Man's Search for Meaning

On my recent trip to Texas, my nephew suggested I read Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning."

I knew this book was on my reading list from years gone by. I remember shelving it in our hospital library, but hearing my nephew suggest reading it, I could not wait to borrow Frankl's books from the library.

A quote by Nietzsche, cited in the book, is as follows:

             "He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how."

I have been thinking much about these words in relation to my father who lost his first wife and beautiful 9 year-old, blond-haired, blue-eyed daughter --- or more specifically, neither wife or child are documented on any reliable list after September 3, 1944, after arriving in concentration camp Stutthof  from Auschwitz.

My "lost" sister was a member of a group now called "The Last 500."

Frankl, a psychiatrist survivor of the Shoah (Holocaust), presents much information which sounds familiar, things my father told me or I somehow assimilated? Frankl understands survival, what survival involves, and has first-hand knowledge of being a slave laborer and concentration camp inmate.

My father told me he survived as wanted to tell the world what had happened, but after the war he felt that no one would believe what had happened, no one would believe our family's story, no one would believe the horrors of the Holocaust.

I am rereading Frankl's book which is reminding me of the many things buried deep in my own mind, things my father had told me which I did not document. Frankl verifies what I knew, but expresses it much better in words than I can. He gives me the gift of understanding what was needed to survive, in addition to physical strength and luck.

If you are interested in the mindset of survivors and those who did not, you might wish to read Frankl's
book(s).

A big  Texas "Thank You," to our dear nephew, our niece made an incredible choice in choosing him as her soul mate!

Thanks for Joining the Search for a Lost Sister

Incredible that publishing "Walk Forward," which is one of my last hopes in finding my sister who was lost in the Shoah (Holocaust), has led me to finding a new cousin, a new friend who was with my sister on the journey in various concentration camps, and the grave of my father's beloved youngest brother, Leo Chimowicz, in the "New Jewish Cemetery" in Prague.

I wish to thank the many readers in the UK, USA, and Australia who have not only read "Walk Forward," but have sent leads. I am grateful for the help in the search for my lost sister and any and all information leading to more information. I am impatiently waiting for the results of DNA testing as my father said, "If anyone comes to you one day and says she is your sister, you must believe her." My sister lives on in the book and in your hearts. Many thanks to those of you who have taken the time to read each of the chapters in "A different kind of Schindler's List," my lifelong search for my lost sister.

"Walk Forward" is not one story, but a series of chapters put together over a 20 year period, with the hope that if my sister is out there, she will read the book, and feel confident in contacting me. Each chapter is merely a piece of the complex puzzle. If my older sister, Eugenia (Genia) Chimowicz, is not out there, the book keeps her memory alive along with her young cousins. The 1.5 million children who were robbed of their childhood and systematically murdered, having been born at a wrong time and in the wrong place, have nothing to be remembered by, but perhaps a book, book trailer, or a movie.

No matter what you read or how incredible it might seem, we do not yet know the fate of my sister, Eugenia Chimowicz, a beautiful 9 year old, with blond hair and blue eyes. We have no proof to date that she was murdered in 1944. My father did not believe that his firstborn was killed, he did not declare his child as "dead," and he did not light a memory candle for her. She lived in his heart and survives in the minds of her three younger sisters, each lucky to have been born after the Second World War.

We have discovered some encouraging facts;  Eugenia was the only blond-haired girl in the group now called, "The Last 500," and not everyone's hair was shaved off in concentration camp Auschwitz.