Sense of Time

My life has been a journey from victimhood to life affirmation. A child survivor of the Holocaust, I lived for six years under the Nazi regime, and, as the only Jew in my school, was harassed by my Hitler Youth classmates on a daily basis. In November 1938, my father was shipped off to concentration camp, and I witnessed the destruction of my home by Nazi thugs. A few months before the outbreak of World War II, I escaped to England with the famous Kindertransport and, when the bombs began falling on London, I was evacuated with my school and lived for a year with an English foster family. In 1940, at the height of the Atlantic U-boat campaign, I sailed for New York with my parents. After service in the U.S. Army, I worked my way around the west at hard labor jobs, then studied at Columbia and Princeton, and ultimately became an international patent lawyer. My original ambition, to become a novelist, was not fulfilled. I live in Rockville, Maryland, am divorced, and have two children and two grandchildren. I have traveled widely and consider myself a citizen of the world. In my 80s now, I am active in The ManKind Project, a mens organization conducting transformational trainings on four continents, as a community leader, group facilitator and mentor. Having been honored by my German home town, and having experienced reconciliation with my former Hitler classmates, I now speak widely on that subject, and conduct a workshop called The Power of Forgiveness. While I have never experienced "survivor guilt," I do attempt to conduct my life so as to be worthy of my survival.