Abraham M. Muhlbaum | Holocaust survivor, 92

Abraham M. Muhlbaum, 92, a Holocaust survivor and member of the Dutch resistance during World War II who later became a Navy research physicist in the Washington area, died Feb. 19 at a retirement community in Falls Church, Va.

The cause was complications from Parkinson's disease, said a son, David Muhlbaum.

Mr. Muhlbaum was born in 1922 in Berlin. His Jewish family fled to Amsterdam weeks before the Kristallnacht attacks of 1938.

The Germans occupied Holland in 1940, and three years later, Mr. Muhlbaum's father, stepmother, and three siblings were sent to a detention camp. Mr. Muhlbaum managed to elude capture by sneaking out a window and scaling rooftops.

He became involved in the Dutch resistance and helped others find shelter and obtain false identity papers.

He concealed his Jewish identity with false papers and was interned as a political prisoner at several prisons and labor camps. He spent eight months at the Dachau concentration camp until the Allies liberated it in 1945.

He began his Navy career in 1968 at the Navy's Oceanographic Office in Suitland, Md., and in 1975 was assigned to the former Naval Surface Warfare Center in White Oak, Md. He studied underwater acoustics and helped design, develop, and test "sonobuoys," which can detect, identify and, track enemy submarines and torpedoes.

- Washington Post