The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., has announced a gift of $17.2 million — its largest single gift to date — from the estate of Eric F. Ross, who died in 2010.

The gift will support the museum's endowment fund, for which the museum hopes to raise an additional $200 million over the next eight years. Ross and his late wife, Lore, both refugees from Nazi Germany, contributed more than $12 million to the museum during their lifetimes, including $5 million in 1998 to dedicate the Ross Administrative Center in memory of Eric Ross' parents, who were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Rosses also sponsored four challenge grants that raised more than $4 million for the museum and were the inaugural members of its Chairman's Circle.

Ross, who fled Germany in 1938, returned to Europe in 1942 as a soldier in the U.S. Army and received a Bronze Star for his service. After the war, he founded Alpha Chemical & Plastics in Newark, New Jersey, and later the Mercer Plastics Company in Florida. He sold both companies in 1985.

"Having experienced firsthand Nazi anti-Semitism and hatred, Eric and Lore Ross became determined and generous investors in Holocaust education," said museum director Sara J. Bloomfield. "Their loss and suffering inspired remarkable generosity."