Storm Against the Innocents: Holocaust Memories and other Stories

From the National D-Day Museum

"In 1998 Elly Gross saw a picture on a display in Poland that changed the direction of her life. This book would not have been written if Elly had not seen that picture.

Elly Gross was seperated at the age of 15 from her mother and 5 year old brother and incarceration as an inmate and slave laborer at Auschwitz II/Birkenau. She survived; her family was murdered. After liberation, she began a new family with a survivor of the Death March. In 1966, they fled from communist Romania to the United States. She, her husband, and two children worked hard to attain the American Dream.

Then in 1998, she participated, for the first time, in the March of the Living, a program where teenagers and survivors visit Jewish sites in Poland and Israel. At Auschwitz-II/Birkenau, there was a picture of a group of women and children, just off the cattle cars, whose lives were soon to be snuffled out. In that picture, Elly found her mother and brother. This "reunification" is the touchstone from which so much of Elly's poetry and narratives pour.

The history she writes about, from the Holocaust to the attack on the World Trade Center, is horrific. Elly, the innocent child, saved through a series of miracles or accidents, becomes Elly, the survivor-adult. As her legacy, she shares the feelings and facts of the time period with her readers. her writing is a memorial to her family, as well as commitment against hatred and the destruction to which it leads.

To read this book is a memorable and touching experience. There are moments described that the reader will not forget, because they are not meant to be forgotten."