Jamie Metzl

My father and grandparents technically are Holocaust survivors, and now all are deceased.

They weren't in a camp.

My father was born in Austria in 1938.

They escaped to Switzerland at the end of 1938, were displaced persons for 10 years, and then came to the United States.

So for my whole life, I've always felt the accident and the opportunity and the responsibility of that history.

And so I even wrote about this in my first novel.

There's one idealistic character who says that his mission is to stare into the darkness.

It doesn't end well for this character, but as a hero of the world, that the way to be an idealist

is not through isolation or blindness.

The way to be an idealist is to go to the hardest places and see what you can do and try to help people insofar as you can.

And so both in Cambodia, on the border, and in Cambodia, and in the former Yugoslavia, and in Afghanistan, where I actually was pretty active and I created a youth leadership network of these incredible Afghan young leaders, everywhere there's so much despair and so much hope.

In these dark places, in these difficult places, you see the worst of people and you see the best of people.

The Italian writer Primo Levi has a wonderful book, a wonderful, terrible book called Survival in Auschwitz, where he talks about being in Auschwitz.

And you see these extremes of humanity.

You see the absolute worst, not just humanity.

The Nazis, but even among the prisoners that these people who are it's like they become their worst.

And then you see the people like the Viktor Frankls and others who in these terrible environments are really being their best.

So for me, that's been I can't I'm not saying that I've lived up to that principle, but my goal for myself is to not avert my eyes.

to what's really difficult in the world and to dedicate as much of my life energy to saying, well, what can I do either to help or to inspire people or help people think or things like that?

I'm very proud that I've gotten pretty strong support for this book, both from the Vatican and