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 Fernando Acevedo spoke of his dad’s selflessness. He was always a medic, trying to help others the Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. resident noted. WWII veteran Army medic Anthony Acevedo, 93, who was held in two German POW camps, was buried at Riverside National Cemetery, Calif. on Thursday, Mar. 8, 2018. The medic assigned to the 70th Infantry Division during the war, was one of the 350 U.S. soldiers captured during the Battle of the Bulge in France and sent to the Berga an der Elster labor camp – a satellite camp of Nazi’s Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany from which only about 180 would survive by warÕs end. His dad was a 30-year Yucaipa, Calif. resident who spent his last year in Rancho Cucamonga. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 Siblings Fernando Acevedo of Rancho Cucamonga, left, and Ernesto Acevedo of Lake Elsinore attend the burial service of their dad WWII veteran Army medic Anthony Acevedo, a 30-year Yucaipa resident, who was held in two German POW camps. The service was held at Riverside National Cemetery, Calif. on Thursday, Mar. 8, 2018. Acevedo, 93, spent his last year in Rancho Cucamonga. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 
 
 Riverside National Cemetery Support Committee Chairman Paul Adkins recalls Army medic Anthony Acevedo’s last words to him was come back soon. Adkins motions to Acevedo’s casket. He was buried at Riverside National Cemetery, Calif. on Thursday, Mar. 8, 2018. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 Stephanie Acevedo of Huntington Beach, left, embraces friend Patricia Ledesma of San Jacinto at Acevedo’s grandpa’s burial service held at Riverside National Cemetery, Calif. on Thursday, Mar. 8, 2018. Anthony Acevedo was assigned to the 70th Infantry Division and was one of the 350 U.S. soldiers captured during the Battle of the Bulge in France and sent to the Berga an der Elster labor camp Ñ a satellite camp of Nazi’s Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 Chaplain Don Forden, left, tells a story of the torture his friend Army medic Anthony Acevedo endured and the post traumatic stress he suffered during the 93-year-old’s burial service at Riverside National Cemetery, Calif. on Thursday, Mar. 8, 2018. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 Siblings Fernando Acevedo of Rancho Cucamonga, second from left, and Ernesto Acevedo of Lake Elsinore, fourth from left, bring their dad’s casket to Riverside National Cemetery, Calif. on Thursday, Mar. 8, 2018. Anthony Acevedo, a 30-year Yucaipa resident was a WWII veteran Army medic who was held in two German POW camps. Acevedo, 93, spent his last year in Rancho Cucamonga. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 Ernesto Acevedo of Lake Elsinore hugs friends and family at his dad’s, WWII veteran Army medic Anthony Acevedo, burial service held at Riverside National Cemetery, Calif. on Thursday, Mar. 8, 2018. Acevedo, 93, spent his last year in Rancho Cucamonga. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 
 
 People listen to accolades for the WWII, POW Army Anthony Acevedo, a 30-year Yucaipa resident, who was held in two German POW camps. The service was held at Riverside National Cemetery, Calif. on Thursday, Mar. 8, 2018. Acevedo, 93, spent his last year in Rancho Cucamonga. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 Siblings Fernando Acevedo of Rancho Cucamonga, left, and Ernesto Acevedo of Lake Elsinore, right, bring their dad’s casket to Riverside National Cemetery, Calif. on Thursday, Mar. 8, 2018. Anthony Acevedo, a 30-year Yucaipa resident was a WWII veteran Army medic who was held in two German POW camps. Acevedo, 93, spent his last year in Rancho Cucamonga. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG) 
 
 Anthony Acevedo, an Army medic who helped heal and cheer those around him in two Nazi prisoner-of-war camps and for decades afterward, was buried with full military honors at Riverside National Cemetery on Thursday, March 8. 
 
 Acevedo, 93, struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder from the horrors he suffered, but he never showed any bitterness, said his son, Fernando Acevedo. 
 
 “My father never stopped being a medic who rendered aid to anyone who needed it, and he would always tell me, ‘Never hate, never be bitter, don’t be mad because it doesn’t profit you anything,'” Fernando Acevedo said in an interview. 
 
 Anthony Acevedo was captured in the Battle of the Bulge in January 1945, then held at Stalag IX-B and Buchenwald’s Berga an der Elster slave labor camp, his son said. 
 
 There, prisoners lived on 3 1/2 grams of bread, given daily or sometimes only every other day. They were forced to march 217 miles, an ordeal that left only 165 out of the 350 prisoners alive. When he was rescued in April 1945, Acevedo weighed 87 pounds. 
 
 These horrors, recorded by CNN and others, are known in part because he kept a diary cataloging each death along with other details. The diary had to be kept hidden from the Nazis on pain of death. 
 
