Ernest Gross was born in Turc, Romania [Annotator's Note: Turc or Turt, Romania] in 1929. He describes his lifelong situation as being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was the fourth son among seven children, so he never had anything new. He didn't like the way he looked in his ill-fitting hand-me-down clothes. In school, the teacher didn't like Jewish students and ignored him, as did the Gentile students. Gross felt lonely and sad. When lunchtime came, the other students bullied him about his Kosher customs, and he was too ashamed to report it to his elders. He remembers a song from Synagog, "Here Comes the Boy Who Never Laughed." Now, since his liberation, he is making it up and enjoys life very much. Gross lived in a three room house that had no electricity and no plumbing. The family had no radio, television or telephone, and had no knowledge of what was going on in the outside world. His father was a salesman of cows and horses and his mother was a seamstress. Gross's mother was very busy, and didn't have enough time to show all of her children affection, and he felt left out. His father didn't show affection either. Gross' young life was not that good. He thought that because the Gentiles taught their children that the Jews killed Christ, it made them angry, and he was treated as an outsider. He couldn't complain to the police, because they didn't like Jews either.

In April 1944, the day after Passover, two Hungarian police officers woke the family of Ernest Gross, and told them they had to report to the synagogue within an hour. They were instructed to leave their money on the table and to leave the door to their home unlocked. The Jews were frightened, and knew they had to follow orders, and people came from all corners. In the synagogue, all the doors and windows were locked. There were no toilet facilities, and by the second day, the stench was unbearable. On the third day, the inmates were taken by carts deep into Hungary to a ghetto. Gross notes that in 1942, the Hungarians took over Transylvania from the Germans. He was in the ghetto for about three weeks, during which time their leaders were saying that "nothing is going to happen to us, we are the people of God." But when the guards began spitefully cutting off the Jews' beards and hair, they realized they were "all equal." People were systematically taken away, professionals and businessmen first. Within a week, everybody else was taken. The name of the village was Sevlush, and the prisoners were occupying the houses of Jews that had already been taken to Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp complex in German occupied Oswiecim, Poland]. Two or three families were crowded into each house, and everyone slept on the floor. The Jews had no idea of what was going to happen, or why. There was no German presence at the time; Gross encountered his first German at Auschwitz. The prisoners traveled by train. Everybody had something with him, either a bag or a suitcase, and when they reached Auschwitz they were ordered to leave their belongings. The train was totally enclosed, and there was only a bucket for toilet facilities. Gross doesn't know how long they were on the rails, because the train made many stops along the way. Once they arrived, Polish prisoners emptied the trains of whatever was left behind. One Polish prisoner approached Gross and inquired about his age. When Gross replied that he was 15, the prisoner told him, "When you face the Nazi, you'd better say you're 17"; otherwise he would go where his parents went. The man described how his parents had been taken to the gas chambers and the crematorium. Gross wondered if he would pass for 17, and when his age was demanded, he wavered in his first response; when asked to repeat his answer, Gross replied loudly, and was sent to join his brothers.

Ernest Gross was taken into a building, where he stayed a day and a night. He didn't talk about what he knew of his parent's fate with his brothers. Gross never spoke about it until he started making presentations. When, on his second day at Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp complex in German occupied Oswiecim, Poland] the guards took his brothers for work, Gross was left behind, and because he had only been there a short time, his number was not yet on his hand, it was on his jacket: 71366. In addition to everything else he once owned, Gross lost his name also. Once selected for work, prisoners reported to a field, where they undressed and shaved all the hair off each other. Then, they were given prison clothes. The same thing happened to the women, and all the prisoners looked the same. Gross describes the selection process, starting when they disembarked from the train and faced a Nazi with a German shepherd dog, that was even more scary than the Nazi. The Nazi made the decision who should die and who should live that day. Persons holding children were summarily sent to the left, which meant they were not useful, and would be exterminated. Once he was shaved and issued clothes, Gross left Auschwitz, and was moved between sub-camps every couple of months. The reason was so that the prisoners couldn't get to know each other and organize something. If a prisoner was allocated to Camp Seven, it meant he was no longer productive; he was no longer fed, and his next destination was Dachau [Annotator's Note: Dachau concentration camp complex near Dachau, Germany]. When a prisoner arrived at a sub-camp, he was issued a cup and spoon. Gross kept his with him at all times. He received his meager rations in that cup: a little black coffee in the morning and at night, soup. At the end of the day, the prisoners were given a small loaf of bread to share among eight people. Every crumb counted. They developed a system of lots to mete out the uneven slices. Gross had no place for God, because it was whatever he [Annotator's Note: Gross] did that saved his life. He learned that in order to survive, he had to be selfish. He shared nothing but after his liberation, he was generous with a cousin who had refused to share a potato with him in the camps, because he was not out for revenge for what happened in the past. People who were heavy smokers were willing to give up their rations for cigarette butts. Those who gave up their food for cigarettes lost energy, and were unable to work, which meant their demise. After liberation, the mentality not to share stayed with Gross for a while, until he realized he could not go through life like that, and trained his brain to be generous.

