For Holocaust Remembrance Day, also known as Yom HaShoah, we had a Conversation with longtime friend of TCS, Larry Gross. Larry is the Founder and Head of the Coalition for Economic Survival in Los Angeles. He is also the son of a Holocaust Survivor.
His Mom, Alice Sylvester, was taken as a teenager along with her Jewish family by Nazi soldiers from their home to Auschwitz in 1944. When she disembarked from the railcar, she was examined by the infamous so called angel of death, Dr. Mengele. Larry read his mothers own account of her story at the camp including the horrifying experience of his mom being stripped and in the gas chamber. The chamber malfunctioned and she was sent back. As the liberating troops were getting closer to Auschwitz, the prisoners were rounded up into a death march to flee the camp. Surviving all of this, Ms. Alice eventually was liberated. Her father and other relatives did not survive.
Larry spoke about his own experience retracing his mom's journey. He and his wife Mimi went back to the house in Mukachevo where the Nazi soldiers rounded up his mother and family. Larry toured the city and saw the brick factory where his family was held before being taken by rail to the work and death camps. He then went to Auschwitz and saw the platform where his mom disembarked and then witnessed the barracks and ash pits in the vastness of this camp. One of the most difficult parts of this retracing was when he arrived...
