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Friday December 8, 2006

Holocaust hero dies at 92

new york (jta) | Jack Werber, a Holocaust survivor who helped save some 700 Jewish boys at a Nazi camp, has died at age 92. He suffered a fatal heart attack last month in his hometown of Great Neck, N.Y.

Born in Poland to a furrier, Werber was separated from his wife and daughter in 1939 and taken to Buchenwald. His wife and daughter did not survive the war.

In 1944, a transport of 2,000 prisoners came to the camp, including some 700 boys. Werber, the barracks clerk, worked with fellow inmates to hide the youngest throughout the barracks and find easier jobs for the older ones. He obtained the complicity of some Nazi guards who were beginning to fear war-crimes charges.

After the war Werber moved to the United States, where his older brother, Max, his only surviving immediate relative, had settled. Werber found success in the 1950s manufacturing coonskin caps, cashing in on the Davy Crockett fanfare.

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