She is currently sharing with anyone who will listen, urging against the propagation and acceptance of hatred. However, prior to her time at Auschwitz, she was imprisoned at the Stutthof concentration camp. Edith Gross managed to survive a harrowing Nazi “death march.”
Gross captivated her audience in a cozy chamber within Islip Town Hall, evoking heartfelt emotions as she recounted her harrowing experiences and her eventual voyage to the United States on Yom HaShoah, a day dedicated to remembering the Holocaust.
I am a person who has changed, even if I am satisfied. Maybe I have reached some people who will no longer have hate in their hearts. Rabbi Shimon Stillerman of Chabad and Angie Carpenter, the Supervisor of Islip Town, joined the event on Thursday, according to 93-year-old Gross. I think it’s very, very important to know as many people as possible. It never leads to anything good because of hate.
He had never publicly discussed her survival until Thursday, when he was in his 30s. Steven Rabinovici, the son of Plainview’s 70-year-old mom, said that he didn’t even broach the subject until they were adults. Even Oakdale’s Gross, who lives in the Holocaust, had never talked to her children about it.
In 1944, Gross was compelled to leave her residence in Czechoslovakia and transported to the notorious Auschwitz facility and subsequently Stutthof. The Holocaust tragically took the lives of all three of her siblings.
Before the Nazis invaded, Gross said life was peaceful. Adolf Hitler shattered that bliss, and Gross was compelled to wear a yellow star that identified her as a Jew, enduring insults from her classmates. The Nazis crammed Jews into cattle cars, which she vividly remembered refusing to go to her grandmother’s. A soldier threw her in anyway.
Chambers gassed the women who were being carried toward their suffering, but the suspects were alive. Gross recalled seeing a cart filled with elderly women, but she remembered that they appeared to be vulnerable. She lied about her age, telling the officers she was 16 since children were especially vulnerable during the Holocaust. Upon her arrival at Auschwitz, she recalled.
“My entire belief system crumbled,” she remembered.
“Step by step,” she found out that her family’s residence had been destroyed when she returned to Czechoslovakia. Gradually, Gross returned to Czechoslovakia, shortly after being freed by those soldiers, and was compelled to participate in what would later be called a “death march,” a compulsory relocation as Soviet troops started to encircle the Nazis. It didn’t take much time before Gross was displaced once more.
Prior to experiencing abuse, Gross had concerns about her ability to conceive, making it all the more delightful when she eventually got married and became a mother. At the age of 19, she encountered her future spouse and also enrolled in a nearby high school, where she acquired proficiency in English and learned how to navigate the subway. This was accomplished swiftly, despite having endured one of the most terrifying events in history. Tragically, Gross lost her mother during the Nazi occupation before being sent to Auschwitz. On September 7, 1946, she arrived in the United States and reunited with her father in New York City.
“I’m sharing so that people will know it should not happen again, she said that the Jews who were murdered in the camps were alive, it’s important to know that.”