In MEANT TO BE, author Roslyn Franken reveals the unforgettable true story of her parents, John and Sonja Franken – two unlikely survivors of World War II.
While John, a young Dutch naval recruit in the Dutch East Indies, is captured at sea by the Japanese and must fight for his life as a POW, Sonja is taken by the Nazis from her home in The Netherlands to endure the horrors of Auschwitz and other Holocaust concentration camps. Remarkably, John survives the Nagasaki atomic bomb and miraculously, Sonja escapes death in the gas chambers on three separate occasions.
After suffering endless tests of faith and fortitude at the hands of their brutal captors on opposite sides of the world, the war ends and the two are brought together in the most extraordinary of circumstances to rebuild their lives as one based on love, trust and commitment.
When Sonja is diagnosed with cancer and John suffers a massive heart attack, they triumph once again by calling on the same daring and determination that allowed them to survive the war.
When diagnosed with cancer at 29, Roslyn turns to her parents’ examples of daring and determination as inspiration in her own fight to beat cancer and become a long-term survivor.
