From Broken Glass: My Story of Finding Hope in Hitler's Death Camps to Inspire a New Generation

Steve Ross was eight years old when the Nazis invaded his Polish village, forcing his family to flee. He spent his next six years in a day-to-day struggle to survive the notorious camps in which he was imprisoned, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Dachau among them. When he was finally liberated, he no longer knew how old he was, he was literally starving to death, and everyone in his family except for his brother had been killed.

By observing and enduring inconceivable cruelty as well as by receiving compassion from caring fellow prisoners, Ross learned the human capacity to rise above even the bleakest circumstances. He decided to devote himself to underprivileged youth, aiming to ensure that despite the obstacles in their lives they would never experience suffering like he had. Over the course of a nearly forty-year career as a psychologist working in the Boston city schools, that was exactly what he did. At the end of his career, he spearheaded the creation of the New England Holocaust Memorial, a site millions of people visit every year.

Equal parts heartrending, brutal, and inspiring, From Broken Glass is the story of how one man survived the unimaginable and helped lead a new generation to forge a more compassionate world.

"One of the most striking things about the book is how [Ross] manages to maintain hope." ― The Boston Globe

"A timely and beautiful book." ―Gary Shteyngart, New York Times–bestselling author of Little Failure