Gen. James B. Thayer, who helped liberate a Nazi death camp during World War II and later had a long business and military career in Oregon, died Sunday. He was 96.

Word of his passing came via an announcement by the rock band Kiss, in which Thayer's son, Tommy, is lead guitarist.

"First and foremost he was a great family man and great father, but had a great military, business and civilian career," Tommy Thayer said Monday. "He liked to help people and organizations that needed help."

Thayer was born in Portland but grew up on a farm in the Yamhill County town of Carlton. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Oregon.

He received the Silver Star and Bronze Star for his service in the U.S. Army during World War II, and was credited with liberating the Gunskirchen Nazi death camp, which he discovered while leading a platoon in Austria in May 1945.

"I didn't know what to do," he recalled in an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive in 2012. "I got on the radio and said, 'We need all the help we can get, right away.'

After the war, Thayer served as a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve. He was later promoted to brigadier general and commander of the Oregon State Defense Force.

He also owned an office supply business, the J. Thayer Co., and served on the boards of the Port of Portland, Reed College, the Oregon Graduate Institute and other organizations. Thayer had been residing recently at a retirement community in Lake Oswego.

The Oregon Military Museum, under renovation at Camp Withycombe in Clackamas, was named for him in 2012.

"Retired Gen. James Thayer served our country & our state with great distinction in World War II and for decades afterward," U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden wrote Monday on Twitter. "I'm sad to learn about his passing. My condolences to his family."

For most of his life, Tommy Thayer said that his father was reluctant to talk about the difficult things he had seen during the war. That changed in 1992 when James Thayer joined a tour of concentration camps organized by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.

A Jewish man approached him at the airport in Vienna and identified himself as a survivor of the camp in Austria that Thayer discovered. The man, Wolfe Finkelman, said he wouldn't have survived another 24 hours if the Americans hadn't arrived.

"That changed my life," Thayer said in 2012.

Thayer and his wife, Patricia, had five children, Jim Jr., John, Tommy, Michael and Anne, according to a University of Oregon profile.

Patricia and Anne preceded him in death, according to that profile. His son Tommy has been associated with the hard rock band Kiss since the 1980s and formally joined the band in 2002. Kiss frontman Gene Simmons, whose own mother was a Holocaust survivor, once said he owed "a debt of gratitude to Gen. Thayer."

Information on memorial services is pending.

This article has been updated with additional comment from Sen. Ron Wyden and from Tommy Thayer.

-- Mike Rogoway | twitter: @rogoway | 503-294-7699