'Etched In Glass' Chronicles The Life Of Holocaust Survivor Steve Ross

Steve Ross was just 9 years old when he was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp.

Over the next five years, he was starved, beaten, experimented on, forced into labor, and terrorized at 10 different death camps. He escaped death by hiding in human waste in an outhouse and by holding onto the axle of a train as it went to another death camp.

On April 29, 1945, American soldiers liberated Dachau. Some 30,000 Holocaust survivors were freed. Ross was among them. As he walked away from the camp, he came upon a U.S. army lieutenant, sitting on a tank, eating food. What happened next transformed Ross' life.

"After I was rescued from hell, in the valley of death, I came upon a soldier on a tank that showed me compassion for the first time, concern, and took me back to God to civilization and mankind," Ross often tells people. "He gave me his food, he puts his arm around me, and he he gave me a flag."

That encounter also set Ross on a path that eventually lead to Dorchester, and his work with at-risk youth in Boston, trying to ensure that such evil was never forgotten.

His story is told in a new documentary, "Etched in Glass: The Legacy of Steve Ross," which premiers Friday at Coolidge Corner Theatre.

Other screenings include, Nov. 12 at Roger Williams University and November 20 at the Center for the Arts in Natick.

Roger Lyons, filmmaker and director of "Etched in Glass: The Legacy of Steve Ross." He tweets @RogerLyons1.