 Acevedo donated those records to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., in 2010, the first diary written by an American prisoner to be donated to the museum. After CNN’s coverage of the Acevedo donation and lobbying by then-Reps. Joe Baca, D-Rialto, and Spencer Bachus, R-Alabama, the Army honored the “heroism and sacrifice” of Berga an der Elster prisoners. 
 
 His writings show that he survived by mixing bread with grass, sand, wood shavings and other fillers. 
 
 “Berga was a prison camp designed to kill POWs by working them to death,” said retired Army Col. Don Forden, the presiding chaplain at the cemetery ceremony. “Because Tony was a medic, he was able to keep some of them alive a little longer.” 
 
 Forden said he knew Acevedo for the past 10 years and had enjoyed his company, as had many others. 
 
 “When Tony was in your presence, you could feel love and caring and empathy,” Forden said. 
 
 He said Acevedo’s cooking kept up spirits in the camp — at least when the soup made of rats, cats and grass was combined with a cheerful demeanor. 
 
 “He kept asking, ‘What do you want to eat tomorrow? How about a hamburger with everything on it?'” Forden said, recalling a story Acevedo had told him. “He wanted to keep everyone happy.” 
 
 Acevedo died Feb. 11 at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Loma Linda. 
 
 Born in San Bernardino, he lived in Pasadena and Lakewood before spending most of the past 30 years in Yucaipa. His last year was in Rancho Cucamonga with his family. 
 
 He worked as a design engineer at North American, McDonnell Douglas Aircraft and Hughes Space and Communication until retiring in 1987, then focused on volunteering at the VA to help those with PTSD, his son Fernando said. 
 
 “I like to say the Lord allowed him to live for a reason,” he said. “My dad impacted a lot of people.” 
 
 During a funeral service at Transformation Calvary in Rancho Cucamonga, his children said they were forever shaped by their father’s strength and love. 
 
 “If I can describe my father with one word, it would be heart,” said his daughter Rebeca. 
 
 Ernesto Acevedo said he was grateful he was able to tell his father he loved him shortly before he died. 
 
 “I am honored to call you my hero, but most of all my dad, my Papi,” Ernesto said. 
 
 In addition to Ernesto, Fernando and Rebeca, Acevedo is survived by his son, Tony, and six grandchildren. 

 LOMA LINDA, California (CNN) -- Anthony Acevedo thumbs through the worn, yellowed pages of his diary emblazoned with the words "A Wartime Log" on its cover. It's a catalog of deaths and atrocities he says were carried out on U.S. soldiers held by Nazis at a slave labor camp during World War II -- a largely forgotten legacy of the war. 
 
 Anthony Acevedo served as a medic during World War II. He was captured and sent into a Nazi forced labor camp. more photos » 
 
 Acevedo pauses when he comes across a soldier with the last name of Vogel. 
 
 "He died in my arms. He wouldn't eat. He didn't want to eat," says Acevedo, now 84 years old. "He said, 'I want to die! I want to die! I want to die!' " 
 
 The memories are still fresh, some 60 years later. Acevedo keeps reading his entries, scrawled on the pages with a Sheaffer fountain pen he held dear. See inside Acevedo's diary » 
 
 He was one of 350 U.S. soldiers held at Berga an der Elster, a satellite camp of the Nazis' notorious Buchenwald concentration camp. The soldiers, working 12-hour days, were used by the German army to dig tunnels and hide equipment in the final weeks of the war. Less than half of the soldiers survived their captivity and a subsequent death march, he says. 
 
 Acevedo shows few emotions as he scans the pages of his diary. But when he gets to one of his final entries, the decades of pent-up pain, the horror witnessed by a 20-year-old medic, are too much. 
 
 "We were liberated today, April the 23, 1945," he reads. 
 
 His body shakes, and he begins sobbing. "Sorry," he says, tears rolling down his face. "I'm sorry." Watch Acevedo's emotional account of being freed » 
 
 Acevedo's story is one that was never supposed to be told. "We had to sign an affidavit ... [saying] we never went through what we went through. We weren't supposed to say a word," he says. 
 
 The U.S. Army Center of Military History provided CNN a copy of the document signed by soldiers at the camp before they were sent back home. "You must be particularly on your guard with persons representing the press," it says. "You must give no account of your experience in books, newspapers, periodicals, or in broadcasts or in lectures." 
 
 The document ends with: "I understand that disclosure to anyone else will make me liable to disciplinary action." Watch diary of a POW at slave camp » 
 
 The information was kept secret "to protect escape and evasion techniques and the names of personnel who helped POW escapees," said Frank Shirer, the chief archivist at the U.S. Army Center for Military History. 
 
 Acevedo sees it differently. For a soldier who survived one of the worst atrocities of mankind, the military's reaction is still painful to accept. "My stomach turned to acid, and the government didn't care. They didn't give a hullabaloo." 
 
