What Scholars & Readers are Saying
Memory is Our Home. Loss and Remembering: Three Generations in Poland and Russia 1917–1960s
Dr. Tanya Narozhna, Oct, 2017, Associate Prof., Political Science, University of Winnipeg, for the Journal Europe-Asia Studies, U of Glasgow. “SUZANNA EIBUSZYC’S BOOK IS A DEEPLY MOVING AND POIGNANT memoir written by a daughter based on her mother’s diaries. The book is an example of life writing at its finest. It situates the horrific experiences of a family in the broader historical context and recovers the continuity of a biographical narrative of the family and community, ensuring that the memories of the unspeakably tragic past are not forgotten.” The entire review is posted on this website: https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2017.1371494
“Dear Suzanna, if I may, if anyone should be thankful, then it’s myself and all the other readers of your book. I was deeply moved by the story of your family. And I can honestly say that your book has taught me more about the importance of memory and the impossibility of separating the personal from the political than the volumes of academic literature on the subject. So, thank you! Tanya”
Sean Martin, Associate Curator for Jewish History, Western Reserve Historical Society, The Russian Review, Volume 75, Issue 2, April 2016. Pages 334-335. Wiley Online Library. This remarkable memoir combines the voices of a mother and daughter to recount the story of Roma Talasiewicz-Eibuszyc, a Polish Jewish refugee in the Soviet Union during World War II. Suzanna Eibuszyc translated her mother’s memoir from Polish and, interspersed throughout sections of her mother’s narrative, added parts of her own story growing up in postwar Poland. The story of mother and daughter spans the long twentieth century, from 1918 to 1968. Memory Is Our Home is a primary source that deserves the attention of those interested in prewar Polish Jewry, the course of the Holocaust, the fate of refugees in the Soviet Union, and Jews in postwar Poland. The story told here is raw and moving and filled with descriptions that illuminate our understanding of what happens to civilians during and after wartime trauma. Talasiewicz-Eibuszyc was born in Warsaw in 1917. She grew up attached to Poland and Polish culture and to both leftist and Jewish nationalist ideals. She survived the war by fleeing to the Soviet Union, spending most of the war years in Saratov as a worker at a textiles factory and then in dire poverty in towns in Uzbekistan.
Dr. Joanna B. Michlic, Dept. of Historical Studies, Bristol University, UK. The HBI Director, Project on Families, Children, and the Holocaust, Brandeis, US. This is an essential primary source for scholars and graduate students of European Women Studies, East European Jewish History, and the Holocaust. Roma Eibuszyc’s memoir is extremely powerful and throws new light on the daily life of young Jewish women in prewar Poland. This is also an insightful memoir to study the faith of Jews, and especially young Jewish women in the Soviet Union during the WWII, a subject matter that only recently has caught the attention of scholars of the Holocaust and East European Jewish History.
Adam Zamoyski, Award-winning British historian and author of the best-selling epic 1812. Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow and its sequel Rites of Peace. The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna. He is also a distinguished commentator and reviewer, and has contributed to all the major British papers and periodicals, and lectured widely in England, Europe and the United States. Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, of the Royal Society of Arts, and of the Royal Society of Literature. http://www.adamzamoyski.com
This is an extraordinary document, unique in many ways. Its freshness and honesty bring to life with exceptional clarity and immediacy the struggle for survival of those at the bottom of the social and economic scale during this terrible period: anti-Semitism and the Holocaust should not obscure the fact that for the overwhelming majority of the Jews of Central Europe in the first half of the twentieth century, grinding poverty and hunger threatened on a daily basis. With best wishes, Adam Zamoyski.
Kenneth Waltzer, Michigan State University, Ph.D., Harvard University; History, Director of Jewish Studies at MSU, was selected by the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to participate in an international research workshop of scholars that was the first to work in the newly opened Red Cross-International Tracing Service (ITS) Archives in Bad Arolsen, Germany in June 2008. This memoir by Roma Talasowicz-Eibuszyc, translated and prepared from the original Polish by her daughter Susanna Eibuszyc, is the memoir of a Jewish woman born in Warsaw in 1917 and raised in a close-knit family of six amidst difficult challenges and portending disaster. By her early teen and adult years, Roma had lost her parents, embraced a radical politics hopeful for a new world, and then experienced the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. Before the creation of the Jewish ghetto, Roma escaped east to Russian-held territory and eventually spent most of the war in Uzbekistan. Afterward, she returned to build a new Communist Poland until the late 1960s, when anti-Semitism again drove her from Poland. This is an interesting story of the persistent hope for a new world by a young Jewish woman who faced the terrible events that shaped 20th century Polish Jewish existence and alone survived to recount a full life.
Marek Rozenberg, http://meditationyoga.in/Goodreads , Jun 22, 15. Five Stars, all the way from India. Expat, Lodz, Poland, It’s a very, very precious book for everyone! I could not stop reading it! Thank you so much Suzanna! http://www.amazon.com/Memory-Our-Home-Remembering-Generations/dp/3838207327/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1&qid=1422268449
Zieva Dauber Konvisser, Wayne State University Professor, Ph.D. Fellow, Institute for Social Innovation, Fielding Graduate University. http://www.zievakonvisser.com/index.html
A beautiful biographical memoir and a labor of love written by a daughter based on her mother’s diaries and the difficult stories told to her as a child so that she – and now we – should never forget!
A story of survival in Soviet Russia and Uzbekistan after escaping the atrocities of World War II in Poland, demonstrating how “when faced with tragedy, people found a way to triumph” and how “their human spirit rose above all suffering.”
And an important lesson that “A responsibility rests upon us-not just to preserve the memory of injustice, but also to prevent future injustice.” https://www.amazon.com/review/R2F1A7I4XFXSHJ/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv
Antony Polonsky, Professor, Albert Abramson of Holocaust Studies at Brandeis University and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Chief historian of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. “This moving double memoir of a mother and daughter, based partly on the mother’s diary and partly on her conversations with her daughter describes the mother’s life in pre-war Warsaw, how she was able to survive the war in the Soviet Union and her subsequent life in Poland until the family’s forced emigration in the wake of the ‘anti-Zionist campaign of 1968. It is essential reading for all those interested in the fate of Polish Jews in the twentieth century.”
