The Light Through the Storm
In 1940, Dr. Leon “Machiku” Schmelzer hurries to his home in Chernowitz, Bukowina, Romania, to tell his wife what they had been fearing for two years: they and their baby daughter have to begin their trip to Palestine, escape Nazi occupation, and “leave now.”
The Light through the Storm is based on Ganor’s own family history—her mother’s diary, an interview with her mother in 1970, and her own stories, self-published in 2004. Though labeled as a novel, it reads like a memoir. Instead of following a standard novel story arc, the book chronologically follows Machiku and his family, providing 1938 backstories of Machiku and his early years before focusing on prewar tensions and wartime life. As such, the book is illuminating in many ways, adding details about life as a Jew at the time—whether Machiku should identify himself as a Jew or German-speaking Austro-Hungarian, how he and his wife burned their books and scratched their leather furniture to disguise their wealth, as examples.
The result, however, is a series of statements, a recitation of facts that sacrifice emotion. Readers learn that Machiku was taken away and interrogated in 1940. In 1942 he was accused of treason and deported as part of a show trial that allowed him, his family, and others to flee Europe. But readers don’t feel the fear that keeps the family waiting “until the rage is gone,” remaining “unassuming and quiet” or the desperation that leads Machiku to threaten a farm woman if she does not hide him and his family. Readers find out what happened but have difficulty warming under the light of this family’s storm.
