95-year-old Caledon Holocaust survivor writes memoir

Margalith Esterhuizen, 95, signing her book, A Light in the Clouds, during her 95th birthday celebration in Caledon. - Rhea Singer photo

Margalith Esterhuizen is the author of A Light in the Clouds

At a time when most people are slowing down in their lives, Caledon resident Margalith Esterhuizen has been busy.

The Holocaust survivor spent the last 10 years working on her memoir, A Light in the Clouds.

The book was recently released in co-ordination with her 95th birthday.

“I must be one of the few Holocaust survivors still alive,” says Esterhuizen, “and it’s important for me, especially now, (for) the world to know that it happened … I’m proof.”

Esterhuizen was born in Rădăuți, Romania, in 1927.

During the Holocaust, she was sent on a death march to a ghetto in the borderlands, a little-known region in Holocaust history called Transnistria, where she managed to survive until she was liberated in 1944.

She eventually made her way to Canada in 1989, settling in Caledon where she still lives today. Esterhuizen began writing her memoir 10 years ago and published it through the Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivors Memoirs Program.

“The survivors we have the honour of working with have endured more than we can ever fathom,” says Jody Spiegel, director of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program. “To see how liberated they feel when their memoirs are published and to partake in such joyful occasions together is such a gift — one that we will never take for granted.”

Originally published in The Caledon Enterprise. View the original article here.

 

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