Henry Oster

As a young boy Henry Oster survived deprivation in the Lodz Ghetto, a life-or-death selection in the Birkenau extermination camp, a firing squad in Auschwitz, being strafed by an Allied fighter, and starvation in Buchenwald. Henry rebuilt his life in America, arriving at 18 with no family, no English, no money, and no education. Of the 2,011 Jews who were rounded up by the Gestapo and deported from Cologne, he was one of only 23 to emerge alive from the concentration camps after the war. He was still working as a world-respected Professor of Optometry on his 85th birthday, helping the world to see.