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Memoir of child of Holocaust survivors takes riveting twists
Book Review by Julie Kirsh (former Sun Media News Research Director)
Exclusive to The Jewish Post
“We used to Dream of Freedom, A Memoir of Family, the Holocaust, and the Stories We Don’t Tell”
By Sam Chaiton (Dundurn Press) 2024
Sam Chaiton’s memoir of growing up with Holocaust survivor parents in downtown Toronto in the 1950s is a compelling read.
Jeanne Beker, a well known Toronto fashion writer, mentions in her praise for “We used to Dream of Freedom” that her survivor parents talked incessantly about their war experiences.
My own parents, both survivors, would drop tidbits of their stories now and again. I learned to be watchful and vigilant for these rare moments of revelation. However, questioning my parents about the Holocaust, would cause them pain. I knew when to stand down.
In his memoir, Sam Chaiton tells the reader that his parents chose to remain completely silent about their wartime experiences. Poignantly their son was left with a silence that he interpreted as huge empty sound. Although the son could understand some Yiddish, his parents turned to Polish in order to keep the “kinder safe”. Outright denial of illness and death was part of his parents’ way of coping.
Born in the 1950s on Palmerston Boulevard in downtown Toronto, Chaiton paints a vivid picture of his youth as the middle son of five boys. He describes the mayhem of a household of barked orders and punishment by his father’s belt. His mother, as with many other survivors, was obsessed with eating and food. Chaiton learned early that rejecting his controlling mother’s food was one of his few weapons. “It’s hard not to do what a Holocaust survivor wants you to”, he says. Chaiton had to stare down two parents both with tattoos.
Dance proved to be a saving grace for Chaiton. On the dance floor, with a partner, the gates of happiness and permission to be oneself, opened. The Toronto Dance Theatre in Yorkville was a salvation and home for Chaiton. Also important to Chaiton was a family – not his troubled blood family but a chosen one – a commune.
In 1973, after a sojourn in New York, Chaiton decided that he was not a performance dancer. Back in Toronto as he pointedly danced with his mother at his brother’s wedding, she told him that he was her favourite child, imposing “the psychological damage that parental favouritism caused”.
Living in a commune with a chosen family afforded Chaiton the freedom to dig deep into his psyche, face his traumatic upbringing and tear down the rigid rules of society and the biological family. At a certain point, for reasons he explains in the book, Chaiton made the decision to vanish from the lives of his parents and brothers.
In 1980 the commune took up the cause of the injustice and illegal jailing of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. Carter had been exonerated, released from prison and then reconvicted and sent back to prison.
In hindsight Chaiton wonders if his disengagement from his family caused them the same wounds and feelings of emptiness that Carter had to face when he was reincarcerated.
In 1985 while sitting in a New Jersey prison yard with friends and Carter, Chaiton had the riveting vision that he was in a concentration camp, “on a mission to liberate (his) parents – the dream of every Holocaust survivor’s child.”
In the summer of 1985, Chaiton received the news from Toronto that his parents were involved in a fatal car accident. Only after his mother’s death, was Chaiton able to acknowledge that in spite of her smothering, she gave him a sense of self worth and strength.
In 1988 Chaiton co-wrote the story of freeing Carter. One of his brothers saw him on a news broadcast, contacted him and the 20-year silence between Chaiton and his blood family was over.
Riding on the coattails of the successful release of Carter, Chaiton and some friends established an organization that continues to exist today. Innocence Canada has helped wrongfully convicted people like Guy Paul Morin, David Milgaard and Steven Truscott.
In chapter 16, entitled Wierzbnik, Chaiton finally learns about his father’s testimony published in a book, “Remembering Survival”, by a university professor. Reading about his father’s history helped Chaiton to understand the damage done to survivors, his parents’ trauma and why the home that they created for their sons after the war was so fraught.
Chaiton remarks on the interconnectedness of learning about the sufferings of his parents, his own personal struggles and the gift his father left him of being able to tell his own story.
Sam Chaiton’s profound memoir took courage and brutal honesty to write.
His book teaches that the legacy left by Holocaust survivors, along with a deep sadness, is the innate need of the children to persevere and find their own path of survival and growth.
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Swiss Eurovision Winner Nemo to Send Trophy Back in Protest Over Israel’s Participation
2024 Eurovision Song Contest winner Nemo performs during the Grand Final of the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest in Basel, Switzerland, May 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
Swiss Eurovision winner Nemo on Thursday said they were handing back their trophy in the latest protest about Israel’s continued participation in the contest over the war in Gaza.
