A Long Labour: A Dutch Mother's Holocaust Memoir.

Ian A. Andrews is a high-school social sciences teacher and editor of the New Brunswick Teachers’ Association’s Focus.

As age reduces the number of Holocaust survivors, the urgency to record their memoirs increases. Although Holocaust survivor Rhodea Shandler died in 2006, shortly after completing her memoir, her family and friends from the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre ensured the publication of this unique story. Rhodea was in her early twenties when Germany invaded the Netherlands, where she lived with her parents in the town of Leeuwarden. She survived, but her parents were eventually deported to Auschwitz where they died. Her two sisters also survived, but one brother perished. A Long Labour is Rhodea’s story of survival by hiding with the assistance of the Dutch resistance, of giving birth out of wedlock, of entrusting young children to the care of foster families, of being cheated out of possessions by those entrusted with them, of marriage and reunion and relocation—and of survivor guilt.

In an introduction, S. Lillian Kremer, an English professor from Kansas State University, provides the historical and literary context for Rhodea Shandler’s memoir. She also exposes the reality of female vulnerability associated with Holocaust trauma. Daughter Roxsane’s afterword provides additional perspective. Family pictures, many of which were taken by her father, a skilled professional photographer before the war, effectively complement the narrative.

Rhodea Shandler immigrated to Canada with her family in 1951 when their acceptance into post-war Dutch society proved unsuccessful. In Holland there was no “remembering” the Holocaust. Even during the war, those in hiding focused on their moment-to-moment existence, remaining unaware of the mass extermination being simultaneously perpetrated by the Nazis. This memoir ends with Rhodea’s arrival in Canada, although for over half a century she would continue to suffer psychologically from her wartime experiences. Her continuing torment was expressed by her own words: “Our lives will never be complete. A great gap remains.”