A 92-year-old World War II vet held captive by the Nazis finally graduated his New Jersey high school this week — more than 70 years after he took his last class, according to reports.

“I felt so great. I even had tears in my eyes, and I don’t cry that often,” Vito Trause, of Washington Township, NJ, told CBS 2. “It was tremendous.”

The former prisoner of war was awarded a diploma at Becton Regional High School in East Rutherford on Wednesday as audience members cheered and chanted “USA! USA!,” according to NorthJersey.com.

He walked the stage with the rest of the 2018 graduating class and was escorted by active-duty commanders and sergeants from the US military.

Trause was 18 years old when he dropped out of what was then East Rutherford High School in November 1943 to join the Army, he said.

“Everybody wanted to go [to war]. My brother went in, my other brother went in, and I went in there and that was it,” he told CBS. “I was up in the front line about five or six months, and then I got captured [by] the Germans,” he told the station.

As an infantryman, he earned a Good Conduct Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, and an American Campaign Medal along with three Bronze Stars, according to military records cited by NorthJersey.com.

“[He] spent the end of his junior year on the front lines of World War II as part of the U.S. Army infantry,” the principal of the high school, Dario Sforza, said during the graduation ceremony.

“What would have been his senior year wasn’t so pleasant. Instead of English class, he was captured and held as a prisoner of war under horrible and horrific conditions. He was eventually liberated, returned to Carlstadt, married Terry from East Rutherford, and had two beautiful children,” Sforza said.

School officials made arrangements to award Trause his diploma, despite his not completing his senior year, after he gave a speech at the school last month, according to NorthJersey.com

After graduating, Trause said, one lesson students should learn from him is the value of military service.

“They should think about our country, respect the flag, respect the servicemen,” he said.