Messages (Paperback) | Released: 07 Feb 2014

Eugene Heimler, in his captivatingly poetic style, takes you with him on a life-transforming journey through seas of imagination and rivers of tears; from storms of pain to pools of individual and communal wisdom as well as deep inside his self and yours.His universal and autobiographical stories, like the vivid colors on the canvas of a water-color artist, flow and dynamically blend time dimensions into an expanding, cohesive whole.The diversity of genre, time and metaphor is startling and reveals multiple layers of our physical, emotional and spiritual reality. The author transcends time as he interweaves past, present and future into a tapestry of deep meaning and passion, stained by blood and marked by tears and joy.This book is about the author's journey of losing, searching and re-finding his own identity and place in his physical, emotional and spiritual worlds.In his 'stream of consciousness' musings Heimler crosses time from biblical through medieval to modern human experiences of transformation through pain to self-discovery.This artful intimate intertwining of personal, particular and universal themes draws the reader into Heimler's awe-inspiring multi-layered world of courageous introspection. Messages illuminates how Heimler, as a Holocaust survivor, struggles to re-discover meaning, purpose and passion from his once shattered world.Working through these challenges leads him to existential questions about the very meaning of life: What are the connections between life and what we call death?How can meaning transcend suffering?How can we find peace if we deny our worst hours?How can we understand all the hatred that surrounds us? How can hate be turned into creativity instead of self-destructiveness?What can keep our love and our ability to love alive in the midst of atrocities or indifference?Come, join this remarkable man in his quest for eternal wisdom!
About the Author: Eugene Heimler was born on March 27, 1922 in Szombathely, Hungary the son of a lawyer and prominent member of the social-democratic party. He became a successful poet in Hungary with two volumes of poetry published before he was twenty. At age 21 he was deported to Auschwitz and Buchenwald and survived with the help of his happy memories about his childhood and his beloved mother, who had died after a long illness shortly before the start of World War II. His wife Eva, his father, sister and her little son were murdered in Auschwitz. In 1946 he married Lily, née Salgo. At her untimely death (1984) she left two children, Susan and George. In 1947 Heimler immigrated to England. Soon after he received his diploma as the first psychiatric social worker from Manchester University, he began to develop his own social-integrative method, which became well known in Europe, America and Canada under the name of Heimler Method of Social Functioning. Later on he returned to Germany in order to teach young Germans his unique approach in which frustration and suffering are used as potential for satisfaction and creativity, and as the means to find purpose and meaning in life. He became Consultant for the Ministry of Social Security in England, the World Health Organization and the Government of the United States of America. For 20 years he taught his subject at the University of London, England and his fame lead to chairs at several universities in the USA and Canada. In 1985 Heimler received an honorary doctorate from the University of Calgary, Canada, where he had taught his subject for 17 years. On the day marking the 40th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe, he married Miriam Bracha with whom he spent the last, very happy and fulfilled years of his life. Heimler died on December 4th, 1990.