If a prisoner was lucky, he got a potato with his nightly ration of soup. Ernest Gross once watched a man going around randomly asking people something; when he got to Gross, he asked him if he wanted to join others in a seder [Annotator's Note: a ritual marking the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover]. Gross agreed to do so, and quickly ate half his food, and stashed the rest for after the ceremony. While he attended the service, somebody took his meal. Food was all the prisoners thought about. For work, Gross unloaded bags of cement, cut down trees, and repaired bombed-out rail lines. If a prisoner slowed down, he was beaten. The young German guards were the harshest; the middle-aged men felt a little sympathy for the prisoners. As an example, a young guard once slapped Gross hard in the face when he asked for shoes in a size that fit. Gross had to work barefoot until he found a man who agreed to trade shoes. Inevitably, the time came when Gross couldn't produce. They sent him to Camp Seven, where he got no food for several days. He tried to eat grass, but had to spit it out. The prisoners were so weak, they could not stand, and Gross had to abandon one of his cousins who couldn't get to his feet. He was brought to Dachau [Annotator's Note: Dachau concentration camp complex near Dachau, Germany], and stood in line to go into the crematoriums. When Gross was in sight of the ovens, the soldier who was guarding the prisoners threw down his weapon and ran away. Gross turned and saw American soldiers, and the camp was liberated. It took 60 years, but Gross found Don Greenbaum [Annotator's Note: Army Corporal Don Greenbaum, a forward observer with the 283rd Field Artillery Battalion], one of the soldiers who set him free. The two are now friends.

Ernest Gross was brought to a sanatorium to recuperate. One of his brothers found him, and Gross was both happy and sad. He was happy to see his brother, but sad to see only one brother. From the sanatorium, Gross and his surviving brother when home, but things were not good there, and they decided to leave Romania. They did not leave together, however. Because Gross was under 21, he was able to get to the United States through HIAS [Annotator's Note: Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society; Jewish American nonprofit organization that provides humanitarian aid and assistance to refugees], and his brother settled in Amsterdam [Annotator's Note: Amsterdam, Netherlands]. Other members of his family went to Israel, where he visits them about every five years. Describing the first few days of liberation, Gross said the American soldiers meant well by giving them food, but the prisoners' starved bodies could not process it. He digressed to comment on how some men lost their religion because of their Holocaust experience, while others were determined to remain devout. Many had difficulty adjusting; Gross decided to make a new life, and to help where he was able to help. In the barracks, prisoners often woke up next to a dead person. One night, Gross couldn't fall asleep, and the American planes came across, so all the lights were put out. Gross decided to run to the kitchen to snatch some food, but on his way back, he was attacked by other prisoners who took the potatoes he had stolen, and he lost a shoe in the process. For Gross, the only joy in the prison camp was eating soup. Gross would eat his daily slice of bread crumb by crumb.

When the war was over, all that remained of Ernest Gross' family were three brothers and a sister. He arrived in New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] and was assigned a social worker. He decided to settle in Philadelphia [Annotator's Note: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania], where he had three aunts. A new social worker went with him to see them. The first aunt, who didn't trust he was part of the family, said she didn't have room for him. The second aunt said the same. The third aunt believed him, but wasn't well off and had a large family, so she couldn't take him. The social worker found him room and board, and he had a dollar a week spending money. The only English he knew was "ice cream," so he was put in a class to learn English. After four months he got a job making false teeth, but he was often ill, and found out the chemicals used to make the teeth were affecting his lungs. He had to quit, and went to work in delicatessens. He met another survivor, whom he married, and never spoke with her about her experience in concentration camps. Only after she died did he determine to tell his story. Talking about it gets it out of the back of his mind. He has become well known everywhere he goes, and makes it his business to make people laugh. Even though he had all this bad stuff, he is still a happy man. He survived the camp, he got married, had three children, graduated from high school, lost his first wife and remarried, and his second wife was a victim of alzheimer's. He now helps in a nursing home for alzheimer's patients. And, with his friend Don Greenbaum [Annotator's Note: Army Corporal Don Greenbaum, a forward observer with the 283rd Field Artillery Battalion, was one of the American soldiers who liberated Gross from the Dachau concentration camp], he gives presentations on his Holocaust experiences.