Alter Wiener (1926–2018)

Alter Wiener was born to a Jewish family in Chrzanow, Poland. He was 13 years old in 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded his hometown in World War II. Alter, his stepmother, and his brothers fled, but his father was required to stay behind to supply groceries from his business to Polish troops. When the family returned three months later, they learned his father was dead, murdered by the Nazis. Wiener was barred from attending school and two years later, at age 15, he was deported to Blechhammer, a forced labor camp. For three years, he was moved from one concentration camp to another, until he was freed from Gross Masselwitz by the Red Army in May 1945.

He returned to Chrzanow and found that more than 120 members of his extended family had perished. Wiener moved to the British Mandate of Palestine and eventually to New York City to live close to his surviving cousins. In 2000, when he moved to Hillsboro, near Portland, Oregon, the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education asked Wiener to share his story publicly. He hesitated because of his Polish accent, but decided to give it a try. Eventually, he spoke to thousands of Oregonians about his experiences, making about 1,000 appearances at schools, libraries, churches, conferences and charitable events and giving media interviews. He went before the Oregon Senate Committee on Education to advocate for a mandatory statewide curriculum on the Holocaust and genocide. He wrote From a Name to a Number: A Holocaust Survivor's Autobiography, published in 2007.