War, genocide, displacement, Victoria woman’s search for aunt’s lost writings in powerful memoir

VICTORIA (NEWS 1130) — It’s no secret the Holocaust wiped out entire families. And there are countless stories of heartbreak weaved through the threads of those six million Jewish lives lost. A new book picks up the tale of one such family nearly 80 years later.

“She said to me at one point, ‘Isa, write this down. This should be your next book.’ And I’m madly writing, trying to capture her words,” recalls Isa Milman, about how she started her memoir Afterlight: In Search of Poetry, History, and Home.

Afterlight was inspired by Milman’s mother, who as she lay dying in 2013, revealed the story of her murdered twin sister Basia. She was a published poet in pre-World War Two Poland before she and her infant child were murdered by their neighbours simply because they were Jewish. That set Milman off on a literary and personal journey spanning the next six years.

The story resonated with the Victoria native who has five collections of poetry to her name. Afterlight marks her first foray into actual narrative non-fiction and she admits it was an adjustment.

“Essentially, when you’re writing a poem, you’re telling a story but it’s in the moment versus fiction or prose, [where] you’re telling a story that goes through time,” she explains.

Read More: Glorious but not forgotten: new book looks at Canada’s role in Spanish Civil War

“It ultimately became a choice of writing what’s called a braided narrative. And so, I’m going back and forth in time, you know, from a contemporary chapter to a historical chapter and then back and forth that way.”

Afterlight tells two stories. First, it explores what happened to her family in wartime Poland, including the horrific deaths of her aunt, her aunt’s son, and grandparents; and second, Milman’s own travels in present-day Eastern Europe, reconciling that past with her present. (In fact, her name, Isa, is a female form of Isaak, the name of her murdered grandfather.)

“It’s hard not to hate when you’re dealing with atrocity and pain,” she says. “I didn’t have a good feeling about Poland before I went there. And I wasn’t brought up that way. I mean, what I was brought up with was stories of, you know, the horror of what happened, including what happened to my family.”

“It’s like living in that uncomfortable space where you can recognize good as well as bad and you don’t have to dismiss everything or accept everything but you have to sort of be more whole about your attitudes and beliefs.”

It was her faith that helped her through this journey.

“There’s a Jewish concept of tikkun, which is a Hebrew word which means repair, basically that each one of us human beings, our purpose on Earth is to commit acts of repair, whatever they could be, whatever we can do. No matter how small,” she says.

“What might feel inconsequential can make a huge difference.”

Afterlight: In Search of Poetry, History, and Home is a powerful page-turner too real to be fiction. Look for it from Heritage House Publishing.