"Life is such an amazing journey," Dr. Erica Miller told a packed crowd at the Agoura Hills Library on Tuesday night. It was the eve of her 77th birthday.

When Miller was just 7 years old, she and her parents and sister were taken from their home in Romania and sent to a concentration camp in the Ukraine. Today, the holocaust survivor is a clinical psychologist and author of The Dr. Erica Miller Story: From Trauma to Triumph, which tells the pilgrimage of her life story.

"I just have flashes of memory from that time," Miller said. "I remember hiding in the attic with my mother's hand over my mouth so I wouldn't make a sound. I remember standing on a box and looking out the window to see the daily caravan of corpses passing below me. I would think to myself, 'Maybe it will be me. Maybe I'll be next.'"

Miller and her family survived the camp.  They were liberated by the Russians, but when they returned to their home in Romania, the Russians had taken over their home. They relocated to Transylvania before immigrating to Israel in 1949.

"It was in Israel that I felt safe for the first time," she told the audience.

She received a formal education in Israel and served in the Israeli Air Force from 1954-1956. 

"After finishing the Air Force, I was 23. All of my friends were getting married, but I didn't want to get married. I was very independent and didn't need a man, so I was an old maid at 23," Miller joked.

She went on to tell her captive audience about coming to Los Angeles to visit her sister and seeing that there were so many more opportunities here than in Israel.  She also met the man who would become her husband.

"When I met him, I knew he was the one. He didn't know I was the one, but I knew, so after eight months I did something very untraditional.  I told him that I wanted to marry him," Miller said.

"I said, 'If you don't know by now that we are meant to be together then I never want to see you again.' He asked me for a week to think about it.  He came back three days later and said yes," she said. "We have been married for 50 years."

Miller went back to school when her son began 1st grade. Eight years later, she graduated with a PhD in clinical psychology.  She admitted that it was very hard on her family, but she had always wanted to be a doctor.

"By taking care of others, you take care of yourself," she said.

Miller established a chain of mental health clinics throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties, known as the Miller Psychological Centers. As Executive Director of the these centers, she employs over 40 health professionals.  

Following Miller's presentation, sponsored by the Friends of the Agoura Hills Library, visitors waited to get their book signed.

"I can't believe the life she's lived," said one attendee after meeting Miller. "To survive the holocaust like that and be such a vivacious and successful person—It's truly amazing what the human spirit can do."