Memory is Our Home

Suzanna Eibuszyc

"Memory is Our Home" is a powerful biographical memoir based on the diaries of Roma
Talasiewicz-Eibuszyc, who was born in Warsaw before the end of World War I, grew up during the
interwar period and who, after escaping the atrocities of World War II, was able to survive in the
vast territories of Soviet Russia and Uzbekistan.
Translated by her own daughter, interweaving her own recollections as her family made a new life
in the shadows of the Holocaust in Communist Poland after the war and into the late 1960s, this
book is a rich, living document, a riveting account of a vibrant young woman's courage and
endurance.
A forty-year recollection of love and loss, of hopes and dreams for a better world, it provides richlytextured accounts of the physical and emotional lives of Jews in Warsaw and of survival during
World War II throughout Russia. This book, narrated in a compelling, unique voice through two
generations, is the proverbial candle needed to keep memory alive.

Excerpts:

My earliest memories are hauntingly painful; they take me back to a day when Mother came home with just
a piece of bread. I don't know how old I was, but I can see myself sitting with my brothers and sisters
hungry, cold, and alone in our room, waiting for Mother to return. I sat on the edge of the narrow bed that I
shared with Mother and watched the door for hours, just waiting for her. We didn't know where she had
gone, but she had been gone all day, and my fear that she was never coming home grew stronger as
darkness descended. We were forbidden to light the kerosene lamp when we were alone.
***
I remember how Mother looked when she opened the door, disheveled and out of breath, as though she
had been chased. She paused for a few seconds, walked over to me, and gave me the small piece of bread
she clutched to her chest. Turning away from my starving brothers and sisters, I devoured it. Rationally, I
know in hindsight that there was no reason to feel guilty; I was too young then to be accountable. But in my
heart, I ask myself over and over, "How could I have not shared even a bite?"
***
We ran inside a little grocery store on Dzikiej Street, but as we ran, I thought I heard someone call out
"Pola, Roma"but the blasts from the bombs were deafening. I hesitated to see who was calling me but
Pola grabbed my arm and pulled me inside the shop. We spent the whole night there waiting for things to
quiet down. In the morning, we rushed toward Sala's street. The fire had died out but the building was
destroyed. There was no trace of Sala, her two boys, or her husband. We stood there in disbelief. We were
frozen to the spot; around us was nothing but devastation. The rubble might very well have been their
graves. Pola and I stood there crying, helpless to do anything. Pola was soon able to control herself, but I
cried hysterically. Sala was the first one of us to suffer from the German bombardment. Only the day before,
a six-story apartment building stood there. Over two hundred people lived in that building. Now Sala and her
family were missing. I could not bear to think that they were gone forever. In the devastation and panic that
surrounded us we did not know where to go and look for them, the only thing we could do was to make our
way to Adek and Anja. In the midst of the nonstop air raids, Warsaw's citizens were barely surviving. I, too,
could think of nothing but to stay alive. Fear and terror overtook my rational thinking. When it got quiet, I
cried for Sala and her boys.
***
Sometimes our train was shunted to tracks no longer in use, and we were left there for days at a time.
Regular passenger trains or trains carrying soldiers, equipment, or goods would pass through instead. From
time to time, the locomotive was unhooked to fill the engine with coal. They would give each car a pail of
coal for the stove. Most days, however, we rode in cold railroad cars as our train moved through what
seemed like endless snow-covered fields. I was physically and emotionally exhausted from the monotony of
the vast, frozen landscape, from the constant state of being cold and hungry, which I convinced myself
would never end. My heart was heavy. I was being taken away further and further from those I loved. I could
not shake my despair. I knew there was no turning back. We traveled through western Russia, going east for
six weeks before finally arriving at our destination. The train stood in what seemed like the middle of
nowhere for two days and two nights. It was bitter cold. We were allowed out of the crowded cars only to
relieve ourselves. Finally, Russian officials with open trucks came to take us away to the rural community
they called Sharyk Podczypnik.

Reviews by Scholars:

Dr. Joanna B. Michlic. Dept. of Historical Studies, Bristol University, UK. The HBI Director,
Project on Families, Children, and the Holocaust, Brandeis, MA, US.
This is an essential primary source for scholars and graduate students of European Women Studies,
East European Jewish History, and the Holocaust. Roma Eibuszycs 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.

Eric Scot. Eibuszyc has written a gripping memoir about her Polish Jewish familys 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 authors unresolved feelings towards the society, language
and culture that once gave her life.
Memory is Our Home, Eric Scott, Documentary Filmmaker
http://www.restitutionthedocumentary.com/

Adam Zamoyski. Award-winning British historian and author of the best-selling epic 1812.
Napoleons 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.

