We Used to Dream of Freedom

A Memoir of Family, the Holocaust, and the Stories We Don't Tell

by Sam Chaiton

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Pub Date Oct 08 2024 | Archive Date Aug 31 2024

Dundurn Press

Biographies & Memoirs | History

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Description

“Chaiton's fearless and moving memoir is a precious gift to anyone who yearns for a better understanding of intergenerational trauma and the path to true liberation.” — JEANNE BEKER, author, fashion editor, and television personality

A child of Holocaust survivors grapples with his parents’ untold stories and their profound effect on the course of his extraordinary life.

Growing up in Toronto, Sam Chaiton and his brothers knew their parents had been prisoners in Bergen-Belsen. But what their parents wouldn’t share about their history — including the fact they had also been in Auschwitz — ended up shaping their children’s lives.

We Used to Dream of Freedom explores what a family is or could be; the psychology of survivors and the impact of survivor silence on their family; and the responsibility of second generations from traumatized communities to share knowledge from their own histories to help alleviate the suffering of others. Irreverent, moving, and tragic, often all at once, at its heart it is a story of a man who disappeared on his family, his quest to understand why he had to leave, and the long-overdue discovery about his parents that brought him back.

Advance Praise

"A vividly written, dramatic personal memoir of activism, artistry, alienation, and ultimately, affirmation, depicting a life lived in the murky after-shadows of the Holocaust."
— Gabor Maté, M.D., author of The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture

"We Used to Dream of Freedom is a fascinating and compelling account of a life lived outside convention yet guided by the most important human values: freedom, family, compassion, memory, and self-knowledge."
— Gary Barwin, author of Yiddish for Pirates

"From his beginnings as a child of Holocaust survivors, dreaming of a life in the arts and beyond, comes Sam Chaiton’s frank, wholly engaging memoir."
— Geddy Lee

"Chaiton's fearless and moving memoir is a precious gift to anyone who yearns for a better understanding of intergenerational trauma and the path to true liberation."
— Jeanne Beker, author, fashion editor, and television personality