I was born near Baku, Azerbaijan as my family was fleeing from the German army during World War II. After the war, as Holocaust survivors, we eventually escaped the Soviet Union to refugee collection centers in Poland and were transferred to several displaced persons camps in Austria, where we remained for three years trying to obtain visas to immigrate to the United States. I arrived at age 7 with my family in the United States, unable to speak English, and went through the public-school system in South Bend, Indiana from kindergarten through high school. I graduated as a high school valedictorian, attended the University of Chicago as an undergraduate and Purdue University where I received a PhD in Biochemistry.

From the time I was a child, I developed a passion for collecting stories and photographs of my extensive and exceptional family history. As an adult, and while fully engaged in my professional activities, I conducted myriad interviews of survivors and my family, extensively documented all their photographs and history, and have conducted presentations on them. Since retirement, I have produced a 4 DVD video-documentary of my family’s history and used that material as a basis for writing my book. While I consider the book a memoir, it could easily fit into the genre of a nonfiction narrative. While there are a number of historical fiction books describing events of this era, there are few authors remaining that survived these experiences that can describe them with such detail and veracity and relate them to current times. While I could have grown up to be a goat herder in Azerbaijan, my progression from those horrible times to becoming a top scientist adds an interesting and unusual thread to this story.

getbook.at/StoryKeeper

Beyond expectations from my unique beginnings, I worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 30 years becoming a Senior Vice President and Chief Science Officer with global responsibilities and chairing an international world-class scientific advisory board. My expertise was in the application of science to industrial processing for the development of advanced therapeutics, especially in the treatment of life-threatening congenital inherited diseases. I developed several “First-in-Class” products that have been registered and distributed globally. I have been invited and participated in industry conferences as a keynote speaker and presented in venues around the world.