The effort to build the New England Holocaust Memorial began with a Holocaust survivor, Stephan Ross (Szmulek Rozental), who was imprisoned at the age of 9 & whose parents, one brother & 5 sisters were murdered by the Nazi's. Between 1940 & 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 his neck in human waste, to save himself from being shot. At one time he was hung for eating a raw potato. At age fourteen he was liberated from the infamous torture camp Dachau by American troops. Steve will never forget the soldiers who found him, emaciated & nearly dead. They liberated him from a certain death.

When Steve & his older brother, Harry, the only other surviving family member, were released from the Dachau Camp to seek medical attention, they came upon a U.S. Tank Unit one of the soldiers jumped off his tank, gave Steve & Harry his rations to eat & put his arms around Steve. Steve fell to his knees, kissed the G.I.'s boots & began to cry for the first time in five years. The soldier took out of his pocket a piece of cloth & gave it to Steve to wipe his tears. Steve later found out that it was a small American Flag with 48 stars. This small flag is a treasured item & it will be kept by Steve & his children as a symbol of freedom, life, compassion & love of the American soldiers.

At the age of sixteen he was brought to America in 1948 under the auspices of the U.S. Committee for Orphaned Children. He was illiterate having had minimal education prior to the Nazi occupation of Poland in 1939. Over the years, he managed to earn three college degrees. Steve made a new life in the Boston area & has worked for the City of Boston for over forty years. He provides guidance & clinical services to inner-city underprivileged youth & families. He eventually achieved the level of Senior Staff Psychologist. Soon after arriving into his adopted country, he had one dream, one vision & one mission. He wanted to remember, with a memorial, his lost family who were ripped away from him & murdered, the six million Jewish victims, other innocent people who lost their lives, those soldiers who liberated the concentration camps, all the soldiers who helped end the war & to serve as a lesson to future generations.

It was this one survivor with one voice who started the project to build a Holocaust Memorial. With the encouragement of a number of Jewish & Christian fellow employees of the City of Boston a committee was formed to put together a proposal. Steve then spoke with William Carmen, a WWII Veteran, about the memorial proposal & he immediately embraced the dream &, became the Chairman of the Committee. Israel Arbeiter, President of the American Association of Jewish Holocaust survivors of Greater Boston also embraced the dream & became a member of the Committee. It truly turned out to be a Christian-Judaic Project for remembrance of human rights & the dignity of life.

There were several City of Boston Officials, including Mayor Raymond Flynn, who were extremely interested in assisting Steve with this vital task of erecting a Holocaust Memorial on the Freedom Trail. Soon after Thomas Menino became Mayor, he also came on board to join the forces of the committee.

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