The Sky Is Not the Limit
''WE ARE ALL MIRACLES,'' says Robert Otto Fisch, brushing the word away with his hands like a mosquito on a summer night. He is a Holocaust survivor, a doctor, an author, an artist, and somehow an optimist, yet still he isn't convinced he belongs to a select group. ''Stop on any street corner,'' he says, ''and you will find somebody extraordinary.'' And so we did, in a way, talking to many individuals whose struggles represent the best of the human spirit. What follows (including the journey of Dr. Fisch) are some of the most remarkable breakthroughs, quests, survival tales, and other amazing stories we've ever heard--from the extraordinary lives of ordinary Minnesotans....HopeRobert Otto Fisch has authored four books about his life, art, and Holocaust experience, includingThe Sky Is Not the Limit,a collection of his illustrations and aphorisms.''I was born in Budapest in 1925 and raised Jewish. In June 1944, when I was 19, and not long after the Germans occupied Hungary, I was sent to a ''working camp'' with 280 men. We built bridges. It was tough work, and the Nazis were rude to us. When they saw us looking at family pictures, they would rip them up. ''You don't need these pictures,'' they said. ''You're never going to see them again.''In January 1945, the Nazis sent us on a death march toward the German border. We walked through the Alps during the winter with very little food, very little water. At one time, we walked for four days without any food at all. Many got so weak that they couldn't walk, and they were shot. But still we walked. February, March, April. We marched hundreds of miles.On May 4, we were liberated. But I could barely walk. My body was like a skeleton. My spirit was like a skeleton.Do I hate them? No. Instead, I hope to contribute to a kinder world. I write books. I paint flowers, huge flowers. As the Jewish prayer says, ''Thank God for letting me live to this day.'' --Minnesota Monthly, July 2013