Nemo, the non-binary singer who won in 2024 with “The Code,” a drum-and-bass, opera, rap and rock song, said Israel’s continued participation went against the contest’s ideals of inclusion and dignity for all people.
The comments are the latest protest against the European Broadcasting Union, the Eurovision organizer that has seen five countries pull out after it cleared Israel last week to take part in next year’s event in Austria.
“Eurovision says it stands for unity, for inclusion, and dignity for all people. And these are the values that make this contest so meaningful for me,” Nemo said in a post on Instagram.
“But Israel’s continued participation, during what the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry (on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel) has concluded to be a genocide, shows there’s a clear conflict between those ideals and the decisions the EBU is making.”
Israel has repeatedly rejected any accusation of genocide, saying it has respected international law and has a right to defend itself after the cross-border Hamas-led attack from Gaza on October 7, 2023, that precipitated the war.
Iceland will not take part in the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest, the country’s public broadcaster RUV said on Wednesday, joining Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Slovenia who have also pulled out, citing Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza.
Nemo said it was clear something was deeply wrong when countries pulled out of the contest, adding they would send their Eurovision trophy back to the EBU’s headquarters in Geneva.
“This is not about individuals or artists. It’s about the fact that the contest was repeatedly used to soften the image of a state accused of severe wrongdoing, all while the EBU insists that this contest is non-political,” Nemo said.
The singer said they had a clear message for the EBU, which organizes the contest that reaches around 160 million viewers.
“Live what you claim. If the values we celebrate on stage aren’t lived off stage, then even the most beautiful songs become meaningless,” Nemo said.
“I’m waiting for the moment those words and actions align. Until then, this trophy is yours.”
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US Aims for International Gaza Force Deployment Early Next Year, Say US Officials
The Beaver Moon supermoon rises above destroyed buildings amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City, Nov. 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
International troops could be deployed in the Gaza Strip as early as next month to form a UN-authorized stabilization force, two US officials told Reuters, but it remains unclear how Palestinian terrorist group Hamas will be disarmed.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the International Stabilization Force (ISF) would not fight Hamas. They said lots of countries had expressed interest in contributing and US officials are currently working out the size of the ISF, composition, housing, training, and rules of engagement.
An American two-star general is being considered to lead the ISF but no decisions have been made, the officials said.
Deployment of the force is a key part of the next phase of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan. Under the first phase, a fragile ceasefire in the two-year war began on Oct. 10 and Hamas has released hostages and Israel has freed detained Palestinians.
“There is a lot of quiet planning that’s going on behind the scenes right now for phase two of the peace deal,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday. “We want to ensure an enduring and lasting peace.”
INDONESIA PREPARING TROOPS
Indonesia has said it is prepared to deploy up to 20,000 troops to take on health and construction-related tasks in Gaza.
“It is still in the planning and preparation stages,” said Rico Sirait, spokesperson of the Indonesian Defense Ministry. “We are now preparing the organizational structure of the forces to be deployed.”
Israel still controls 53% of Gaza, while nearly all the 2 million people in the enclave live in the remaining Hamas-held area. The plan – which needs to be finalized by the so-called Board of Peace – is for the ISF to deploy in the area held by Israel, the US officials said.
Then, according to the Trump peace plan, as the ISF establishes control and stability, Israeli troops will gradually withdraw “based on standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarization.”
A UN Security Council resolution adopted on Nov. 17 authorized a Board of Peace and countries working with it to establish the ISF. Trump said on Wednesday that an announcement on which world leaders will serve on the Board of Peace will be made early next year.
DEMILITARIZING GAZA
The Security Council authorized the ISF to work alongside newly trained and vetted Palestinian police to stabilize security “by ensuring the process of demilitarizing the Gaza Strip, including the destruction and prevention of rebuilding of the military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, as well as the permanent decommissioning of weapons from non-state armed groups.”
However, it remains unclear exactly how that would work.
US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz noted on Thursday that the ISF was authorized by the Security Council to demilitarize Gaza by all means necessary – which means use of force.
“Obviously that’ll be a conversation with each country,” he told Israel’s Channel 12, adding that discussions on rules of engagement were under way.
Hamas has said the issue of disarmament hasn’t been discussed with them formally by the mediators – the US, Egypt, and Qatar – and the group’s stance remains that it will not disarm until a Palestinian state is established.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech on Sunday that the second phase would move toward demilitarization and disarmament.
“Now that raises a question: Our friends in America want to try and establish a multinational task force to do the job,” he said. “I told them I welcome it. Are volunteers here? Be my guest,” Netanyahu said.
“We know there are certain tasks that this force can perform … but some things are beyond their abilities, and perhaps the main thing is beyond their abilities, but we will see about that,” he said.
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Irish Minister Defends ‘Limited’ Trade Curbs on Israeli Settlements
A bicycle with the Palestinian and Irish flags is seen at the University College Dublin (UCD) ‘Palestinian Liberation Encampment’ on June 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne
Ireland’s planned curbs on trade with Israeli settlements will be limited strictly to goods, a minister told Reuters, offering the first clear signal on the scope of the contested legislation and rejecting accusations that the country is antisemitic.
Ireland has been preparing a law to curb trade with Israeli communities in the West Bank, facing pressure at home to widen the scope of the ban from goods to services, while Israel and the United States want the bill scrapped.
Ireland has been one of the European Union’s most outspoken critics of Israel’s military campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
‘EXTREMELY LIMITED MEASURE,’ SAYS MINISTER
But Thomas Byrne, Ireland’s Minister of State for European Affairs and Defense, told Reuters that the bill is limited to the import of goods and that it would not become law this year.
“It’s an extremely limited measure, which would prohibit imports of goods from illegally-occupied territories,” he said in an interview. “Similar measures have already been brought in in a number of European countries.”
Byrne’s comments give insight into Dublin’s thinking as Ireland seeks to deflect pressure, including from US companies based in the country, to soften its criticism of Israel. Ireland’s bill is expected to help shape how other European nations launch similar curbs on trade with Israeli settlements.
The Irish government has signaled the bill is imminent but has yet to publicly announce its scope.
Byrne declined to say when it would be sent to parliament, as the government weighs the bill’s implications. “It’s certainly not going to be implemented this year,” he said.
Earlier this year, sources told Reuters that the government intended to blunt the law, curbing its scope to just a limited trade of goods, such as dried fruit, and not services.
That more ambitious move could have entangled companies in technology and other industries in Ireland doing business in Israel. Business lobby groups had sought to kill the idea.
Limiting the bill to goods only would catch just a handful of products imported from Israeli settlements such as fruit that are worth just 200,000 euros ($234,660) a year.
LAWMAKER BLACK SAYS SHE STILL WANTS SERVICES BAN
Much of the international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law.
Israel disputes this, citing historical and biblical ties to the area. It says the settlements provide strategic depth and security. Defenders of Israel also note that, while about one-fifth of the country’s population is Arab and enjoys equal rights, Palestinian law forbids selling any land to Israelis.
On Gaza, Israel says it acted in self-defense following the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people and resulted in 251 hostages. Israel has repeatedly said it is committed to international law and tries to minimize harm to the civilian population of Gaza.
Frances Black, the lawmaker who proposed the Irish bill, told Reuters she would push to include a ban on services. “It will take a lot of work in the new year to get services included but that’s exactly what I’m prepared to do.”
Byrne also defended Ireland’s government, after Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar recently posted a video online where he accused the Irish government of having an “antisemitic nature.”
Saar said the Irish government’s response had been slow to a local proposal to rename a park bearing the name of Chaim Herzog, the former president of Israel who was raised in Dublin.
Irish ministers had roundly criticized the idea and Dublin City Council has since delayed a decision on whether to remove the name.
US Senator Lindsey Graham had also labeled Ireland a “cesspool of antisemitism.”
EU LAWMAKER REJECTS ANTISEMITISM CHARGE AS ‘NONSENSE’
“I reject outright that the country is in any way antisemitic,” said Byrne. “We’re deeply conscious of the contribution that Jewish people have made in Ireland.”
Ireland’s relations with Israel have been fraught. Last December, Israel shut its embassy in Dublin amid a row over Ireland’s criticism of its war in Gaza, including Ireland’s recognition of a Palestinian state last year.
Barry Andrews, an Irish member of the European parliament, urged Dublin to go ahead with its “occupied territories” bill. “Claims that Ireland is antisemitic are nonsense,” he said. Ireland has nothing to fear. We are no longer the only ones doing this.”
On Wednesday, Ireland’s central bank governor Gabriel Makhlouf was forced to abandon a public speech in Dublin by pro-Palestinian protesters objecting to the central bank’s earlier role in the sale of Israeli bonds.