Heroic World War II soldiers honored by Long Island museum for Veterans Day

US Army Pfc. Jim Andreadis was a teenager in April 1945 when he made history.

That month, the Brooklyn-bred soldier and his unit helped liberate the Nazi-run Ohrdruf concentration camp — one of World War II’s most horrific sites, and the first camp shuttered by US troops.

Andreadis and his division dutifully guarded the grounds in central Germany with tanks as Adolf Hitler’s reign came crashing down.

“They were tough times,” the heroic veteran, who is now 96, said of his service in the war.

Some 77 years later, Andreadis’ heroism will be honored Thursday at a Veterans Day ceremony on Long Island along with fellow vet Sgt. Julius Fiorini, 99, of West Babylon.

The event at the Museum of American Armor in Old Bethpage is a tribute to soldiers who crewed battle tanks in the fight against European fascism on the 80th anniversary of the Sherman tank.

“This is, regretfully, probably the last call for reconnecting these veterans with their mounts,” said Gary Lewi, a spokesman for the museum.

The war vehicle is considered the crown jewel of the museum’s collection and will be showcased in action at the ceremony.

The Sherman — a medium tank manufactured by the tens of thousands and fielded by multiple American allies during the war — was a mainstay of the fight against the Axis powers.

With lighter armor and smaller guns than many of Germany’s main battle tanks, Sherman crews had to outwit and outmaneuver their Nazi foes in order to ambush and overwhelm the Third Reich’s forces.

“You had to be incredibly brave,” Lewi said of the men who crewed the Shermans. “It’s not really about the tank, it’s about the GIs.”

Andreadis’ first time in a Sherman was as an 18-year-old city kid fresh out of high school when he was assigned to be a “cannoneer,” who loaded the small tank’s main gun.

“The first Shermans, they were lightly armored,” Andreadis, who now lives in Hempstead, told The Post.

“They had a 75mm gun that didn’t do much damage — especially to the Tiger,” he said, referring to the feared Nazi heavy tank.

Still, when asked what his earliest memories were of war, he chuckled.

“Lousy food,” he said.

In December 1944, his unit was nearly sent in to reinforce allied positions in the Battle of the Bulge — the brutal German counterattack near the Belgian border. Instead, the tanks were sent east to liberate the Ohrdruf concentration camp.

After Andreadis and his division liberated the camp, which was littered with piles of decomposing corpses, US Gen. George Patton called the defunct camp “one of the most appalling sights that I have ever seen.”

“[It’s] history,” was all Andreadis would say of the fateful assignment.

Andreadis’ unit was then sent into Czechoslovakia, where they were told to meet with the Allied Soviet forces, who were on the front lines fighting Nazi soldiers.

“They were very tough,” Andreadis said of the Russian troops. “We expected soldiers like we were — in full uniforms. But very few had uniforms — they [just] had a cap with a red star on it.”

After encountering Russian troops in what would soon become the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, Andreadis said, they were given “30 days to get out of Czechoslovakia” and when the war formally ended, he was in a field outside the Czech city of Pilsen, mounted on his Sherman.

He was ordered to take his personal belongings from the tank and soon found himself working as an Army mail clerk, swapping 75mm shells for letters for the remainder of his enlistment.

“I went from a tank to a jeep,” he quipped.

When Andreadis came home from the war in 1946, he was 20 years old and frustrated.

“No money, no education — thank God for the GI Bill,” he said.

The vet went on to study structural engineering, and built a career working in the New York City area.

Andreadis said he planned to attend Thursday’s ceremony with his son and daughter, and had invited his parish priest.

The ceremony will involve a moment of silence for all servicemen who died in their Shermans.

“They don’t teach World War II in schools anymore,” Andreadis said when asked about the importance of Thursday’s ceremony.

“The US was lucky [in the war],” Andreadis said. “We didn’t suffer here. [Americans] really didn’t know what the war looked like.”

“I saw cities leveled,” he said. “It really rocks you.”

Additional reporting by Natalie O’Neill