NJ Jewish News | Museum names gallery for local philanthropist

The Berlin Jewish Museum honored a local philanthropist with the dedication June 20 of its Eric F. Ross Gallery.

Ross, of South Orange and Palm Beach, Fla., declined to say how much he has given the museum in the German capital, but described his support as a tribute to the Jewish past in the country where he was born, and from which he fled in 1938 on the eve of Kristallnacht.

“It’s natural for me to support a revival of the German Jewish community,” said Ross, a plastics manufacturer. “I consider myself part of that museum. People are very friendly toward me. Anything I can do to help I will.”

The museum dedicated the exhibition gallery on the ground floor in a gala ceremony that included a speech by Germany’s minister of state for cultural affairs, Berndt Neumann.

Museum officials unveiled a plaque that includes the patron’s birth name, Erich Rosenberg; his birthplace of Frankfurt am Main; and Dortmund, the town where he began to make his way before being forced to flee the country. It also includes the names and fate of Ross’ parents, Albert and Regina Rosenberg, who were deported to Theresienstadt and murdered at Auschwitz in 1942. Earlier this year Ross donated $10 million to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, its largest single gift ever.

The Jüdisches Museum Berlin, designed by Daniel Libeskind, opened in 2001. The next year, Ross and his wife, Lore, paid a visit. His support began not financially, but with family documents and memorabilia that he donated to its collection. “There were old letters — 50 and 75 years old, from my parents,” he said.

There are an estimated 105,000 Jews in Germany today, mostly immigrants from the former Soviet Union, according to the German Embassy in Washington. In 1933, there were more than 500,000 Jews in Germany, according to a census from that year.

Such figures leave Ross circumspect about the Jewish community in his birthplace. “There are no more German Jews. I’m the last of the species. Now, it’s mostly Polish and Russian Jews there.” And he added, “What can they collect there?”