Grace Feuerverger, Winter Light: The Memoir of a Child of Holocaust Survivors, Amsterdam Publishers, September 2024, 452 pgs.
(reviewed by Monette Moradi)
Intergenerational trauma is not a new subject for Jews in the 21st century. However, post-World War II and the Holocaust, this definition was not even researched, let alone acknowledged and treated as a part of typical treatment plans. While a reader could easily summarize the book to this diagnosis in the memoir Winter Light: The Memoir Of A Child Of Holocaust Survivors by Grace Feuerverger, it would miss the healing voyage that the author undertakes based on her individual history rather than as an extension of her parents’ experiences before, during, and after the Holocaust.
The author approaches trauma, mental health, and her relationship with her parents with an honesty that asks readers either to engage with heightened sensitivity or, if they have experienced similar themes themselves, to read at a pace that minimizes emotional overwhelm. The stories told and the feelings Feuerverger describes both as a child and adult, are not just about the antisemitism she faced from the secular community in Canada, but also the treatment she received from her parents. She frames the struggle for inclusion and self-actualization into two fitting metaphors. One is her passion for languages and their use in social welfare. The other is her love of fairytale stories, which started early.
The mention of languages becomes a prominent indicator of whether she is experiencing disconnect or unity within her domestic or social space. Languages such as Polish, which her family speaks to her exclusively, are a cold presence, adding to the burdens of her childhood and representative of the traumas they experienced during the Holocaust. On the other side, she frames French as the calming language that pushes her to succeed in her learning, Yiddish being the magical force that draws her closer to her Jewish background, while listening to Hebrew in Israel drawing her closer to her Jewish beliefs. The second theme—seeing the world in terms of the fairytale—is indicated early on when she labels her panic attacks and anxieties as the dybbuk/devil/monster. To a person who has not experienced them, underlying these moments is a clever representation of a fearful threat that threatens to upend her life like it has her mother. However, she also makes sure to mention the men and women she encountered during her story, who have a clear recognition for being a magical being that gives her the strength and comfort to endure these trials.
Feuerverger uses these two framing devices to express how her passion for ensuring that children (whether first-generation immigrants or refugees or the parents of one) can mold themselves into the individuals they want to be despite cultural barriers. And that the trauma that she endured—understanding what her parents went through during the Holocaust—is not a burden but a tool to connect with the next generation of children enduring a troubled environment of their own as a means to ensure that they can achieve their goals more efficiently than she ever did. Passing on the comfort and positive communication she longed for all the years she was around her parents and breaking the cycle of abuse by seizing control of her destiny—something her parents and other European Jews could never do during the Holocaust.
In Winter Light, Grace Feuerverger moves beyond a framework of inherited trauma to examine how personal agency, cultural adaptation, and narrative reframing shape identity after historical catastrophe. By structuring her experiences through the dual lenses of language acquisition and mythological thinking, she highlights the processes by which second-generation survivors negotiate belonging and self-definition. Rather than centering on suffering alone, Feuerverger’s memoir offers a critical reflection on how individuals can reconfigure the legacies they inherit, building new modes of connection across generations.