Meant To Be by Roslyn Franken – Roslyn Franken, a native Montrealer who is an author and motivational speaker, has an interesting story of survival to tell in her latest book Meant To Be.
It’s an amazing story of survival against all odds from both the European and Pacific theatres of World War II. Her father John, who was born in Indonesia, was a recruit for the Dutch Navy in the Dutch East Indies during the war when he was captured and held as a prisoner of war by the Japanese. Her mother Sonja was born in the Netherlands and when the Nazis invaded Holland in 1940, she was put in a slave labor camp and later sent to Auschwitz. But what makes their separate survival stories so amazing were the somewhat fortunate circumstances that befell upon them that enabled their survival. John was sent to Nagasaki to work in the mines there; in fact, he was working deep in the mines when the U.S. dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki in August of 1945; Sonja was sent to certain death in the gas chambers of Auschwitz three times and it was during those three times she escaped that certain death (including one instance of the chamber running out of the deadly zyklon B gas when it was her turn, and was sent back to barracks with her group).
Ms. Franken attributes these strokes of luck in the lives of her father and mother on opposite ends of this deadly conflict to a simple concept: meant to be. In fact, this concept dominates the reasons how and why her parents met (which led to their marriage in 1960), and how the entire family faced and successfully conquered other personal challenges, including a major heart attack and two battles with cancer.
As well, the book also serves as a motivational and inspirational text to how one can survive adversity and challenges not only through meant to be, but also through other life concept such as the power of appreciation, the power of perseverance, and the power of choice.
Roslyn Franken has given us an awe-inspiring, incredible story of love and survival with Meant To Be that will leave you not only with a feeling of inspiration, but a feeling of amazement at how such simple, positive attitudes can lead to overcoming things when the odds can sometimes be overwhelmingly against you. As Ms. Franken writes in the conclusion of her book:
If people around the world could use their conscious might for desired good, believe that miracles are available to us if we also make ourselves available to them, and remember that things are perhaps meant to be, then this world could be a better place.
(10-Q Publishing, $18)
