Nat Ross was filled with joy at the sight of all his loved ones surrounding him to celebrate his 100th birthday.
It’s a joyous memory for him and much needed as he’s still filled with the memories of his experience in a concentration camp 80 years ago – one horrific memory in particular was when a soldier held a gun to his head and told him to dig his own grave.
“There is no day or night that my memory doesn’t go through what I went through,” he said, as per Fox10 News.
The now Florida resident was one of thousands of Polish Jews that the Nazis launched a campaign of terror against following the German military defeat of Poland in September 1939.
At just 20 years old Nat survived the ghettos, years of hard labor in Auschwitz-Birkineau, in Poland, and other concentration camps and even a death march in the middle of winter.
He survived on scraps of potato he discovered while building a sewer system for the Nazis.
His granddaughter Dana Arschin-Kraslow went on to explain: “Every few weeks the Germans forced the prisoners to throw their clothes into a pot of boiling water to disinfect the clothing they were wearing, and my grandfather found a way to throw in a few scraps of rotten potatoes that he found. He sewed it into his uniform and that’s how he got nourishment.”
That was until one day when Nat was caught and ordered to dig his own grave.
“When he was almost done digging, they asked him to lay down on the ground to see if his body fit,” Dana said. “When he did, the guards told him to keep digging. And there was a gun to his head this whole time.”
But in that moment a fellow prisoner collapsed and the guard said to Nat ‘isn’t today, your lucky day.’
His granddaughter said the guards shot the other guy and threw him in the grave that Ross had just dug.
“That grave was 100 percent intended for my grandfather, but the rest of his life he had to live with that guilt that it ended up being for someone else,” she added.
Nat witnessed many horrors during his experience including fellow prisoners who took their own life but Ross had a strong will to live.
“I wanted to live because I wanted to tell the story,” he said. “Of how humans can suffer. I wanted to live through it.”
His granddaughter said she will never stop telling her grandfather’s story.
“In my wildest nightmares I cannot imagine going through what he did,” she said.
Thankfully Nat’s life is now filled with happy memories.
He and his wife Celia, who have been married for nearly 70 years, will be celebrating the milestone birthday with their children, grandchildren and now great-grandchildren.
Before moving to Florida, Nat lived in New York working in a garment center in Manhattan for years as a pattern maker for children and women’s clothing.
To have lived and survived that horrific experience is astounding, let alone to make it to 100. Help us wish this incredible man a Happy Birthday by sharing this story.