Matthew Feldman, Professor of History and co-director of the Center for Fascist, Anti-fascist and Post-fascist Studies at Teesside University, UK. An immensely moving narrative of one Jewish family’s life in Poland, both before and after Nazi Germany’s indelible murderousness. Spanning the middle decades of the 20th century and centering upon Warsaw – the intellectual and demographic capital of Jewry in Europe before its annihilation by Hitler’s Third Reich – this presents not just a single, detailed narrative, but two. Roma’s diary and her daughter Suzanna’s memoir are skillfully interwoven across this richly textured account, itself set against the backdrop of three Poland’s: quasi-liberal between the wars; Nazi-occupied; and then as part of the USSR’s Warsaw Pact. Memory is our Home is a heartfelt testimony to individual acts of survival and memory under an occupation of unparalleled rapacity. Although the daily, scarcely-believable brutality of Nazi occupation makes for emotionally challenging reading, this book is ultimately a story of hope and resolve, not despair. Suzanna Eibuszyc’s account will appeal to a wide range of academics (especially of the Shoah, of modern Poland, and of Jewish Studies), but its intended audience is, surely, much wider than this. Memory is our Home is aimed at anyone wanting a better, more personal understanding of sacrifice and survival in the Warsaw Ghetto and wartime Russia – let alone the searing memories afterwards which, like European Jewry as a whole during World War Two, refused to give in and be forgotten. Equally unforgettable and highly recommended.
Marilyn J. Harran, PhD. Director, Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education and Stern Chair in Holocaust History, Chapman University, CA. http://www.chapman.edu/our-faculty/marilyn-harran
“A poignant chronicle of one woman’s harrowing journey across the decades, from Poland in the post-World War I era to Nazi occupation and flight to Russia and Uzbekistan. The book’s rich detail creates a living portrait of a survivor, her determination, and the dangerous and complex times in which she lived. The story also powerfully reflects a daughter’s love for her mother demonstrated by her careful transcription of her mother’s words and her own moving responses to them.”
Dr. Dennis B. Klein, Professor of History, Director, Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Kean University, NJ. “Seen and Unseen” excerpt from Foreword to Memory Is Our Home by Dennis Klein. This memoir, however, is unusual. It is not only the result of a conversation between mother and daughter; it is also constructed in two voices. We learn about the past and the present, or more technically, about intergenerational transmission. I am drawn to the mother’s direct account of her experience in Poland between the two world wars, the new realities she encountered, and her life-changing disillusionment that resulted from an exposure to aggressive behavior that came as a complete shock to her and her generation of Jews who were looking forward to an affirmative life. “Home,” as in the title of this memoir, would have to materialize where it could: in survivors’ memories.
Shatit Shoshi, Prof. Bar Ilan University, Israel, clinician in private practice for emotional, academic and behavioral therapy. Daughter of Holocaust survivor from Poland, runes an international group of Sokolow Podlaski Jewish Community that organizes memorial days and other activities to cherish our ancestors. I have to say it is an exciting, interesting and important piece of reading. As a second-generation person, whose father went through similar history of life, I identified with a lot of sentences in your book. It is a desire of us, second generation, to ease the pain and the burden of our parents by telling their unbelievable stories and make sure the world will hear them ‘maybe learn from them. I always ask myself -how much do I let the past -my father’s past- be present in my life. I know that if I don’t tell his story and carry on the torch, is like murdering all our family members again and miss the lesson Humanity has yet to learn from that part of history. Your writing, Suzanna, is beautifully done by combining the personal with the national, the past with the present and the fathers’ story with their children’s one. Also, as a person, who deals with emotional healing of people, I fully encourage people to learn about their ancestors’ history and traumas. Science as well experience shows us again and again that we carry in our genes not only our parents’ blue eyes or dark skin but their memories as well. Reading a memoir like yours tells the story of so many people so that reading it can help heal a lot generations who carry this unbelievable tragedy in their lives. Thank you for opening a window to your mother’s life and heart so we can also observe our own.
Dalia Ofer, Max and Rita Haber Professor, Avraham Harman, Institute of Contemporary Jewry. Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Emeritus, Max and Rita Haber Professor of Holocaust and East European studies, Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, the Melton Center for Jewish Education.
The life story of Roma Talasowicz-Eibuszyc, as translated and prepared from the original Polish by her daughter Suzanna Eibuszyc is a remarkable memoir of a Jewish working-class woman in Poland. It describes her experiences from the early 1920s through her life as a refugee in the Soviet Union during World War II and continuing to her ultimate departure from Poland in 1967. Her story is told with great compassion and sincerity, reflecting an ability to both love and criticize the life she recalls. Memoirs by Jewish working-class women in Poland between the two World Wars are quite rare. The detailed description of her family’s economic hardship, the hierarchy between the lower classes and the bourgeoisie and the limited ability to move between classes during the 1920s and 1930s are extremely interesting and moving. Like many other young Jews of her time, the quest to improve their lives and to work toward a just society motivated Roma and her friends to enthusiastically join socialist movements.
Arlene J. Stein, Department of Sociology Rutgers University, NJ. http://sociology.rutgers.edu/faculty/menu-ii/228-arlene-stein
AREAS OF INTEREST Sociology of gender, sexuality, historical sociology, feminist theory, identities, social movements, culture, trauma, collective memory, religion, public sociology. I have now read your mother’s memoir and have to say that I found it extremely moving. I am amazed at your mother’s power of recall–the subtle nuances of daily life before and after the war she captured so many years after the fact, the tremendous hardships she faced from an early age, and how those hardships continued to affect her life after the war. For me personally, the memoir was particularly moving–and relevant– since your mother’s story was so similar to my father’s, at least in its basic contours—they were the same age, from Warsaw, were among those young Polish Jews who survived the war in Russia, and he too was imprisoned in a labor camp, and returned after the war, only to find that his family was gone. And like your mother, he carried the pain of those losses for the rest of his life. I have for a long time tried to understand the shape of my father’s life both before the war and during the war in Russia, and your mother’s story, better than anything else I have read, helps me to do that. There is relatively little written about this group of “survivors” who are often not officially classified as “survivors”.
