Searching Survivor: Volume II

This, the second volume, has a temperament uniquely different from volume one. It leaves behind Germany and the Holocaust to take up the story in the United States where Marion became a citizen and found a satisfying career as a registered nurse. Her daughter Karen had grown up and Marion, by then divorced, remarried my father. After their marriage in 1980 they began a life together that would continue as a perpetual, exotic honeymoon. As dad tells it: Marion was enjoying her freedom and advancing her career. Everything was going her way then dad entered her life with the invitation: Marion Dear, let me take you away from all this. And so he did! As Marion s stepdaughter I have listened to her and my father converse about their experiences many times, perhaps before the fireplace at home or informally in casual conversation. My respect and admiration for Marion was reinforced many times over as I read her memoirs, chronicled here for all who will read her story. The intimate details in volume two are woven together with common sense and human sensitivity, and enriched with cultural experiences. Marion and Dad became unfettered spirits, almost careless of life and limb as they embarked into Middle Eastern ways of life, observing how ancient nomadic habits have wormed their way into modern civilization. The foibles and frailties of my stepmother and father are offset with a vitality that may keep the reader spellbound from the first page to the last. Most importantly, Marion draws from the heart of her story humble examples that echo throughout, explaining how Divine intervention guided many events, how prayers were answered before they were asked, and how the final moments of distressing circumstances could undergo miraculous change. She had been born into a religious German Jewish family, but even at a tender age she was questioning its ritual and asking, Where is God? She did not know just then how much she would come to rely upon Jeremiah 29:13-14: You will seek me and find me. When you seek Me with your whole heart I will be found by you. Her story is not only about her experiences as a Holocaust survivor in volume one or about her romantic adventures in volume two; it is about her search for God and accepting His forgiveness with the gift of life from Jesus Christ, the Jewish Messiah. These two books are a testament of the search she has felt compelled to share with you, and the answer is articulated as volume two ends the search to her father s challenge: Naber, there is a God, but you will have to find Him yourself. Helen Gwendolyn Gerhard Loving Stepdaughter