In the 1990s, my father printed and bound more than a dozen booklets filled with simple affirmations like, “Now is a good time to be loving. There is never a good time to be unloving.” I never appreciated them before working on Quest for Eternal Sunshine, because I didn’t yet understand the transformative power of constantly choosing to seek out and embrace all that is good, loving, and kind.

For many decades after the war, Mendek suffered from unrelenting depression, nightmares, and emotional isolation. He meekly accepted this painful existence as his inescapable fate until he reached middle age, when he suddenly became determined to liberate himself from what he termed the “concentrate camp” of his mind.

Perhaps the life force within my father that compelled him to push through more than one thousand torturous days as a starving slave laborer in Nazi concentration camps was the same force behind his quest for eternal sunshine. No matter the hardships he faced, something drove him to choose life over and over again.

Holocaust Days of Remembrance will be celebrated on April 21th, and this year is the 75th anniversary of liberation. As I mourn the dozens of close family members who were murdered by the Nazis along with millions of others, I also reflect upon the fact that I would not be here if both my parents hadn’t had the strength and determination to survive, and that they would not be here if not for numerous acts of courage and kindness during, and soon after, that terrible time. They received help from family and friends who loved them or felt a personal obligation, and also from people they didn’t know—men and women whose hearts were big enough to be brave and generous even in the midst of terror and cruelty.

All of us are descended from ancestors who survived wars, famines, and plagues, and in this pandemic, we are adding to their stories of strength and resilience. I am in awe of the heroes among us—nurses, doctors, bus drivers, grocery store clerks, farmworkers, and my friend who brings homemade soup to her neighbor with cancer.

As my father wrote, “In a world of sadness and madness, we can all be islands of hope and love.”

With wishes for peace, health and love,

Myra