Elaine Leeder, Dean Emerita School of Social Sciences, Professor of Sociology, Sonoma State University. “In a moving and touchingly written fashion Suzanna Eibuszyc tells the story of life before, during and after the Holocaust in Poland. By weaving her own story with that of her mother’s survival Eibuszyc touches us with the sweet memories as well as the haunting details of victimization and overcoming enormous obstacles for three generations of Jews in Europe and then the US. This is a book to pick up if you want to remember the past and look for hope for the future.”
Atina Grossmann, Professor of History, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Cooper Union, New York teaches Modern European and German history, and women’s and gender studies. She holds a B.A. from City College of New York and a M.A. and Ph.D. from Rutgers University. Her new book, Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany (Princeton University Press) won the Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History from the Wiener Library, London. http://cooper.edu/humanities/people/atina-grossmann A deeply, moving and historically rich account of a Holocaust story common to many survivors but still little known and documented offers a vivid and intimate portrait of a working-class Jewish childhood and adolescence in Warsaw, highlighting the significance of class and gender, as well as political conviction and religion in Polish Jewish life during the interwar years. The second half of the manuscript follows young Roma through her flight to Soviet occupied eastern Poland after the Nazi invasion of 1939 and her struggle for survival in Soviet Central Asia, a harsh exile that nonetheless –and ironically – proves to be Polish Jewry’s single best chance for escaping the catastrophe that engulfed East European Jews during the second world war. This is a tale of hardship and endurance, recording the chaotic conditions in Bialystok in 1940 as the local Jewish community and Soviet authorities attempt to cope with the influx of refugees from western Poland, the trauma and confusion of separation from loved ones left behind in Nazi occupied territory, the desperate search for news and contact, the flight south into Uzbekistan where Roma works in factories, encounters the pains and pleasures of romance under wartime conditions, struggles to find adequate food and medical care, and is tormented by anxieties about her family, and finally the shocking repatriation to the “vast graveyard” of postwar Poland.
Myrna Goldenberg, Professor, English Department at Montgomery College, about twenty-five years ago, she invited Holocaust survivors who live in Montgomery College region to tell the community stories of their experiences during the Nazi era. Myrna’s first book reflects her research interests, women, and the Holocaust. “I found myself so moved by your mother’s story that I have had difficulty writing about it without sentimentality”. Suzanna Eibuszyc’s translation of her mother’s diary is a searing account of a family destroyed by the Nazis and the Soviets. BESHERT traces what it meant to be a young Jewish woman from a poor family during that dark period. Through Suzanna’s narration of Roma’s diary, we feel the poverty of the squalid Jewish section of Warsaw. Roma, the youngest of 6 children, is orphaned young and, with her sisters and brothers, barely survives the disease and hunger of Warsaw between the wars. She describes the 1939 bombing of Warsaw, street by street and building by building as she and her family barely escapes the attacks. The author’s gripping account includes details about political factions among the Jews, the risks Jews took to avoid capture, the difficulties of staying connected to family, and the persistent hunger. Against a background of despair and inevitable deportation, we meet teenagers who try to live normal lives. They are thwarted by rigid class differences as well as by the war. Nevertheless, Roma tries to find comfort and even love. We witness what she witnesses—the secret abortions and deliveries in the midst of the Nazi campaign to murder Jews. Roma’s escape to Soviet Russia leaves her with unresolved guilt. Her return to war-torn Warsaw in 1946 compounds her anxieties. Eventually, she emigrates to the United States and builds her family. BESHERT is a vividly told story of Polish Jews who suffered the oppression of both Hitler and Stalin.
Al Filreis, Kelly Professor of English and Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania. “Memory Is Our Home reminds us of a truth the holocaust sadly confirmed: traumatic total loss creates an absence that can only be retained as memory, and that memory is best made back into a presence in thoughtful words. Diaries such as Roma Talasiewicz-Eibuszyc’s are this particular memory’s mother tongue. Suzanna’s relatively recent discovery of her mother’s writings is a miracle for all of us who do not want to break the chain of witness.” http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis
Janice Eidus, Novelist, short story writer, and essayist twice won the O. Henry Prize for her short stories, as well as a Pushcart Prize, a Redbook Prize, the Acker Award for Fiction, and numerous other awards. Author of The War of the Rosens, and The Last Jewish Virgin. http://www.janiceeidus.com/
In this haunting and brave book, Suzanna Eibuszyc bears witness and pays tribute, through her mother’s journals that she has lovingly and beautifully transcribed, to what Jewish families, especially women, endured in Poland before, and during, the Holocaust and in its aftermath. Eibuszyc’s mother’s story is compelling and poignant; it will both move and educate readers. This book deserves – cries out – to be published, and published soon, and well.
Marcy Dermansky, http://www.marcydermansky.com/ Author of novel Bad Marie a Barnes and Noble Fall Discover Great New Writers pick. Time Magazine pronounced Bad Marie “irresistible.” “Deliciously wicked,” proclaimed Slate. “Bad-ass,” said Esquire Magazine, naming Bad Marie one of the top novels of 2010. Marcy’s first novel Twins was a New York Times Editors Choice Pick: “A brainy, emotionally sophisticated bildungsroman-for-two.” “This book is such a tremendous accomplishment. The small details of your mother’s survival constantly amazed me. I find that the more I think I know about the Holocaust, the more that there is still to learn”. Powerful in its simplicity, the pages are all about the smallest things – the details about finding shelter, surviving cold and hunger, and how much a person can take. The interplay of the 2G voice is also powerful, with a new perspective that is also simple and straightforward in the telling of survival. It says so much, too, about a decision to bring daughters, the 3G to Poland. The importance of not forgetting, or ensuring that the Jewish legacy survives, that the Jewish culture and contribution to Poland are not erased.
