"My favorite dreams are in my head now in this book and they have been said pain and suffering make little sense but at least we can all have Resilience. Avoid the mistake of following the past so that we can have humanity last please head this message loud and clear my hope for peace will soon be here"

Resilience The Book Stories of Young Holocaust Survivors by Cheryl Reibel

Hardcover & Digital

The Author’s Story

Hearing these stories in line at the bakery, supermarket and around their dining room table Cheryl sat and listened intently as her mother spoke to her friends. Cheryl vividly remembers the touching details and anecdotes that resonated from her own childhood.

"I knew it was important to preserve these stories and personal accounts, and I wanted to share them in a way that was unlike any other." The approach of storytelling through poignant art and poetry vividly illustrates the impact of the Holocaust on young lives.

“We are all one and we must never forget,”— Cheryl Reibel, Author

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The Book

Resilience is a 54 page full-color book that belongs on coffee tables, in classrooms, libraries, museums and exibitions across the US and globally. For lovers of fine art, the detailed multi-media illustrations capture the undeniable spirit of survival during one of the darkest periods in history. 

For Holocaust researchers and readers, experiencing this book provides moving perspective that’s unseen in most period literature. For all people, in addition to Jewish families and their descendants, Resilience offers a connection to the past regardless of race, culture, gender, age or situation. For everyone, the message of Resilience is one that transcends history and all barriers.

“Many young people today who are now third-generation Holocaust survivors never got the chance to meet or interact with their surviving grandparents and families, and as survivors age, the anecdotal stories fade away,” Cheryl said. “It is my hope that Resilience spurs family conversations, where the stories told are inspirational and experiences are shared.”

  “The flowers of their courage will not wither"

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"A Masterpiece"

The poems in Resilience are about Jewish children in Germany, Poland, and other areas of Eastern Europe enduring the events of the Holocaust (1941-1945 CE. ) They were, of course, not the only children who suffered during the war: from Western Europe to Africa, World War II’s atrocities traumatized children throughout the world.


 “Deeply moving stories brought to life like never before.”


 The suffering and death proved too much for many people - they despaired. However, for the children in these poems, they found hope in suffering, endured, and even fought back.Their experiences are varied: Some children escaped, others were forced to survive the horrors of the concentration camps. Many hid. But they survived.


“An important piece of Holocaust history vividly captured through poetry and art.”


These poems speak with the voices of survivors of the Holocaust, but they also speak for other survivors. The poems in Resilience are about hope despite atrocity, love despite cruelty, and about finding the strength within and surviving. Even when others try to break you down, be they an invading army, bullying class or workmates, abusive parents, or even yourself, you have this same strength within you.Through the power of poetry, you can have this strength and find your own Resilience.

Excerpts

Resilience - Historical Video

Bring Resilience to Your City

  • Bring Resilience to Your City

    Nothing impacts the senses more than art, and our traveling exhibition will bring our original oils, inspirational artwork to Holocaust museums, universities, and places of worship. Do you want to remember the tragedy, while inspiring resilience and hope?

  • Holocaust Education

    Cheryl Reibel is an experienced educator who has taken Resilience on the road. Her hour long classroom appearances galvanize your students into an awareness that inspires empathy, and awareness for the history of the Holocaust.

    Bulk Purchases At A Discount for Schools and Non-Profits When You Contact me Via E-mail At The Bottom Of This Website

  • Resilience Curriculum

    Educational materials in the form of teacher’s guides and curriculum are available. The author and artist are available to guide you along the journey of the exhibit, and not only teach about the Holocaust from a position of truth, but to also engage middle school through college aged students and inspire them with amazing courageous stories of resilience of young Holocaust survivors.

Biography

As I grew up, no story could ever compare what I heard around the dining room table and in the little park across the street from the school, told by people I thought of as my own family.

When I approached my artist, McLean Fletcher, about illustrating my poetry collection, she was intrigued by the beautiful brevity and simplicity of the poetry, as well as its authentic childlike voice. McLean is an artist, dancer, and actor working out of Washington, D.C, and has engaged in the arts since she was 3 years old. The poems resonated with her inner child, and, while creating the illustrations for “Resilience,” McLean imagined the young survivors themselves writing the poems and paintings as a way to cope with the immense hardships they faced. She has received a write up in the World Curators list of emerging contemporary artists. She is available to come in as well. In her art, she gave an interpretation that could be understood as well. Before she created the originals, she had no awareness of the Holocaust.

Each page next to each story, was left open for the reader to have the option to write, illustrate, or create their personal thoughts of the story. Parents and teachers have an opportunity to read them and detect any thoughts of isolation, bullying or unhappiness of the story.

The result is a collection of 37 (this number resulted from 2 times the number of 18, translated as Life in Hebrew plus 1 extra for the count to identify a new generation that resulted from all the 2 lives that survived) poems. These poems capture and evoke the innocence and inner strength of these children, surviving even as the Nazis sought to crush both their hope and their lives.

It is a good thing that I captured these stories when I did, though, because we are starting to forget.

Resilience a universal book has been taught in inner city schools, Jewish, Catholic and public schools. It can be found in the Washington DC Holocaust Museum, The Museum of Tolerance, Simon Wiensenthal Center, Jewish National Fund and Yad Vashem and the Amsterdam Jewish Muesuem.

It has been more than 70 years since the Holocaust and, one by one, we are losing our survivors to the march of time. This decade may well be the last where we will be able to hear their stories from their own lips. We are losing these wells of strength, wisdom, and humanity, and, already, we are making the mistake of following the past. But we have a choice: We can learn from it, instead.

The Resilience Project seeks to keep the stories of these incredible survivors alive by connecting the past and the present. Join me in fostering tolerance, kindness, and healing through art. Let’s create a world where the tragedy of the Holocaust can, truly, never happen again -- to anyone.

Cheryl's book now is being translated into three other languages for distribution in Germany and South America. She has been speaking at universities, schools and organizations to make young people aware of the history of hate for no reason, on unity, open mindedness and individual thinking.

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