L'Chaim: Margit Chinkes’ Holocaust Survivor Story

Margit lived but did not tell her story. How a fourteen-year-old German girl in Frankfurt am Main was picked up by the Gestapo in 1944, endured and survived the horrors of the Holocaust, rescued herself, and went on to lead a seemingly perfect life in the United States, was a story she left to her daughter, the author, to discover. This unique account is unembellished beyond ascertainable facts but as riveting as any Holocaust novel. Margit’s several cards and letters written from the detention center and the concentration camp are heartrending but reveal an inner strength that carried her through the ordeal.The backstory of how Angie Osborne, motivated by her faith and grandchildren, traveled to Europe to uncover her mother’s story from only a few fragments nearly twenty years after Margit’s death is awe inspiring. This story will resonate with anyone intrigued by personal stories of World War II, students of that history, especially adolescents, and is a lesson of the price innocents pay in a world ruled by ethnic and racial division.

Includes photos, maps, and numerous documents from Margit’s personal history. Three appendices.