Inge Auerbacher, Holocaust survivor, author, and Inspirational Speaker. If we do not have memory, we do not have a future. We build our lives upon the foundation of our ancestors. We must learn from the past and never forget it. The history of the Jewish people often has been soaked in blood, and yet we rose from the ashes to build new lives, and make for all a better world. We must preserve all the stories of not only our tragedies, but also our incredible successes in so many fields. I congratulate you for your work to inspire all the new generations to come.
Eric Scott, Les Productions des Quatre Jeudis Inc., Documentary Filmmaker. I just finished your book this afternoon! Trust me, I’ve read a lot of Polish Holocaust memoirs since I began this bizarre journey towards making a film Polish restitution. Your book is a powerful one, among the better ones I’ve read. And the story sucked me in. Completely. I liked how you separated your voice from your mother’s, yet you connected them. Eibuszyc has written a gripping memoir about her Polish Jewish family’s struggle to find its place inside a country she once called home. Terrifying encounters with Nazism, Communism and extreme Polish nationalism tell only part of the story. This book is a testimony to the complexities of Polish identity and the author’s unresolved feelings towards the society, language and culture that once gave her life.
Dr. John Z. Guzlowski, Professor Emeritus, Eastern Illinois University, is the author of Lightning and Ashes, a verse memoir about his parents’ experiences as slave laborers in Nazi Germany.
lightning-and-ashes.blogspot.com History is more than numbers, more than the story of how one war started on such and such a date and how it ended on a different date. History is about what a child feels growing up in the poverty of Post-World War I Poland. It is about what it is like to feel fear the day the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. History is about what it means to stand on a street and know that this street will take you to a concentration camp from which you may never return. History is about how one woman survives the return to her home after a war that has left her country in the hands of the Soviet Communists. This is the history that Suzanna Eibuszyc shares with us in her moving book Memory is Our Home. Combining excerpts from her mother’s diary with her own memories of stories her mother shared with her, Ms. Eibuszyc has created a work that will move every reader with the truth of what those years between 1917 and 1969 were like.
Rabbi Barbara Aiello, Serrastretta, Calabria, Italy, Memory is Our Home is an important book for many reasons, not the least of which is that our Holocaust survivors, older and more fragile as the years go by, soon will no longer be with us. As one historian starkly reminds us, “the twenty-year old who survived Auschwitz is now nearly ninety.” This means that for us Jews specifically and for humanity in general, we are about to lose our eye-witnesses – something that could reduce the memory of the Holocaust to the back pages of history. That’s why Suzanna Eibuszyc’s efforts at not only recounting her mother’s story but her determination to share it with the world are so vitally important. In the vast library of Holocaust literature, several books hold our attention and Memory is Our Home is one of them. Ms. Eibuszyc tells her mother’s story with words that touch our hearts and create an indelible album of what happened to one family and how Nazi horrors shaped their lives. As our survivors pass on, Memory is Our Home will live in our hearts, reviving the spirit of those who suffered so while superbly maintaining Holocaust literature in the place of prominence it deserves.
Aaron Elster, a child survivor of the Holocaust; “I Still See Her Haunting Eyes” a memoir of his survival. He currently is serving as Vice President of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. Aaron, as a Ten-year-old, was able to escape the liquidation of the Ghetto where most of his family was sent to a death camp in Treblinka. Living on his own, he was hiding in barns and forests. Roma’s story reads like a Jewish version of Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt. There are so many similarities between his heartbreaking Irish life and hers. Roma’s life starts in a poor Jewish neighborhood in Warsaw. It describes her devastating experience of the German invasion of Poland and the harrowing experience of surviving Stalinist Russia from 1939 to 1946. Roma’s memoir is very compelling, it pays special attention to the physical, emotional and cultural conditions associated with the First and Second World War. It highlights the notions of sacrifice, determination, loyalty and love in various forms. Yet, her life’s story is not all doom and gloom. Although, she suffered unspeakable cruelty she is able to forgive. Even in the midst of total desperation she was always able to find a glimmer of hope. It is my firm belief that it will touch the lives of all who read this amazing story.
Rudy Rosenberg, after attending the 1991 first meeting of the Hidden Children in New York, he decided to break his silence and wrote his first book “And Somehow We Survive” and started to lecture to show that he had indeed survived. The Memoir of Roma Talasowicz-Eibuszyc Lovingly translated from the original Polish by Suzanna Eibuszyc, her daughter, fascinates from the early paragraphs. Roma was forced to abandon all she had known for her own self-preservation. All her friends, siblings and relatives vanished. Only Roma survived to be the witness to life as it was between the two World Wars and to the utter destruction of Warsaw in the few weeks after the German invasion of Poland on that fateful September of 1939. With the “peace” of total destruction descending upon her land began the systematic horror of the Holocaust that would soon annihilate what was left of the world of her infancy. The story of a young Jewish person in the maelstrom of what it was to be caught up in Poland between the end of the First World War and the onset of WWII. It gives the impression of Roma being the sane center in the middle of millions of ants scurrying about trying to survive in the face of incredible odds. When “normalcy” finally appeared, the greatest calamity was about to descend upon her people and her land. Roma’s brushes with love and romance that did not blossom into full flower as Roma sacrificed so much in her attempt to keep her orphaned family together are told realistically without ever becoming Maudling. Book, one ends with Roma seeking the “safety” of the Soviet Union where a rough awakening will surely await her. It leaves the reader anxious and impatient to read the second volume that is sure to unveil Roma’s disillusions with her “safe haven” in the Soviet Union. Rarely has a book been written that pencils so bleak a portrait of the Poland that had been cloaked in the secrecy of life under Germany’s iron fist. Even for those who lived those years in the rest of occupied Europe it presents an unfamiliar, stark black and white vision of hell.
