81-year-old Holocaust survivor tracks down kin of soldier that saved him as a child

A Holocaust survivor who was saved from a concentration camp has finally met the family of a U.S. soldier who gave him an American flag as he fled - the only memento he has from his childhood.

“I said this man was going to be a part of my family,” Stephan Ross, 81, said of the now-deceased serviceman, Steve Sattler, according to the Boston Globe.

“And now we have found them. Not the man but his family. It’s a wonderful feeling in my heart,” he said.

Ross finally had the opportunity to give the flag back to Sattler’s family this Veteran’s Day, 67 years after his unforgettable encounter with the soldier.

Ross, then about 14-years-old, was emaciated, infested with lice, and severely beaten down when he met Sattler just outside the gates of the Dachau concentration camp during the 1945 liberation.

“He wasn’t scared he was going to get my lice, my diseases,” Ross said of Sattler, a member of the 191st Tank Battalion, one of the troops that freed the prisoners from Dachau on April 29, 1945.


Sattler gave his rations to the young boy and then handed him his handkerchief adorned with the stars and stripes.

Ever since then, Ross, who came to the U.S. in 1948 through the U.S. Committee for Orphaned Children, has wondered what became of the kind soldier.

Now a resident of Newton, Mass., Ross even appeared on the show “Unsolved Mysteries,” hoping that he would find Sattler.

The soldier’s granddaughter saw the program, which reminded her of a story her grandfather used to tell her, and decided to give Ross a call.

“It’s amazing how things worked out for us to get connected,” Sattler’s son, Jim Sattler, told the Tuscola County Advertiser. “God had his finger on these two men back then and now. It is touching … unbelievably touching.”

Steve Sattler, a Purple Heart recipient, returned to live on his farm in Unionville, Mich., following World War II. The father of six died in 1986 at age 70.

Ross, who lost his entire family in the Holocaust save one brother, thanked both the Sattler family and all WWII veterans during Sunday’s emotional meeting in Boston. Several of Sattler’s kids and grandkids were in attendance.

“I hate to think of what would have happened to us if you had not come at the time you did,” Ross said of the veterans. “You, the GI Joes, spoke the first kind words to us in years. You held in your arms living skeletons too weak to walk too weak to eat, and (nearly) too weak to live.”

By Christine Roberts / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS