As of January 2024, 245,000 Holocaust survivors lived in approximately 90 countries across the globe. According to AP News, nearly “half of them, or 49%, are living in Israel; 18% in Western Europe, 16% in the United States, and 12% in countries of the former Soviet Union.” Those 245,000 have all left individual legacies, including families like author Willie Handler’s, a Canadian-Jewish writer whose book Out from the Shadows: Growing Up with Holocaust Survivor Parents published in late 2024 thanks to Amsterdam Publishers. In a time of rising antisemitism and threats to democracy bring to mind the historical events and racist, dehumanizing political rhetoric which unleashed the Holocaust, Handler’s book is not only an intimate look at the generational trauma inherent in Holocaust survivor families, but also the familial and regional history that shaped an entire generation of European Jews and their resilient spirit.
Handler is known on social media platforms like X, Instagram, and BlueSky for his humorous jokes and posts that brighten his followers’ feeds. However, Handler also uses these platforms to share important information about Jewish history and the Holocaust. His advocacy of and passion for Holocaust awareness, nonetheless, come after many years of struggling to understand his family’s dynamics, behaviors, etc. In the pages of Out from the Shadows: Growing Up with Holocaust, Handler explores the familial moments he once found embarrassing. For example, he keenly recalls his father’s knack for duping the system, be it by deception or what others might view as outright thievery—skills he developed in camps like Auschwitz in order to survive. At the same time, Handler also highlights the excruciatingly painful roles men like his father held in the Sonderkommandos, a group of Jewish prisoners assigned to perform a variety of duties in the gas chambers and crematoria of the Nazi camps. The psychological and emotional toll such a role took on men like Handler’s father is, quite frankly, indescribable and unimaginable. Handler frequently returns to his father’s role as a Sonderkommando throughout Out from the Shadows, and this cyclical discussion reinforces the generational trauma cycles experienced by Handler’s family and many other Holocaust-survivor families.
Trauma—recognizing it and overcoming it—is another of the book’s central themes. Handler recognizes, “Trauma was obviously not unique to my family. It showed up in other survivor families; although, when I was younger, I didn’t discuss with friends how messed up our parents were.” He acknowledges that “understanding and processing past trauma is important,” and he frequently discloses his own techniques of acknowledging, dealing with, and coping with trauma. Where this is most evident is in Handler’s discussion of how his parents were extremely risk adverse and maintained a distrust of police and the military. Handler acknowledges that these attitudes stem from an inability to “trust the system” because it “failed” people like his family “miserably.” He poses, “They are supposed to protect me but how can I be sure the opposite won’t happen? When the protectors become oppressors, there is no one to turn to.” It is a sentiment shared by minority populations across the globe, and especially in the United States, since the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
Handler, too, bravely tackles contemporary antisemitism by not only addressing the topic outright, but also by fearlessly sharing how contemporary antisemitism affects Holocaust-survivor families today. Handler asserts, “Jew react differently to antisemitism depending on their connection to the Jewish communities.” He also affirms an anecdote that, given the right-wing political waves that have swept across numerous nations, should not be forgotten: “History has shown that racists don’t care how closely you connect with the community. They will define who is Jewish.” Handler also provides another stark, yet necessary, reminder: “Can people have this much hate? This was not the act of a few individuals but of an entire nation.” Handler’s words serve as a reminder that those in power who seek to destroy certain communities will automatically identify and label individuals however they see fit and that propaganda evilly directed at certain groups is, sadly, a powerful weapon.
Another aspect of Holocaust history that Handler highlights well is how nations like Poland have “done a wonderful job at preserving Auschwitz.” The consternation point, nonetheless, is that “it has been commercialized and has become a little too sanitized.” Holocaust education is a primary focus in Handler’s book, and Handler details his own return to Poland to visit what was once his family’s neighborhood, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and other places significant to Holocaust history. Handler’s honest, poignant reflections about these education efforts and his own personal experience also highlight a sad, disturbing fact about many countries across Europe: the Holocaust decimated the Jewish populations, and it is only in recent years that an interest in and rejuvenation of Jewish identity has emerged in these areas. Handler notes that many Jews in these regions conceal their Jewish identity and refuse to talk about it since in many small towns “antisemitism still exists.”
Handler’s memoir resonates well with contemporary poetry collections like Ava Nathaniel Winter’s Transgenesis, a poetic exploration of antisemitism, nationalism, and rediscovering one’s Jewish identity. Part historical account, part personal testament, and part guidebook for navigating generational trauma, Willie Handler’s Out from the Shadows: Growing Up with Holocaust Survivor Parents is an important contribution to the ever-growing canon of Holocaust-focused literature.
Nicole Yurcaba (Нікола Юрцаба) is a Ukrainian American of Hutsul/Lemko origin. A poet and essayist, her poems and reviews have appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Atlanta Review, Seneca Review, New Eastern Europe, and Ukraine’s Euromaidan Press. Nicole holds an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University, teaches poetry workshops for Southern New Hampshire University, and is the Humanities Coordinator at Blue Ridge Community and Technical College. She also serves as a guest book reviewer for Sage Cigarettes, Tupelo Quarterly, Colorado Review, and Southern Review of Books.