Anne Lukawiec Lukas, active with Kol Israel Generations, a Cleveland organization for families of survivors for the past 25 years, and as president for the past several years. She founded the Paralegal Studies Program at Notre Dame College and at Ursuline College. Anne started teaching a course on the Holocaust and started taking students and others on Jewish-Christian Journeys to Europe. I was heartened to learn about Beshert -It Was Meant to Be, by Roma Talasowicz-Eibuszyc, translated from the original Polish by Suzanna Eibuszyc. It provided so much explanation and historical understanding that for the first time, I have a palpable understanding of my parents complicated and poverty-stricken lives in Warsaw and how they endured their many hardships in Saratov and Uzbekistan. The writing is especially helpful since it allows us to appreciate the activity as well as the emotions Roma experienced. The descriptions of life in the various places answered so many questions about how people coped with the loss of family and friends, uncertainty, unrelenting labor, diseases and displacement. I plan to keep a copy of this book as an “heirloom-reference book” for my family to read so they can have a fuller understanding of our family history. An important autobiography; the kind one seldom finds nowadays. Through the prism of the youngest of six sibling’s memories and observations, first as a child then, as an astute young woman, we witness her constant struggles, dashed hopes, occasional joys of accomplishments, meaningful friendships, and her strong family ties within the warm embrace of her family. As Roma says, “in the glow of the Shabbat candles, Mother looked down at the potato soup and then up at us.’ Poor but always together, like a mother bird with its newborn babies in a nest,’ she said. The warm feeling I got from her reassuring words is still with me today.” This would be a helpful compass through much of her life. Roma takes us through the historical era starting just after World War I, when she was born to the early months of Nazi Germany’s invasion, atrocious bombardment and oppressive occupation of Poland. This also signifies the start of the persecution of the Jewish people in Poland, leading to their total demise. It is a rare intellectual treat how Roma eloquently intertwines her personal and family history with the prevailing general socio-political conditions and popular workers’ movements of the Jews in Poland.
Dr. George Halasz, Member of the Editorial Board of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry and since 2005 the Editorial Board of Australasian Psychiatry. He has written/co-edited three books, many chapters and journal articles that deal with ADHD, trauma transmission, child psychotherapy and ethics, spirituality and religion. http://kavod.claimscon.org/contributor/halasz-george/ http://kavod.claimscon.org/2016/01/beshert-it-was-meant-to-be/
There is a famous Chasidic saying ‘In the End is the Beginning’ which I had in mind as I read Suzanna Eibuszyc’s refined translation of her late mother’s moving memoir Beshert – It was Meant to Be. The end of each handwritten word penned in Polish by her mother, in her Los Angeles apartment, became a new beginning of her daughter Suzanna’s translation. Her mother had fulfilled her daughters’ request to write about her life as a Jew in Warsaw from 1917. ‘My daughters have convinced me to write about my life.’ And what a life! As I read the book it occurred to me that Beshert – it was meant to be – is the expression used by deeply spiritual people as a way to endure the sometimes-unbearable lot that life casts our way. And Roma Talasowicz-Eibuszyc surely drew on her spiritual sensibility to endure, survive and commit her experiences as testimony, a legacy for her daughters and grandchildren. Her diary is deeply personal, her style at times left me feeling as if I was with her in her apartment ‘ I am putting my pen down and walking around my apartment, my thoughts flooding my mind, there are so many. They come and go too quickly for me to capture them on paper. Paper, as always, is patient and will wait.’ I wished I was there to reassure her that such agitation is normal. It is what we call ‘traumatic flash-backs’. I have never read a more honest description which she no doubt endured over the years, before and during the writing of her diary. That she had a natural gift for learning foreign languages goes along with her gift writing a heart-felt testimony, extraordinary experiences spanning over half a century, the years leading up to the Second World War and after, to her new life in America.
Dr. Dina Ripsman Eylon, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal. Author: Reincarnation in Jewish Mysticism and Gnosticism Songs of Love and Misgivings. Roma Talasowicz-Eibuszyc has written a most compelling and illuminating memoir. In her straightforward style, she encompasses life in its totality. It is highly recommended. In a decade when the last live testimonies of the Holocaust are vanishing swiftly, Roma Talasowicz-Eibuszyc’s memoir tells of Jewish life during the horrible reality of the Holocaust. Roma felt strongly that she had to pass on her legacy, and I believe likewise that it is beshert (meant to be) to resonant with large audiences before these memories fade completely from their consciousness.
Rita B. Ross, author, Running from Home. One wonders what the need to write another World War II memoir is all about. Suzanna Eibuszyc, in her translation of her mother’s diary, makes it eminently clear as to the need for yet another memoir. Roma Talasowicz-Eibuszyc in Beshert-It Was Meant to Be recounts, in exquisite simplicity and detail, what it was like to be Jewish in post-World War I Warsaw. With meticulous attention to detail, the author paints a rich background of the political climate where the poverty, hunger, fears, courage, and daily survival of the Jewish person is challenged. The youngest of six children, Roma’s mother, widowed at an early age battle to make a life for her family. She shares with the reader the strength of her mother’s will to keep her children alive. She introduces her five siblings and how hard they worked to stay alive, remain together and take care of each other when their mother died suddenly leaving six young orphans. Eibuszyc keeps the historic perspective current in her descriptions of the family’s plight. By the time World War II comes to Warsaw, the stage has been thoroughly set. The memoir resonates deeply in everyone whose life has been touched by events beyond their control.
Bruce Black, Founder, The Jewish Writing Project. https://jewishwritingproject.wordpress.com/
It’s one of the most moving pieces that I’ve had the honor of sharing on The Jewish Writing Project site, and I hope you’ll consider expanding it into a longer memoir of your experiences as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. The world, I think, needs to hear your story. Many thanks for sharing your work with the project. Bruce Black, Founder.
