Updated Thursday, Dec. 13

A well-known Holocaust survivor was killed Tuesday when he was hit by a driver while crossing a Hillsboro street, police say.

Alter Wiener, who survived three years in Nazi concentration camps, was struck by a Honda Accord around 5 p.m. on Northeast Century Boulevard near Brighton Street. He died at a hospital, according to Hillsboro police.

The driver, 50-year-old Craig Struckman, cooperated with investigators and won’t face any charges or citations, police said.

Sgt. Eric Bunday, a Hillsboro police spokesman, said Struckman wasn’t distracted, impaired or speeding. He said it appears the crash happened because Wiener was crossing in the middle of the street — not in a crosswalk — and at a curve in the road. It was also dark and rainy at the time, he said, and Wiener was wearing dark clothes.

Wiener, 92, was the author of a book, “From a Name to a Number: A Holocaust Survivor’s Autobiography.” He was also well-known locally for speaking about the Holocaust during library lectures and other talks.

Wiener was born on October 8, 1926, in Chrzanow, Poland, a small town near the border of Germany. Jewish faith and strong family values were embedded deeply into the fabric of his character.

Germans invaded his hometown in 1939, and Wiener, his stepmother and his brothers fled. His father was commanded to stay behind to supply groceries from his business to the Polish troops. When the family returned three months later, they learned the Germans had murdered him.

As anti-Semitism increased, Wiener was forbidden from attending school or practicing his faith. At age 15, he was taken from his home and sent to concentration camps. During his time at the camps he was given very little food and regularly witnessed beatings and deaths. For three years, he moved from labor camp to labor camp, until the Russians freed him from Gross Masselwitz in May 1945.

After the war he went to Palestine. He eventually moved to New York to live close to his cousins, the only survivors among 123 family members murdered in the Holocaust.

When he moved to Hillsboro in 2000, the Oregon Holocaust Resource Center approached him, asking him to share his story. He hesitated, because of his Polish accent, but decided to give it a chance.

He eventually told his story hundreds of times. He had spoken to over 800 audiences as of 2013, according to an Oregonian/OregonLive report at the time.

"Judge each individual on his own merits and not on the color of the hair or the color of the eye or the color of the skin," he said, according to the report. "It doesn't make sense. If you have an open mind you will come to the same conclusion. This is my main lesson. To my understanding all the problems that we have in the world today come from the same root of prejudice. It's senseless. Prejudice and stereotyping are absurd. We are all God's children. You're going to find good people and bad people."

He vowed to keep sharing his story and that lesson until the last day of his life.

"It's not just for me and it's not just a chapter in history -- there is a lesson here," he said.

— Jim Ryan and Oregonian/OregonLive archives

This report was updated Thursday, Dec. 13, to include the name of the driver and additional information about the circumstances of the crash.