 It took more than 50 years, he says, before he received 100 percent disability benefits from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. 
 
 Despite everything Acevedo endured during the war, little had prepared him for his own father's attitude toward his capture. "My dad told me I was a coward," he says. 
 
 "I turned around and got my duffel bag, my luggage, and said, 'This is it, Father. I'm not coming back.' So I took the train the following day, and I didn't see my parents for years, because I didn't want to see them. I felt belittled." 
 
 For decades, Acevedo followed the rules and kept his mouth shut. His four children didn't know the extent of his war experience. He says he felt stymied because of the document he signed. "You never gave it a thought because of that paper." 
 
 Now, he says it's too important to be forgotten. In recent years, he's attended local high schools to tell his story to today's generation. 
 
 "Let it be known," he says. "People have to know what happened." 
 
 Born July 31, 1924, in San Bernardino, California, Anthony C. Acevedo is what is known in today's parlance as a "citizen child" -- one who was born in the United States to parents from Mexico. iReport: Tell us your war stories 
 
 A Mexican-American, he was schooled in Pasadena, California, but couldn't attend the same classes as his white peers. "We couldn't mix with white people," he says. Both of his parents were deported to Mexico in 1937, and he went with them. 
 
 Acevedo returned to the States when he was 17, he says, because he wanted to enlist in the U.S. Army. He received medical training in Illinois before being sent to the European theater. 
 
 A corporal, he served as a medic for the 275th Infantry Regiment of the 70th Infantry Division. Acevedo was captured at the Battle of the Bulge after days of brutal firefights with Nazis who surrounded them. He recalls seeing another medic, Murray Pruzan, being gunned down. 
 
 "When I saw him stretched out there in the snow, frozen," Acevedo says, shaking his head. "God, that's the only time I cried when I saw him. He was stretched out, just massacred by a machine gun with his Red Cross band." 
 
 He pauses. "You see all of them dying out there in the fields. You have to build a thick wall." 
 
 Acevedo was initially taken to a prison camp known as Stalag IX-B in Bad Orb, Germany, where thousands of American, French, Italian and Russian soldiers were held as prisoners of war. Acevedo's diary entry reads simply: "Was captured the 6th of January 1945." 
 
 For the next several months, he would be known by the Germans only as Prisoner Number 27016. One day while in Stalag IX-B, he says, a German commander gathered American soldiers and asked all Jews "to take one step forward." Few willingly did so. Watch Acevedo describe being selected as an "undesirable" » 
 
 Jewish soldiers wearing Star of David necklaces began yanking them off, he says. About 90 Jewish soldiers and another 260 U.S. soldiers deemed "undesirables" -- those who "looked like Jews" -- were selected. Acevedo, who is not Jewish, was among them. 
 
 They were told they were being sent to "a beautiful camp" with a theater and live shows. 
 
 "It turned out to be the opposite," he says. "They put us on a train, and we traveled six days and six nights. It was a boxcar that would fit heads of cattle. They had us 80 to a boxcar. You couldn't squat. And there was little tiny windows that you could barely see through." 
 
 It was February 8, 1945, when they arrived. The new camp was known as Berga an der Elster, a subcamp of Buchenwald, the Nazi concentration camp where tens of thousands of Jews and other political prisoners were killed under Adolf Hitler's regime. See the horrors of Buchenwald » 
 
 Acevedo says he was one of six medics among the 350 U.S. soldiers at Berga. Political prisoners from other countries were held at Berga separate from the Americans. "We didn't mingle with them at all," he says, adding that the U.S. soldiers worked in the same tunnels as the other political prisoners. 
 
 "We were all just thin as a rail." 
 
 The U.S. prisoners, Acevedo says, were given 100 grams of bread per week made of redwood sawdust, ground glass and barley. Soup was made from cats and rats, he says. Eating dandelion leaves was considered a "gourmet meal." 
 
 If soldiers tried to escape, they would be shot and killed. If they were captured alive, they would be executed with gunshots to their foreheads, Acevedo says. Wooden bullets, he says, were used to shatter the inside of their brains. Medics were always asked to fill the execution holes with wax, he says. 
 
 "Prisoners were being murdered and tortured by the Nazis. Many of our men died, and I tried keeping track of who they were and how they died." 
 
 The soldiers were forced to sleep naked, two to a bunk, with no blankets. As the days and weeks progressed, his diary catalogs it all. The names, prisoner numbers and causes of death are listed by the dozens in his diary. He felt it was his duty as a medic to keep track of everyone. 
 
 "I'm glad I did it," he says. 
 
 As a medic, he says, he heard of other more horrific atrocities committed by the Nazis at camps around them. "We heard about experiments that they were doing -- peeling the skins of people, humans, political prisoners, making lampshades." Watch Acevedo talk about Nazi atrocities » 
 
 He and the other soldiers were once taken to what Acevedo believes was the main camp of Buchenwald, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from Berga. They noticed large pipes coming from one building. 
 