Burt E Schuman, December 15, 2017, former Rabbi at Beit Warszawa in Warsaw, Poland. In translating and compiling the diary and the saga of the life of her mother Roma Talesiewicz Eibuszyc and her father, Abram Eibuszyc, their daughter Suzanna Eibuszyc has produced a masterful epic, filled with memories of a close and loving family in pre-war Warsaw, the dislocations caused by two World Wars, her mother’s early commitment to the values of the anti-Leninist Yiddisher Arbeiter Bund and her profound sense of Polish patriotism and love of Polish literature and culture, despite the obligato of anti-Semitism which pervaded much of that country, despite the courage of Polish Righteous of the Nations. Her description of the bombing and surrender of Warsaw, the flight of Roma and her siblings to the Soviet Union and the desperate state of Russia during World War II under Stalin and the challenges her parents faced both in the town of Saratov and later in Uzbekistan had the qualities of a great epic novel. The experience of life in post-war Poland, the murderous pogroms and the ever-tightening vice grip of Stalinism made for a deeply moving account. Of their return to Poland and their departure in 1966.
Jan Ledochowski, a 5-star review, March 5 2016. After the Second World War Jan’s parents could not return to Poland. His family were diplomats for the pre-communist government, now they were prime targets for repression. They had to emigrate to South Africa. This a touching account of life for relatively poor members of the Jewish community in Warsaw before the Second World War and the horrendous experience of being deported into the depths of Russia during the War, which ironically saved them from almost certain death under the German Holocaust. They were then made to feel very unwelcome on their return to a Poland which was now under communist rule, culminating in the anti-Semitic campaign of the 1960s, when they finally left. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to know what it is like to be a minority being treated considerably worse than the rest of the nation under successive totalitarian regimes. Discrimination is not just an unacceptable idea. Find out what it is like when you suffer from it yourself. http://www.amazon.com/review/R1ZSMAGPEX3PXE/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=3838207327&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=283155&store=books
Arthur Miller, May 1, 2016. As a Holocaust educator (non-historian), my eyes are constantly searching for new works of scholarship which shed new light and deeper understanding in areas of investigation already covered by pre-eminent scholars in their respective fields of expertise. For this reason, I always find the genre of Holocaust memoirs especially meaningful and profoundly poignant. Grappling with the Holocaust on an intellectual level and grasping the Holocaust experience on a personal (“being there”) level are literally two different realties. I first discovered this work on a Holocaust FB page that piqued my interest. It rarely happens that a book so moves me that I feel an overwhelming and irresistible need to contact the author and have any lingering uncertainties clarified and explained. Such was certainly the case with this haunting memoir and sensitive author. The author’s mother read Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” in Polish translation as a young girl in pre-war Warsaw and when the shocking German invasion occurred on that fateful day, she instinctively went into auto pilot by escaping to the East. . . and further East and further East. . . It seems nearly every day was a struggle for survival and a piece of bread. While the various ethnic groups were fighting and betraying each other, it seems everyone was hunting for Jews. For me personally, reading this memoir was a harrowing and anguishing experience that I will forever be extremely grateful to both the author’s traumatized mother — for painfully and painstakingly unearthing her traumatic memories and committing them to paper towards the end of her life, and to the author herself — for courageously finding the inner strength to fulfill her commitment and promise to her beloved mother to preserve the non-ending nightmare in print for all the world to see. In between everything, Ellie Wiesel was a kindly guiding figure who encouraged Suzanna Eibuszyc with eternal words of inspiration: “The story must be told. Silence is never an option.” Now I am here to tell you: “This story must be read”.
Chuck Fishman, Photographer. A memoir based on her mother’s diaries, Suzanna Eibuszyc’s “Memory is Our Home” is a fascinating book, especially for those interested in life as a Polish Jew in the 20th Century. Suzanna’s mother, Roma, grew up in Poland during the interwar years, barely survived the Holocaust in the Soviet Union and Uzbekistan and returned to a devastated country to find friends and family gone…murdered. She started a family in then a communist anti-Semitic Poland and was finally able and willing to leave the country with her daughters in the 1960s. “Memory is Our Home” is an illuminating view of survival, perseverance, family, history and much more. Suzanna interweaves her own recollections both growing up in communist Poland and raising her two daughters in the United States making this a “living document” narrated by two generations.
Suzanna’s father died in 1961 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in the town of Klodzko in southwest Poland. In 2008 Suzanna brought her daughters to visit the country of her youth which included a trip to the Klodzko cemetery for the girls to see the grave of their grandfather. It, and the other monuments there, were broken in pieces, destroyed by hateful ignorant people.
This 1975 photograph of an arranged pile of broken tombstones (matzevot) in the remains of the Jewish cemetery in Siedlce is also in southwest Poland not far from where Suzanna’s father is buried. It was the last picture in my book “Polish Jews: The Final Chapter” (1977, out –of-print). With the renewal and re—identity of Jewish life and culture in Poland today, that title has been proven somewhat premature. When I read of Suzanna’s cemetery experience with her daughters, I thought of this picture.
Chuck Fishman http://www.chuckfishman.com/portfolio.html?folio=Portfolios
Maria Van Beurden Cahn, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, “NIOD covers the 20th and 21st century, with a focus on research into the effects of wars, the Holocaust and other genocides on individuals and society.” I met Maria Van Beurden Cahn at the 27th annual World Conference of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust in Houston TX. My book, Memory is Our Home is accessible at NIOD.
Deborah Farnault, Memory is Our Home is now part of collection in Paris and available to the public, Memorial de la Shoah, http://www.memorialdelashoah.org. “It was great meeting you at the conference. I am glad we were able to purchase your book and add it to our collection in Paris. It will be made available to the public very soon. I also sent the URL of your website to my colleagues at our archives center in Paris, they might want to list it in our catalogue, too. At the Mémorial, we work a lot about the history of Jews of Eastern Europe (not only Jews in France), especially Poland because this is where the situation was at its worst, as you know it. I believe this will be a great addition to our collection.”
Dr. Rita Vinocur, Memory is Our Home by Suzanna Eibuszyc is an outstanding book which is a powerful tool for students and public in general. It has a place of honor in our Shoah Library in Montevideo Uruguay and I highly recommend reading it. The Shoah Library in Uruguay called Simon Wiesenthal, means that hundreds of people will be able to read the lesson of memory of the Shoah which your books give. Thank you again Gs bless you and remember if one day you come to Uruguay to visit our Library and Shoah Museum, we’ll receive you with open arms.
