NEW ENGLAND HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL - Friends of the Memorial

The effort to build the New England Holocaust Memorial began with a survivor, Stephan Ross, who was imprisoned at age nine and whose parents and six brothers and sisters were killed by the Nazis. Between 1940 and 1945, he survived ten different concentration camps. Like so many others, he suffered terribly. His back was broken by a guard who caught him stealing a raw potato. Tuberculosis wracked his body. He once hid in an outhouse, submerged to the neck in human waste, to save himself from being shot. At the age of fourteen, he was liberated from Dachau by American troops. Stephan Ross never forgot the soldier who found him, emaciated and nearly dead, and who gave him bread and a small American flag.

Steve came to the United States in 1948 and eventually made his home in Boston. For many years he harbored the dream of building a memorial to pay tribute to those who perished, to honor the liberators who perished, to honor the liberators who freed him, and to serve as a lesson to the living. Stephen is pictured at left with his daughter Julie and son Michael.