The Strength of Hope: A Holocaust Survivor's Guide to Love and Life

One of the most uplifting stories you will ever read. Abram Goldberg is a beacon of joy and optimism, and a master of keeping perspective.

The day Abram and his mother arrived at Auschwitz death camp they both knew it would be her last. In their final moment together, Abram’s mum urged her nineteen-year-old son to ‘do everything humanly possible to survive, and tell people what happened here’. Then she was taken to a gas chamber and murdered. Abram had already endured and survived so much until that moment, but with his strength of hope, sometimes reduced to a flicker, he survived.

After liberation, Abram eventually found his way to Belgium, where he met the love of his life, fellow Auschwitz survivor Cesia. The young couple came to Australia, where that flicker of hope grew as bright as the sun, illuminating everything they touched and everyone who came into their sphere. Without bitterness and always with perspective, Abram has never forgotten his mother’s last words to him. And in their seventy-five years of marriage, Abram and Cesia have remained dedicated to educating people about the Holocaust and to living their lives to the fullest in tribute to its victims.

The Strength of Hope is full of wisdom, insight and daring, but at its heart it is a love story: for Cesia, for Australia and for life itself.

All royalties to the Melbourne Holocaust Museum, where Abram has volunteered since it was founded in 1984.