Aaron Feuerstein, a Massachusetts industrialist who became a national hero in 1995 when he refused to lay off workers at his textile plant after a catastrophic fire then spent hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild it, died Nov. 4 at a hospital in Boston. He was 95.

Mr. Feuerstein’s company Malden Mills, was by the mid 1990s among the last large textile companies in Massachusetts. Most other companies, faced with competition from lower-wage states and cheap imports, had either closed or moved production out of the state. Malden Mills was a shining exception. Then, on Dec. 11, 1995, a boiler in one of the factory’s plants exploded. Nevertheless, Mr. Feurerstein handed out holiday bonuses and announced that he would immediately reopen as much of the plant as he could, replace the buildings he had lost, and continue to pay the idled workers.

By the first weeks of January, hundreds of his employees were back at work, and just 20 months later, he opened a new $130 million complex.

Mr. Feuerstein’s father founded the Young Israel synagogue in Brookline, Mass., where his family lived. A fire there destroyed much of the building, and Mr. Feuerstein donated $1 million to rebuild it.