Lombard resident Eric Blaustein, 90, chronicled surviving the Buchenwald concentration camp in Nazi Germany at the Oct. 18 Aurora Navy League Council 247 meeting in Montgomery. Blaustein told how he became a grave digger at age 15 in 1942 using documents that said he was a Hitler Youth member. Arrested in September 1944, he was sent to Buchenwald after confessing to being Jewish. He survived by taking the identity of a dead Italian prisoner. Blaustein served as a laborer for five months before U.S. forces liberated the camp.
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Lombard resident Eric Blaustein, 90, chronicled surviving the Buchenwald concentration camp in Nazi Germany at the Oct. 18 Aurora Navy League Council 247 meeting in Montgomery. Blaustein told how he became a grave digger at age 15 in 1942 using documents that said he was a Hitler Youth member. Arrested in September 1944, he was sent to Buchenwald after confessing to being Jewish. He survived by taking the identity of a dead Italian prisoner. Blaustein served as a laborer for five months before U.S. forces liberated the camp. (Photo provided)