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 mothers diary and
partly on her conversations with her daughter describes the mothers 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
familys 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 familys life in Poland, both before and after Nazi
Germanys 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 Hitlers Third Reich this presents not just a single, detailed narrative, but two. Romas diary and
her daughter Suzannas memoir are skillfully interwoven across this richly textured account, itself set
against the backdrop of three Polands: quasi-liberal between the wars; Nazi-occupied; and then as
part of the USSRs 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, scarcelybelievable brutality of Nazi occupation makes for emotionally challenging reading, this book is
ultimately a story of hope and resolve, not despair. Suzanna Eibuszycs 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.
A poignant chronicle of one womans harrowing journey across the decades, from Poland in the
post-World War I era to Nazi occupation and flight to Russia and Uzbekistan. The books 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 daughters love for her mother demonstrated by
her careful transcription of her mothers 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 mothers direct account of her
experience in Poland between the two world wars, the new realities she encountered, and her lifechanging 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 fathers past- be present in my life. I know that if I dont
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 childrens 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 mothers 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 familys 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. The presence of solidarity and friction between the
members of this family, who first lost their father and later their mother, are told with great honesty.
Romas description of how these young teenagers were able to assist each other and sustain their
family unit leave the reader absolutely moved. This memoir offers an enriching experience for
historians, scholars of social studies, as well as for general readers. It presents the details of daily life
through the eyes of a young girl, a teenager, and a young woman who slowly discovers her
femininity and dares to acknowledge her individuality, desires and hopes. These include stories of
how young working class women wanted to dress, how their bodies and appearance mattered to
them, why window shopping appealed to them, and how movies, libraries and reading opened up
worlds beyond the barriers posed by poverty and long work hours. The force of Romas personality,
her determination to escape the Nazis and to survive and return to her family members who stayed in
Poland represent not only a personal story but the narrative of many Jews who fled to the Soviet
Union in order to survive. This memoir displays a narrative from a generation that successfully
escaped the Holocaust but endured its losses for the rest of their lives.

Arlene J. Stein. Department of Sociology Rutgers University, NJ.

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 mothers memoir and have to say that I found it extremely moving. I am
amazed at your mothers power of recallthe 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 movingand relevant since your mothers story was so similar to my fathers, at least in
its basic contoursthey 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 fathers life both
before the war and during the war in Russia, and your mothers 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. If my father was any indication, many never took on
the survivor label, believing that those who stayed in occupied Poland were the true survivors. But
as your mothers story documents, this group suffered quite horribly. They faced years of hardship,
uncertainty, dislocation, lack of information about their familys whereabouts, and were under the
thumb of arbitrary Soviet officials. Although they were less likely to be singled out as Jews than
those who suffered under Nazism, they were certainly outcasts among the outcasts of the Soviet
regime. (There is, I am told, a growing interest among historians and museum curators in this period,

and of the fate of Polish Jewish refugees under Stalin. Maybe you already know this.) I appreciated
the vignettes at the beginning of each chapter in which she reflects on the past from the perspective
of the present. Your mother was truly a remarkable woman, one who was extremely perceptive about
what she had gone through, and with your help, and with the passage of time, was able to construct a
narrative of her wartime losses. I hope that this memoir finds a larger readership, and I thank you
very much for sharing it with me.

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-Eibuszycs are this particular
memorys mother tongue. Suzannas relatively recent discovery of her mothers writings is a miracle
for all of us who do not want to break the chain of witness. http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis

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.

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
mothers 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.
Eibuszycs mothers 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. 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. Marcys 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 mothers 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.

Elaine Leeder. Dean Emerita School of Social Sciences, Professor of Sociology, Sonoma State
University www.mylifewithlifers.com
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 mothers 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 womens 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.
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 Jewrys 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. Beshert is among the very few English
language memoirs that recount what remains astonishingly the great untold story of the
Holocaust: the remarkable fact that the majority of those Polish Jews who managed to survive the
Holocaust did so, not only in the death machine of Nazi occupied Europe, but in remote corners of
the Soviet Union. Their dramatic experiences have been marginalized in the historiography and
collective memory of the Holocaust, deemed less tragic and central than the stories of the ghettoes,
camps, hiding, and partisans. Romas meticulously written memoir, which combines historical

background with personal reflection, helps to rescue this story from obscurity and thereby offers
truly groundbreaking insight into the history of World War II and the Holocaust.

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. Myrnas first book reflects her research
interests, women, and the Holocaust.
I found myself so moved by your mothers story that I have had difficulty writing about it without
sentimentality. Suzanna Eibuszycs translation of her mothers 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 Suzannas narration of Romas 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 authors 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 witnessesthe secret abortions and deliveries in the midst of the Nazi campaign to
murder Jews. Romas escape to Soviet Russia leaves her with unresolved guilt. Her return to wartorn 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.

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 mothers 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, http://rabbibarbara.com/about_us.html

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. Thats why Suzanna Eibuszycs efforts at not only recounting her mothers 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 mothers 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. Aaron is a child survivor of the Holocaust; I Still See Her Haunting Eyes is 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.
Romas story reads like a Jewish version of Angelas Ashes, by Frank McCourt. There are so many
similarities between his heartbreaking Irish life and hers. Romas 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. Romas 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 lifes 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. Romas 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 Romas 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 Germanys 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. Anne has been 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.

