(JTA) — Gross told CBS news program “60 Minutes” that he “had to do three things in order to survive” each day in Cuban jail. “I thought about my family that survived the Holocaust, I exercised religiously every day, and I found something every day to laugh at,” he told journalist Scott Pelley, in his first interview since being released last December. Gross, 66, of Rockville, Maryland, a contractor for the United States Agency for International Development, had traveled to Cuba numerous times as part of a project to connect the Communist-governed island’s small Jewish community to the Internet. On his fifth trip, he was taken into custody and accused of crimes against the state. Gross was released on Dec. 17, the first day of Chanukah, as part of a larger diplomatic agreement between the United States and Cuba.