 "We thought we were going to be gassed when we were told to take our clothes off," he says. "We were scared. We were stripped." 
 
 "Rumors were around that this was where the political prisoners would be suffocated with gas." It turned out to be a shower, the only time during their captivity they were allowed to bathe. 
 
 The main Buchenwald camp was officially liberated on April 11, 1945. But the camp and its subcamps were emptied of tens of thousands of prisoners as American troops neared. The U.S. troops held at the Berga compound were no exception. 
 
 "Very definite that we are moving away from here and on foot. This isn't very good for our sick men. No drinking water and no latrines," Acevedo wrote in his diary on April 4, 1945. 
 
 He says they began a death march of 217 miles (349 kilometers) that would last three weeks. More than 300 U.S. soldiers were alive at the start of the march, he says; about 165 were left by the end, when they were finally liberated. 
 
 Lines of political prisoners in front of them during the march caught the full brunt of angry Nazi soldiers. 
 
 "We saw massacres of people being slaughtered off the highway. Women, children," he says. "You could see people of all ages, hanging on barbed wire." 
 
 One of his diary entries exemplifies an extraordinary patriotism among soldiers, even as they were being marched to their deaths. "Bad news for us. President Roosevelt's death. We all felt bad about it. We held a prayer service for the repose of his soul," Acevedo wrote on April 13, 1945. 
 
 It adds, "Burdeski died today." 
 
 To this day, Acevedo still remembers that soldier. He wanted to perform a tracheotomy using his diary pen to save Burdeski, a 41-year-old father of six children. A German commander struck Acevedo in the jaw with a rifle when he asked. 
 
 "I'll never forget," he says. 
 
 On a recent day, about a dozen prisoners of war held during World War II and their liberators gathered at the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Veterans Medical Center in Loma Linda, California. Many applauded Acevedo for his heroics. 
 
 "Those of us in combat have our own heroes, and those are the medics. And that's Antonio. Thank you, Antonio," one of the men said. 
 
 The men gathered there nodded their heads. Two stood to shake Acevedo's hand. 
 
 "The people that are in this room really are an endangered species," another man said. "When they're gone, they're gone. ... That is why they should be honored and put in history for generations to come, because there are not that many of them left." 
 
 Donald George sat next to Acevedo. The two were captured about a half-mile apart during the Battle of the Bulge. "It's hard to explain how it is to be sitting with a bunch of people that you know they've been through the same thing you've been through," George said. 
 
 "Some of us want to talk about it, and some of us don't. Some of us want to cry about it once in a while, and some of us won't. But it's all there," he said. 
 
 "We still like to come and be together a couple times a month," George added, before Acevedo finished his sentence: "To exchange what you are holding back inside." 
 
 Acevedo says the world must never forget the atrocities of World War II and that for killing 6 million Jews, Hitler was the worst terrorist of all time. He doesn't want the world to ever slide backward. 
 
 His message on this Veterans Day, he says, is never to hold animosity toward anybody. 
 
 "You only live once. Let's keep trucking. If we don't do that, who's going to do it for us? We have to be happy. Why hate?" he says. "The world is full of hate, and yet they don't know what they want." 
 
 CNN's Traci Tamura and John Torigoe contributed to this report. 
 
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– After the Pearl Harbor attack, Anthony Acevedo was determined to defend his homeland—which meant returning to it. Acevedo was born in 1924 in California to Mexican parents who were deported 13 years later; he and his siblings went to Mexico, too, and he re-entered the US at age 17 to join the Army. In October 1944, Acevedo found himself a medic in Europe. Just a few months later, at the Battle of the Bulge, he was captured, and began a journal that would end up being hugely significant, one that's coming back into view in the wake of Acevedo's Feb. 11 death at age 93. Acevedo was one of 350 "undesirables," US soldiers that included Jews and were sent to the slave labor camp at Buchenwald known as Berga in February 1945, reports CNN. Half the soldiers sent there didn't make it out alive, and Acevedo journaled every US death he observed, as well as horrors experienced there, including his own: being made to fill the bullet holes left in the heads of dead soldiers with wax to mask the shootings. He told CNN in 2008 that dandelion leaves were a "gourmet meal" compared to their normal rations: soup cooked from rats and cats, and bread made from sawdust, ground glass, and barley. The Press-Enterprise reports he weighed just 87 pounds by April 1945. CNN notes that the US didn't recognize the ordeal of the soldiers kept at Berga until Acevedo went public with his story in 2008. Acevedo donated his diary, which he concealed in his pants and wrote using ink mixed with urine or snow, to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2010. (The museum just took a stand against Aung San Suu Kyi.)