Liladhar R. Pendse, Librarian for Central Asian, East European and Slavic Studies. Doe Library, University of California, Berkeley, your book has been added to our collections on Shoah materials from Poland. To be honest, when I read your dedicatory inscription, it made me very sad and emotional. Yes, this crime cannot be forgotten. Thank you for sharing your parent’s (mother’s) memories with us.
David Rico, NY, it’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed reading anything as much as I did your book. I’ve always been interested in history and especially history surrounding the Second World War. Roma really came alive to me. The way she dealt with and persevered through so many bad experiences is truly inspiring. Thank you for sharing her story.
Judy Weissenberg Cohen, Survivor / Witness / Writer / Poet / Editor Women and the Holocaust Her website is dedicated to women murdered in the Holocaust. Her voice is worth exploring. http://motl.org/survivor-story-judy-weissenberg-cohen/
I highly recommend Suzanna’s book: I was involved with Suzanna at the very beginning of her trying to bring to light her mother’s life story. Now, rightfully so, she published it in a book form. Read the distinguished scholarly and other voices praising the immensely unique historical value of this manuscript wanting to become a book.
Svetlana Grinberg, NY, I’ve just finished reading your book. It is wonderful! It’s heartbreaking, it’s educational, smart and powerful. I could not stop till I turned over the last page. I’ve read a lot of books about Holocaust, watched a lot of movies, but I don’t remember beefing so deeply touched. May be because you feel that every word in this book is true, may be because my parents have gone through almost the same pass as yours: from Kiev, that was bombed at the first day of war, to Uzbekistan, my husband’s family – to Siberia. They experienced almost the same hardships, probably it has been a little easier for them than for your family because they were born Soviet citizens. The difference was that my parents hardly spoke about those times. I believe they tried to protect us children from the terrible truth. I just picked up some pieces about Holocaust much later in life. The Soviet policy was to conceal and forget. Also, this book is so close to me because I was raised and had lived for almost 50 years in Lvov that is mentioned many times in your book. It is really a beautiful city 700-year-old, magnificent architecture. i used to love it, studied its architecture, knew every historical building, churches. There were not many Poles left there after the war, they left for Poland, and whoever stayed were very humble. Our family even had a housekeeper – a Polish woman, very skillful, hard working. Our family was rather well off, my father was a professor, my mother – a doctor. And soviets appreciate scientists much more than other professions. I don’t remember ever experience a hunger that your mother described in such vivid and horrifying words. Also, as strange as it seems, in my childhood and youth I’ve never experienced antisemitism, although I’ve never concealed that I was Jewish, and my last name spoke for itself – Grinberg. Only when I started to work, and was trying to find another job I realized that it was the government policy to restrict Jews from better paying jobs. I got to the state university probably because my father was a known scientist. But when we realized what kind of a government we had, when we found out what happened there during the war, how Ukrainians and Poles participated in exterminating the Jews we decided that our daughter, her future children can’t live there. As soon as we got a chance we emigrated and never looked back, and never would return and even visit this place that we would love for so many years.
Henia Silver, Amazon April 23, 2015. Expat, Szczecin, Poland. Five Stars, one the best books I have read in the long time. Suzanna captures the worst and best of an emotional period of time of her Family. The book was written with a complete candor of horrific time, hunger beyond imagination, love, love lost and hope! It should be read by young adults. Most people do not know what is like to live in “emotional silence “! How it affects their families. http://www.amazon.com/Memory-Our-Home-Remembering-Generations/dp/3838207327/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1&qid=1422268449
Donald H. Harrison, San Diego Jewish World, May 8 2015. http://www.sdjewishworld.com/
The voices of first generation and second-generation Holocaust survivors are interwoven in this family remembrance covering pre-war life in Poland, escape from the Nazis to the Soviet Union and its eastern Republics; a return to Poland after the war, and finally immigration to the United States and adjustment to a new life. Author Eibuszyc, who is the second-generation voice, found her mother’s memoir, translated it into English, and combined it with her own reflections on what it was like growing up under the influence of her parents’ memories of their World War II suffering. In doing so, she provided some juxtapositions that might otherwise have escaped the reader’s notice. The cost, for some readers, at least initially, was confusion as to which family member is narrating. I would have preferred a straight chronological account, going from the mother’s story to that of Ms. Eibuszyc. However, writers have their differences, and my approach is not necessarily more valid than that of Eibuszyc. More important than the style of presentation is the substance of presentation, and on this score, I was very impressed. Although Eibuszyc’s mother wrote matter-of-factly about her experiences, I don’t think that I will ever be able to say the words, “I’m hungry” again, without accusing myself of chutzpah immediately thereafter Eibuszyc calls her memoir Memory is Our Home. Inside that “home,” people were near starvation. After being exiled to a village in the endless stretch of the Soviet Union, it became clear that while the Soviets didn’t murder their prisoners in assembly-line fashion as did the Nazis, death at the Soviets’ hands was all too common. To get out of the freezing cold, one must have a shelter. To obtain a shelter, one must get a job from the state. But these jobs paid starvation wages. People were always hungry. The less scrupulous stole food or money from other people. The more scrupulous tried to supplement their incomes by buying goods in one locale and selling them in the other. In the United States, we call admire the latter approach as private enterprise. In the Soviet Union, it was known as criminal black marketeering. Steal it or buy and sell it, you were considered an economic criminal. So, often people had to endure long periods — we’re talking days at a time — with very little or no food at all. That was frequently the situation of Eibuszyc’s mother, the former Roma Talasowicz. If people were fired from their jobs for even a minor infraction, they could lose their homes. In one instance, Eibuszyc’s mother had no place other than a shed in which to huddle with others during severe weather.
