Because They Needed Me

<p>In May of 2007 noted American poet and novelist and son of Holocaust refugees Michael Blumenthal went to South Africa to volunteer at C.A.R.E. a rehabilitation center for orphaned and injured baboons founded by Rita Miljo. Rita was a Lithuanian-born childhood member of the Hitler Youth who had gone on to have a life as adventure-filled as Beryl Markham’s in <em>West With the Night.</em></p><p>“<em>A lot of people have asked me whether they could write ’my book’ Rita wrote to Michael shortly thereafter “and I said no because I was envisaging a story both sad and happy but certainly mixed with a lot of humor.  But if you asked me I would not say no.”</em> With that for the only time in her life Rita entrusted another human being with thirty years’ worth of her journals and a rare and unusual collaboration was born. <em>Because They Needed Me</em> is that story a chronicle of primate conservation and the intrepid and courageous woman who devoted her life to it. It is like no other book of its kind.</p>