Stephan Ross, a death camps survivor and founder of the New England Holocaust Memorial, dies

Stephan Ross invoked images beyond nightmares when he spoke of his imprisonment as a boy in Nazi labor and death camps – 10 in all. He survived brutal beatings and ravaging illnesses and dashed away when told to wait in a line of those chosen to die.
“The history of my childhood is beyond what you can tell civilized people,” he once said, but he did so to keep alive the memories of his relatives and the 6 million Jews who were killed during the Holocaust.
“What I had to endure is beyond what many people can understand,” he told the Globe in 1995. “Surviving was a relentless struggle day to day, hour to hour.” Mr. Ross, the founder of the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston, died Monday evening. He had lived in Newton for many years and previously lived in Dorchester and Jamaica Plain, after coming to America after World War II as a refugee orphan. “Today Boston lost a giant, and the world quite honestly lost a giant,” Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh said Monday evening. “Here’s a man who could have given up several times in his life and he didn’t. I’m very sad today at the loss of Steve Ross.”