From Broken Glass

March 19, 2018
This moving memoir recounts how Ross, who was born Szmulek Rozental in Poland in 1931, created meaning for himself after the Holocaust, during which he lost his family and was imprisoned in 10 concentration camps. Szmulek’s simple childhood ended after Nazi soldiers invaded his hometown. His family’s efforts to flee to safety failed, but his mother managed to place him with a Polish family who risked their lives to shelter him. Some months later, the Germans he did odd jobs for identified him as a Jew, and he began five hellish years in captivity, suffering torments including sexual abuse and doing whatever it took to survive, including, at 12, passing as an adult at the entrance to Auschwitz because he believed a number tattoo would make him less likely to be killed. After the liberation of Dachau, Szmulek made his way to the U.S. and used his education to pay back his adopted hometown of Boston; he rose from an idealistic truant officer assigned to neighborhoods that had been written off as hopeless to become the Boston school system’s director of education. His reputation for changing lives enabled him to successfully advocate for the creation of the New England Holocaust Memorial and its placement in the heart of Boston. Alternating chapters about his suffering under the Nazis with his successes after the war alleviates some of the grimness, and the end result is an inspirational account of hope overcoming horror.

April 1, 2018
A Holocaust survivor recounts life lessons of use to the latter-day downtrodden.Born Szmulek Rosental in Lodz, Poland, Ross, founder of the New England Holocaust Memorial, was a young boy when the Germans arrived and set about destroying Jewish homes and killing Jewish men, women, and children. An early victim, he writes, was a grandmother who was thrown from a high window after failing to produce hidden treasures quickly enough. Ross quickly came to a realization: "God will not protect us." Left to his own devices, he grew up too quickly in a sequence of concentration camps yet lived to tell the tale. Under the aegis of postwar relief organizations, he came to the United States after the war ended, followed later by a surviving brother. A born negotiator, he excelled at practical politics, which stood him in good stead in social work and later as an administrator in Boston's city government, in charge of education in underserved communities where education was not a given. One of the highlights of the book is the author's account of strong-arming an unwilling admissions officer into admitting ghetto kids into a storied top-tier school: "I will bring you six qualified students, and you will let them take summer classes here. On a scholarship. If they are successful, you can enroll them in school here and either pay for their tuition or provide them with aid tied to a job here on campus." Ross adds that he had a newspaper reporter in tow to chronicle the outcome of the meeting, a fine bit of blackmail that worked. The author emerges as a resilient character who is determined not to allow the enemies of the past to re-emerge in the present unchallenged; his book opens with a cri de coeur on Charlottesville, and it ends with a defiant testimonial: "I am a survivor."A worthy memoir of dark times, full of practical lessons for resistance and community organizing today.

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April 15, 2018

"Survival, I have learned, is tethered to hope"--hope for a better future, hope for a change, hope for a chance for happiness. Ross, a youth activist and founder of the New England Holocaust Memorial, pens an introspective memoir about the power of perseverance and compassion. Ross was eight when Germany invaded his native Poland forcing his family to flee. Separated from all but a brother, Ross endured unspeakable tortures and fortuitous escapes to survive several of Poland's death camps and make his way to the United States. Ross intersperses his traumatic experiences in the camps with his time as a truant officer in the rough neighborhoods of Boston and explains how his early life shaped his ability to provide strength to his community. Although at times difficult to read, this account will inspire others to work in their communities to help the "forgotten." VERDICT This work is a necessary and timely addition to Holocaust memoirs, echoing the experiences of Primo Levi and other survivor accounts. Incidents of vandalism to the Holocaust Memorial and the new Polish "Holocaust law" show that these attitudes are not in the past.--Maria Bagshaw, Elgin Community Coll. Lib., IL

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