(JTA) — A 92-year-old Oregon man who survived Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust was struck and killed by a car while crossing a street near his home.
Alter Wiener died Tuesday in Hillsboro and was pronounced dead at a hospital, The Associated Press reported Friday.
Wiener endured three years in the camps and later in life wrote an autobiography titled “From a Name to a Number: A Holocaust Survivor’s Autobiography.”
He spoke to thousands of Oregonians about his experiences, making nearly 1,000 appearances at schools, libraries, churches, conferences and charitable events.
Wiener appeared before Oregon lawmakers in September to press for mandatory statewide curriculum standards that would require teachers to educate students about the Holocaust and genocide, AP reported.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, remembered Wiener as “a true Oregonian and total mensch who transformed his Holocaust survival into a lesson that taught all of us about the need to fight prejudice always and everywhere.”
Wiener was born in 1926 in Chrzanow, Poland, a small town near the German border. Germans invaded the town in 1939 and Wiener, his stepmother and his brothers fled, The Oregonian reported.
Wiener moved to prestate Israel and eventually to New York to live near his surviving cousins.
He relocated to Hillsboro in 2000.
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