Betty, 5 out of 5 stars on Goodreads, Dec 6 2015. This is one book that you will not be able to put down. We have heard stories of the death camps – but the people who escaped these camps lived through unbelievable hardship. I would highly recommend this book to everyone. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25245373-memory-is-our-home#other_reviews
Linda Marie Marsh, 5 of 5 stars review on Goodreads, Nov 19 2015. An incredibly unique memoir of life during the holocaust and after, and the effects that trickle down through time. The author got her mother to write what she would not speak about, write about her life before during and after the horrors of Hitler and his henchmen. The bulk of the book is set in Poland and Russia which gave it a unique aspect. The first generation of survivors lived in constant fear and silence, constantly looking over their shoulders long after the war ended. Their children absorbed it all and learned to grow up with tremendous distrust! And so, it goes…generation after generation….
The fact that this memoir was translated into English was a blessing.” …the second generation inherited the responsibility to remember the legacy of the vibrant Jewish culture…to never forget the horror of the Holocaust, and to speak for the generation that was forced into silence.”
Laura, Asheville, NC, Goodreads May 01, 2015, I have to admit I was a little skeptical about this novel. I ended up gaining knowledge in the stories which were told. For some reason reading this feels more like storytelling then a novel, it’s told in a way that is more intimate than many narratives which I have read.
What I found most interesting about this novel was for me paradigm shift of sorts about Jews in Poland. In my background as an American Ashkenazi Jew, my grandparents (who all were born here, and my grandmother for example had all four of her grandparents in America) Eastern Europe was not a place thought of fondly. Learning about the Holocaust, pogroms, and history of Eastern Europe I didn’t really understand how Jews could have such a longing for these places where terrible atrocities occurred. Seeing the authors experiences, both good and bad, in Poland really helped me understand this. This is a very important for book for many reasons. An entire book could be dedicated to its historical importance in terms of Holocaust-era literature, especially as the torch of remembrance is passed to the second and third generations. Very well written
Laura Burstein, Los Angeles, Ca, Goodreads Apr 12, 15, Memory is our home is an extremely captivating memoir which was translated by Roma’s daughter, Suzanna from Polish to English after her mother passed away. The chapters are interspersed with comments by Suzanna of her impressions during that time period growing up in Poland. I couldn’t put this book down. Roma Eibuszyc tells us her story, no holds barred. She takes us from her childhood in Warsaw, Poland, to her life after escaping the brutal Nazi regime to Russia and then Uzbekistan. I could feel Roma’s emotional struggles after she leaves her entire close-knit family at the start of the war and dreams of uniting with her family after the war. Roma faces obstacles that would daunt most of us. She inspires with her perseverance. Her focus on the task at hand is a lesson to be taken to heart. This book is well worth reading. It is important that we never forget how the tragedy of the Holocaust affects many generations to come.
Kalli Meisler, media consultant, posted on Amazon April 23, 2015. Five Stars, I highly suggest reading this memoir and personal narrative (translated from Polish to English). Unlike other holocaust nonfiction, this focus on the Polish-Russian and Uzbekistan community sheds new light to the vacuum of information available during the war, and the plight to reunite with the Poles once the Russians were no longer providing safety! I have never read another memoir about the Polish immigrants/Jews that fled Hitler/Nazis for Uzbekistan. As the first book I’ve read re: the blending of Ashkenazi Judaism with the Yemenite Mountain tribes, I’m intrigued to find out MORE. I hope more families tell their stories. I’m thankful I was asked to read the first edition- before the release date!! http://www.amazon.com/Memory-Our-Home-Remembering-Generations/dp/3838207327/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1&qid=1422268449
Matthew Taub, journalist, Daily Reporter, Milwaukee, posted on Amazon April 20, 2015. Five Stars, gripping, haunting, and mesmerizing. This true story mostly comes from the author’s mother in diaries she wrote. Her difficult, hand-to-mouth upbringing in 1920s Poland was compounded by the rise of Nazi Germany. As Warsaw came under siege, the author’s mother and a few others made the fortuitous decision to flee to Russia. But their troubles were far from over. A lifetime of slights, nomadic movements, and perilous circumstances follow. Flickers of romance and a lasting relationship lead to a small sliver of redemption, but they are no replacement for the abrupt and permanent loss of family and community, and the city once called home. In short, this book is excellent. I really could not put it down. http://www.amazon.com/Memory-Our-Home-Remembering-Generations/dp/3838207327/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1&qid=1422268449
Sandra N, Minton, NYC, Amazon, May 29, 2015. Five Stars, it reads like a novel. The book was written from the heart! http://www.amazon.com/Memory-Our-Home-Remembering-Generations/dp/3838207327/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1&qid=1422268449
Honest Review, Amazon, October 19, 2015, Five Stars, Great read about an overlooked part of history: how thousands of Polish Jews survived the Holocaust by escaping to the Soviet Union and how thousands of them struggled to survive in remote areas of the Soviet Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kirghizstan. http://www.amazon.com/Memory-Our-Home-Remembering-Generations/dp/3838207327/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1&qid=1422268449
Erik Seligman, A Five Star Review, Amazon, January 21, 2016. Couldn’t Put it down. A fascinating window into a time and place in history of which many of us are only dimly aware. Highly recommended! http: http://www.amazon.com/Memory-Our-Home-Remembering-Generations/dp/3838207327/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1&qid=1422268449
Riya Wollack, Carlsbad, CA. This deeply moving and historically important project.
It parallels the life story of my parents who left Warsaw around 1940 and went to Russia. Blessings on your endeavor, Havurah Program Director, Ashland, Oregon.
The Breman Jewish Heritage & Holocaust Museum, Atlanta GA.
www.thebreman.org, Facebook link to You Tube, June 2011, reading from the memoir Beshertbook.com
The POLIN Museum Bookstore Memory Is Our Home: Loss and Remembering: Three Generations in Poland and Russia, 1917-1960s
The Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warszawa – Roma Talasowicz-Eibuszyc Warsaw, April 1917-Los Angeles, May 2006 Jewish community before 1989 “Wirtualny Sztetl“, http://www.sztetl.org.pl/en/
International Child Survivors/Hidden Children of the Holocaust Warsaw, Poland, August 2011, published a chapter from Memory is My Home in their commemorative book TO REMEMBER AND TO HONOR.
This is a great tribute to my mother; she never forgot her city of Warsaw, although after the war the communist government did not allow her to return to the city of her birth.
