Longtime Las Cruces businessman Nathan Weiselman, who escaped from Nazi labor camps, has died in California at the age of 94, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported.

After surrendering to Soviet troops in 1940, he was sent to a labor camp in eastern Siberia to work in a coal mine, returning to his native Poland when World War II ended, then on to Salzburg, Austria where he met his wife, Lea, the Sun-News said.

The couple moved to a displaced persons camp in Italy, where an international Jewish organization helped the couple and their son, David, move to El Paso in December 1950, David Weiselman told the Sun-News.

About 18 months later, they moved to Las Cruces, where he opened the OK Tailor Shop, which later expanded into a clothing business, which closed when he retired in 1982, the Sun-News said.

In 1983, Weiselman was among those who successfully lobbied the New Mexico State University board of regents to drop the name of the NMSU yearbook, The Swastika, the paper reported.

Weiselman and his wife are depicted in a park mural on Spruce Avenue, near the Las Cruces Police Station, according to the Sun-News.

Weiselman suffered in recent years from a variety of health problems, including congestive heart failure and emphysema, his son told the paper.

He is survived by his wife Lea, now 89, who lives near his son David in Culver City, Calif.

Weiselman was the only one of eight siblings to survive the Nazi Holocaust, the Sun-News said.

"He beat the odds so many times," David Weiselman told the paper. "Ninety percent of Poland's Jews died (in the Holocaust). Who would have thought of volunteering to go to a labor camp? ... He was always my hero."