Lee Goldman Kikel Discusses “Perseverance”

In the late 1970s, over thirty years after most of his family was murdered during the Holocaust, Melvin Goldman sat down alone to record his life story on cassette tapes. From growing up in Poland before the war, to captivity in the ghetto and concentration camps, to liberation, healing, and moving to the United States, he detailed his painful journey and second chance for a good life. On one of the tapes, he requested his story be put into a book, realizing the magnitude of his experience.

Twenty years after Melvin’s death, his daughter, Lee Goldman Kikel, rediscovered the cassette tapes and listened to them for the first time. In an increasingly strained world with rising hatred, anti-Semitism, and genocide, Goldman Kikel found her father’s poignant words to be timely, troubling, and reassuring. As his only child, she immediately felt called to pursue his dream of telling his story to the world. Perseverance: One Holocaust Survivor’s Journey from Poland to America leaves his legacy and shows how someone who faced so much adversity decided to press on and be all that he could. This story of survival and fortunately beating the odds, is told by a man who had the wisdom and foresight to tell it himself.