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.