Nov. 23--NEW HAVEN -- Fred Gross spent a lot of time in the New Haven area during the mid-1960s to early 1970s, both as a newspaper reporter and school system communications specialist, but even those who were close to Gross knew nothing about his childhood days fleeing the Nazis.

Gross, just 3-years-old when the Nazis invaded Belgium, where his family lived, knew little about the details of those days until the late-1980s, when he decided to interview his mother and two older brothers, Sammy and Leo, about those trying, never-talked-about times.

The result is a memoir aptly called, "One Step Ahead of Hitler: A Jewish Child's Journey Through France," published earlier this year by Mercer University Press.

Gross, an, engaging man who now lives in Kentucky, is visiting Connecticut for the Thanksgiving holiday and recently talked about his family's journey to a wide-eyed and sometimes tearyeyed audience at the Ethnic Heritage Center on the Southern Connecticut State University campus.

The packed house included some who worked with Gross, a reporter at the former Journal-Courier newspaper, and his favorite kind of audience members, children. Students from Bridge Academy, a grade 7-12 charter school in Bridgeport, sat spellbound as he told his story.

"I identify with them (schoolchildren)," Gross said.

Part of what he shares is the sexual abuse he suffered in a foster home on the journey, in hopes that if anyone has suffered the same abuse, they might feel better about dealing with it. Gross never told his parents.

"I love to talk to students and give a message of hope," he said.

He told them when he's watching a documentary on Nazi Germany, "I get furious," adding that if his wife sees him watching, she shuts the program off.

Asked by a student how he feels when he sees Adolph Hitler's picture, Gross said, "I get angry."

He told students there were 1.5 million children killed in the Holocaust, and if you multiply each family by four, that's how many more Jewish people there would be in the world.

Although he lost family in the Holocaust, no one in his immediate family was killed. However, they spent years on the run through France to avoid capture, and eventually sought refuge in Switzerland, where his grandmother had moved under unusual circumstances.

They hid in castles, barns, basements, and in many cases had the help of other families.

"The Italians played a major role in saving many Jewish people in the south of France," he said. "It was tough. I had a tough time growing up," he said, adding that it affected his sociability during his teen years, even though that was long after the war.

The ordeal began in May 1940, when the Gross family awoke one morning in their apartment in Antwerp to the sound of explosions.

The German troops hadn't reached Antwerp, so the family left for a coastal town, leaving most everything behind.

The journey down the coast was tense. They were strafed by German machine guns, and at one point his mother threw him into a ditch and covered him with her body.

To stay ahead of Hitler's army, they went to Paris, then Bordeaux, and at one point took a taxi to the Spanish border, hoping they could cross, but were told they'd never make it because the Gestapo was already there.

Told by International Red Cross workers they could be transported by bus to a restful village, they were instead taken to an internment camp.

A week later, brother Sammy, then 16, escaped by saying he needed to go to the infirmary, then casually strolled away. Sammy went to town and made a compelling case to a government official for his family to be released. Sammy was successful, and they were dropped off at an abandoned castle.

"My brother Sammy is my hero because he saved our lives," Gross said.

They left the camp, but the roller coaster would continue, as the French government had issued an anti-Semetic degree, giving local police the authority to arrest Jews.

From there, they fled to the French Riviera -- his father had money from the black market diamond business and gambling -- but two years later their hotel was raided.

At one point, his parents hid in a basement apartment and Leo and Fred were sent to separate foster homes. That is when Gross was sexually abused by an older boy in the foster family, he said.

The family was reunited about a year later, in September 1943, then escaped to Switzerland. They needed to have relatives there to enter the country, and by a weird twist they did -- Gross' maternal grandmother.

She was there was because she had abandoned her daughter -- Gross' mother -- when she was a teenager. The grandmother had fallen in love with a man while traveling in Germany, and he said they could marry, but he didn't want the teen. So the grandmother put Gross' mother in an orphanage.

"That was pure luck; if it hadn't been for my grandmother, I wouldn't be here," Gross said.

They lived with their grandmother until 1946 before coming to America and settling in New York.

"I think the book acted as a catharsis for me. It was therapeutic," he said.

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