This program, designed for our YOBO students, is open to the entire congregation. Hear from Ernest Gross, a Holocaust survivor, who will share his harrowing and uplifting story of surviving the Shoa during an hour long presentation.

Register for this Zoom program. Once you register, you will receive a confirmation email with the Zoom meeting link, which you can add to your personal calendar.

Speaker Bio:

Ernest Gross - Former Dachau concentration camp prisoner

Ernest Gross (91) was born in 1929 in Turt, Romania, to a family of orthodox Jews. Together with eight brothers and sisters – two of whom died as children – he grew up in the region that today borders on Hungary and Ukraine. His mother was a language teacher, his father worked as a shop assistant.

When Ernest was 15 years old, he and his family were deported to a Hungarian ghetto and from there, three weeks later, to Auschwitz, where his parents and two younger siblings were murdered. Ernest escaped the gas chambers by lying about his age: Pretending to be 17 already, he was considered suitable for work and transferred to a labor camp. After a year's toil (and barely 16 years old), Ernest was at the end of his strength and got deported to Dachau. On account of heavy Allied bombing, the transport was delayed, so that the prisoners reached the concentration camp a day later than planned. Ernest was sure that this day, 29 April 1945, was the last day of his life, when suddenly the German guards dropped their weapons and ran: U.S.-American troops had moved into the camp to liberate the prisoners. Two of Ernest's brothers and one sister also survived the Holocaust.

Ernest Gross emigrated to the USA in 1947. He married twice, fathered three boys and now lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is close friends with one of his American liberators, Donald Greenbaum. They jointly visit schools, churches, synagogues, and other institutions where they tell their life stories.