Out from the Shadows: Growing Up with Holocaust Survivor Parents

What does it mean to “inherit” trauma? To feel so inherently affected by the atrocities experienced by those who lived before you? Told through the perspective of a second-generation Jewish-Canadian, Willie Handler’s Out from the Shadows: Growing up with Holocaust Survivor Parents is a memoir that candidly explores themes of intergenerational trauma, highlighting the ways in which the Holocaust is not just a history about nations or peoples—but also, a history about families.

Toronto-born writer Willie Handler is the reflective voice behind Out from the Shadows, a memoir that follows his journey in tracing his Jewish genealogy, and his ancestral ties to the Holocaust. But Handler’s self-reflection of Jewish identity and familial history goes beyond centering himself as the main subject of the narrative.

Instead, his book is an intricate literary tapestry that stretches far and wide across Handler’s family tree, interweaving various familial narrative threads. The result is a moving portrayal of the Holocaust that is multifaceted in its perspectives, encompassing a diverse array of survivor voices.

Two survivors at the forefront of the book are the author's parents, Shifra and Elijah Handler. From the very onset of his memoir, Willie Handler paints a strong picture of their characters, defined deeply by their lived experiences of antisemitic hostility, and traumas from the Holocaust.

For Elijah Handler, his experiences of losing of his first family—alongside the brutal physical labor he was subjected to under the Nazis—had manifested in his penchant for being “controlling” and “stubborn.” For Shifra Handler, traumas wrought from antisemitic attacks and starvation had shaped her everyday demeanors, where she never wasted a morsel of food, and never slept with the blinds shut.

Handler’s narrative voice becomes a vehicle through which Elijah and Shifra Handler recount their stories of suffering— and ultimately, survival—under the Nazis. He spares us no detail of his parents’ Holocaust histories. Elijah Handler, for instance, was one of the millions of Jews imprisoned in forced labor camps in Poland, suffering from cruel SS beatings, living in cramped and unsanitary conditions, and performing extreme physical labor for little food.

“At Markst?dt, Dad worked at a Krupp artillery factory, manufacturing gun parts. Twice a week, he had a strip shorn on his head, from his forehead to the nape. No explanation was provided, and I suspect it was just another form of humiliation that prisoners had to endure. The guards at Markst?dt were brutal and hundreds of prisoners died from beatings. Dad was frequently beaten, and at one point all his teeth were knocked out. What did he do to deserve these beatings? He was Jewish.”

In Romania, Shifra Handler and her family were deported from their homes. Forced to make the perilous journey to Jewish ghettos located near the river borders of Romania and Ukraine, Shifra and her family also suffered from beatings, starvation, and disease.

“In Mogilev, Mom and the other deportees were taken to filthy barracks without windows, which was used as a central gathering and selection location. However, before reaching the barracks, the Romanians ordered everyone to go through a last-minute search. Any valuables found were confiscated. My mother’s family were eventually allowed to leave the barracks to look for shelter. They knocked on the doors of the Jewish ghetto residents, begging the inhabitants to take them in. They resorted to begging for food.”

Handler also extends this narrative candidness towards other members of his extended family, all of which contribute to the multidimensional quality of Out from the Shadows. Handler writes of the suffering and displacement of generations of Jewish relatives—grandparents, aunts, and uncles—under Nazi rule. With every individual family member introduced, and every piece of personal history and trauma, Handler approaches each one with a voice of empathy and introspection, weaving together a grand familial picture of pasts and presents so deeply entangled with a horrific history.

But interspersed throughout these family histories is the story of Handler’s own upbringing as the child of Holocaust survivors, navigating the moments of silence and outbursts resulting from their Holocaust traumas. Throughout the years, Handler is portrayed grappling with both the traumas of his immediate and extended family members, as well as his own. Handler’s personal reckoning with his family’s Holocaust history culminates in his 2022 visit to Poland—visiting the same sites and walking the same streets his ancestors did during the Holocaust years. As Out from the Shadows oscillates between generational timelines, Handler emphasizes the continuities that reverberate from the events of the Holocaust, and particularly that antisemitism runs rampant beyond the historical confines of the Holocaust era. ?

Out from the Shadows is ultimately a Holocaust memoir that simultaneously looks beyond, and within. It is a literary work that all at once, embodies an archive of familial memory, a cathartic vehicle of self-exploration, and a cautionary message to future generations. As an author, Willie Handler reminds us of the importance of historical remembering, in a modern age echoing the same cycles of marginalized oppression. Whether it be on a microcosmic level of one’s family, or the grand macrocosm of international geopolitics, Out from the Shadows is a pertinent reminder that in order to look forward, we must all learn to look back.

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Amazon link: https://mybook.to/jFzJB