Survivor Biography

"I want you to like me, to think I am the most beautiful, the smartest, the thinnest...." With these words, Abby Kelly encapsulates the overwhelming struggle of her 15-year bout with anorexia. Beginning in her teenage years when the predatory lies of the disease took root in her psyche as she felt pressured from family and peers for not being "enough", Abby lays bare the reality of anorexia.

What is the most baffling period in our lives? Not childhood, not old age, but the decades of our 40s and 50s, the period now generously known as middle age. It's both an occasion for regret and an opportunity for coming to terms, the moment when we come up against our limits and discover, for better and worse, who we are.

Through the lens of the natural world around her, the young cancer survivor reveals the intensely private and deeply emotional aspects of fighting for her life. Sometimes with a pinch of humor but always with raw honesty, she holds on to bright hope that warmly invites you to share in her journey.

When Leah Cik Roth decides to write memoirs for her children, writer Menucha Meinstein walks into her life as a volunteer. The two develop the deepest of human bonds as together they uncover Leah's lifelong bitterness and suppressed Holocaust memories. Through soul writing, they struggle to relive Leah's stories, revealing heroic patterns of resilience from the young age of five. Her memories bring out fresh pain and renewed feelings of loss and loneliness. The Holocaust is merely a backdrop to Leah's life. Together, the two women share joy in the legacy that Leah leaves for the world.

When she was a young girl, Jadie (and her missionary family) experienced a brutal attack while on the island of Palau in the South Pacific. That one hellish night left her physically, emotionally, and spiritually damaged. Jadie had the choice to live the life of a victim or to walk the hard road of healing that leads to wholeness in Christ. Though she faced physical injury, emotional scarring (including avoidance, memory loss, and regression), and spiritual attacks, Echoes of Darkness is a story of hope.

One night in April 2014, members of the terrorist organization Boko Haram raided the small town of Chibok in northeast Nigeria and abducted 276 young girls from the local boarding school. The event caused massive, international outrage. Using the hashtag "Bring Back Our Girls", politicians, activists, and celebrities from all around the world - among them First Lady Michelle Obama and Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai - protested.

This powerful memoir tells the inspiring journey of a blind woman who survived years of abuse, homelessness, and betrayal—only to rise stronger than ever. After enduring physical, emotional, and psychological torment at the hands of those she trusted, she found the strength to escape, rebuild her life, and reclaim her power. Through faith, resilience, and an unbreakable spirit, she transforms from a victim to a survivor, proving that no matter how deep the darkness is, there is always a path to freedom, healing, and hope.

The life story of a Holocaust survivor: his prewar childhood in Czechoslovakia, his experiences in eight Nazi concentration camps, his liberation and emigration to the US, and his career as a General Motors engineer, a Christian minister, and a consummate teacher. For Walter Ziffer, who today considers himself a Jewish secular humanist, life has always been a search for meaning. His compelling and insightful memoir distills the experiences of a remarkable man.

After being sexually assaulted at four, Angelia Robinson grew up with an identity crisis so acute that she didn't even know how to properly spell her name until she was 12. Her autobiography, Who R U?, describes a middle-class broken little girl from Maryland, who is transformed over the course of 48 years, and a fearless woman who would be used to help transform the world.

Follow the winding path of a Jewish refugee turned US Army interrogator who ends up processing Nazi scientists during WWII. Fred Michel was a teenager when he escaped Nazi Germany with his family. When war broke out, he was drafted and trained at Camp Ritchie, a high level intelligence center. He ended up at an obscure fort along the Potomac River known only as P.O. Box 1142.

After a year-long battle with Stage-4C Colon Cancer, 48-year-old Lisa finally heard the words she had been hoping for: no visible sign of disease. Chemotherapy and radiation treatments were over, she was technically disease free, and it was time to celebrate that success. She never expected how difficult it would be to transition from colon cancer patient to colon cancer survivor.

Assigned to the 504th Bombardment Group in the Pacific Theater, Hanley became a flight engineer on a B-29 bomber squad. On his seventh mission, he and his crew were shot down over Japan. In Accused War Criminal, Hanley shares his experiences from his training and commissioning to his deployment on a failed mission that led to his capture. He recounts how he managed to survive as a prisoner of war until his eventual rescue and recovery. With candid honesty and telling details, this is a humbling and harrowing tale of one man's bravery under unimaginable circumstances.

At the 16 week foetal stage, Paul Whymark’s brain development was frozen as a consequence of the drug, Thalidomide. His journey is one of considerable self discovery, but also reveals greater societal insights. “16 Weeks and Everything After...” uncovers the remarkable fact that over the last 50-60 years the establishment has failed to genuinely independently review Thalidomide, and as a consequence, harms on developing life continue to have the potential to occur into the future.

Georgiana White isn’t a self-help guru or spiritual leader. She doesn’t have a degree in psychology, nor is she a licensed therapist. But, she is an expert in survival. In Whispers of Hope, she narrates her story, a story of hope and resilience of the human spirit. Beginning in her childhood and continuing through the years, White shares the lessons she’s learned during her journey as she unravels the memories of trauma.

There was a place far worse than Changi - Singapore's Outram Road Gaol. Deprivation here was so extreme that there really was a fate worse than death. Stubborn Buggers is the story of 12 Australian POWs who fought and survived the battle for Malaya, then captivity and slave labour, followed by the unimaginable hardships of Outram Road Gaol.

It is a story of how they dealt with the brutality of the Japanese military police, the feared Kempeitai.

Dark skies and barbed wire fences were all Bluma Plaskovsky saw as she stepped down from the train onto the main platform of Auschwitz-Birkenau. After surviving the Wehrmacht’s decimation of her hometown, Bluma and what remained of her family were finally put on the long, harsh train ride through inhuman conditions that seemed to last an eternity.

Jason Sommer's father, Jay, is ninety-eight years old and losing his memory. More than seventy years after arriving in New York from WWII-torn Europe, he is forgetting the stories that defined his life, the life of his family, and the lives of millions of Jews who were affected by Nazi terror. Observing this loss, Jason vividly recalls the trip to Eastern Europe the two took together in 2001.

Paul Weigel’s life always felt hard. Throughout his isolated childhood, with distant and detached parents, losing his college sweetheart in a horrible tragedy, and enduring the unexpected death of his father, Weigel spent his life in despair. It all just hurt. Everything changed when his daughter was born. From day one, Weigel and his daughter shared an incredible bond. She was a constant source of peace and inspiration to him, and he was determined to give her the love and security he’d never had.

December 1944, whilst heavy snows fall over Budapest and soldiers battle for the streets, Georgina, a young Jewish woman, is nearly starving to death with her newborn son. The battle outside is one of the most savage in the entire war. She knows that to go into the streets is virtually a death sentence or rape, but she must find food within the next few hours, or her baby will certainly die. For Georgina, there is no choice. Alone and completely vulnerable, she heads out into the freezing cold.

Hope Through Cancer is a unique book about a cancer survivor's journey with hope. Faith, my wife, has ovarian cancer. She can close her eyes and see a mental image of a path, calm waters, shade, light, and hope. We turned this into an official painting about her journey that she mentally envisioned and was created by me. The painting is an artist's perception of a survivor's journey with hope in the light of Psalm 23. She has found the 23rd psalm to be in harmony with each aspect of her journey finding a new life, having settled fear about death.