Happy Anniversary!
It’s been two years since “Witness for My Father” was published on International Holocaust Remembrance Day!
First and foremost, your support and sharing of this story continues to make a tremendous impact and means the world to me!
January 27th honors all those who were murdered in the Holocaust, the same anniversary as Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp’s liberation in 1945. Ten days earlier, on January 17th, my father, Martin Weigen, was selected for the death march out of Auschwitz. Sadly, he was sent to Buchenwald, then to Dachau before he was liberated on April 27th. His strength and stamina to survive following the loss of his mother, sister and father resonate with me every day of my life. How did my father and other Jewish survivors get through this inhumane time? How does that translate to us today, surviving our own traumas?
Unbeknownst to me, my memorable author launch party on January 27th, 2020, Holocaust Remembrance Day, would be my last live gathering. The Florida Holocaust Museum called in March…we had to cancel, three days before my debut author talk.
The rest you all know too well. We shut down and shut ourselves in. I learned how to present my book virtually to museums, libraries, high schools, book clubs and community organizations.
Last night, I began reading a new book, Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult. the first entry quote made me pause. It was fitting for the theme that I’d wanted to explore with you, my readers, and I took it as a sign to do that this year. I’m sharing her book introduction:
“According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.”
-Leon C. Megginson
Stay tuned, I will be posting pictures from the launch party on my website soon, grateful to all of you for honoring my father’s story, honoring survivors, and remembering all those lost in The Holocaust.
Thank You!
Barbara