Richard Wiener

Sense of Time Richard Wiener

My life has been a journey from
victimhood to life affirmation. A
child survivor of the Holocaust, I
lived for six years under the Nazi
regime, and, as the only Jew in my
school, was harassed by my Hitler
Youth classmates on a daily basis.
In November 1938, my father
was shipped off to concentration
camp, and I witnessed the destruction of my home by Nazi
thugs. A few months before the outbreak of World War II,
I escaped to England with the famous Kindertransport and,
when the bombs began falling on London, I was evacuated
with my school and lived for a year with an English foster
family. In 1940, at the height of the Atlantic U-boat
campaign, I sailed for New York with my parents. After
service in the U. S. Army, I worked my way around the west
at hard labor jobs, then studied at Columbia and Princeton,
and ultimately became an international patent lawyer. My
original ambition, to become a novelist, was not fulfilled.
I live in Rockville, Maryland, am divorced, and have two
children and two grandchildren. I have traveled widely and
consider myself a citizen of the world. In my 80s now, I
am active in The ManKind Project, a mens organization
conducting transformational trainings on four continents, as
a community leader, group facilitator and mentor. Having
been honored by my German home town, and having
experienced reconciliation with my former Hitler classmates,
I now speak widely on that subject, and conduct a workshop
called The Power of Forgiveness. While I have never
experienced "survivor guilt," I do attempt to conduct my life
so as to be worthy of my survival.