Judy Weissenberg Cohen. Survivor / Witness / Writer / Poet / Editor

womenandtheholocaust.com Her website is dedicated to the Women who: were murdered while
pregnant. Holding little hands of children or carrying infants in their arms on the way to be gassed,
in hiding, to the mothers who gave their children to be hidden, many never to find them again.
This is an important autobiography, the kind one seldom finds nowadays. Through the prism of the
youngest of six siblings 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 Germanys 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. We learn in minute details, without them becoming dull
or boring, what life was like for her poor working-class family with a widowed, single mother who
together with one son became the main breadwinners till some of the other children reached 12 years
of age. These children were forced to leave school to be exploited child labourers to supplement the
familys income. Her descriptions are so vivid that one can actually touch the poverty and feel her

immense loss when her mother dies twice. As the description of the political situation in Poland
unfolds in her fluid style, one can keenly sense how the laws and anti-Jewish edicts affect the daily
flow of their lives with every sordid detail mentioned. She masterfully infuses the astonishing
hardships with some lighter aspects of a working-class girls life, including personal life; the
ambition to better herself, to learn, to belong, to be active politically; the measure of intimate, private
satisfactions, and even affairs of the heart where social class status painfully intrudes. Roma tells the
readers about Polish politics, the benign era of Josef Pilsudski with its blessed benefit to the Jewish
community, how the socialist revolution in Russia had an influence on the Polish and Jewish
working class including some of her siblings, and a glimpse into the social class structure in the
Jewish community itself. We learn about young Romas Poland and what motivated young Jews to
get involved by joining the Socialist Bund, considered then the most progressive Jewish workers
political movement, and some leaving it when their economic and social circumstances improved.
September 1939 was not only a turning point for Poland, and the world, but for my personal life as
well, begins Chapter Ten. In the last two chapters, with meticulous attention to historical and
personal particulars, she describes Polands surrender to Germany, and its special, lethal effect on the
Jews of Poland. This was definitely the beginning of the end of her life, as she knew it then, and that
of her family. It is described with all its painful and heartrending details. She is conscience-stricken
about the idea of escaping, just as a short term plan. However, her fear of the unbelievably vicious
German brutality (especially the effect of deprivation of food in the Jewish community) as she
observes it daily, trumps fidelity, and her plan is ready. Romas last memories of the final good-byes
with her family members are unforgettable, especially, the painful parting with her beloved, young
nieces and nephews. Her immensely courageous determination to flee is mitigated by two of her
single siblings last minute decision to escape with her to the Soviet occupied territory in Poland.
Roma Talaszowic-Eibuszyc has written a most compelling and illuminating memoir. In her
straightforward style, she encompasses life in its totality. It is highly recommended.

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.
There is a famous Chasidic saying In the End is the Beginning which I had in mind as I read
Suzanna Eibuszycs refined translation of her late mothers 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 Suzannas 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 Ieft 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. The side-by-side story of the past and the
present, contrasting the cheers, excitement and optimisms that the people of New York generate
around New Year reminded her of the dark clouds at the outbreak of war in 1939, Poland. Living in
constant fear, no place to run; moral dilemmas between family loyalty and self-preservation,
decisions no one should be forced to make; how the most important Jewish Holy Days Rosh
Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sabbath all were extinguished with the untimely death of her mother.
But here is another level of this past-present side-by-side story. The daughter, who recognized the
need for her mother to go back in time brought her comfort and torment. It was obvious there had
never been any closure for my mother made me wonder why we would expect closure in one
generation after such massive trauma. I was reminded of an interview a decade ago I started with
Daisy Miller, herself a child survivor, then working for the Visual History foundation in Los
Angeles, which later recorded over 50,000 Holocaust testimonies. Daisy asked me why I wanted to
interview her. I said I wanted to learn about how child survivors healed their trauma. Daisys
previous warmth suddenly transformed into a cold stare, with a steely voice she confronted me:
George Im really disappointed in you (as a mental health professional), do you really think that we
can be healed? In an apologetic voice, No was my reply. So why did you say it? Maybe you could
put the question another way? she encouraged me. I returned with maybe to see how you can repair
the trauma. She smiled and our recorded interview started. The lesson I learnt from that encounter
was the need to be most thoughtful about how and what experiences we language when speaking
with survivors and their next of kin. So I was very moved by the brutal honesty in Suzannas
description of her family life Growing up in the shadow Sometimes I was sympathetic. Other
times I was filled with contempt. I was angry, and overwhelmed for being connected to my mothers
ongoing grief. Later to add that, To this day I do not have any emotional attachment to holidays,
but now at least I understand how this disconnection came about. So it is with the inherited trauma
across the generations.
The detachment her mother needed to make with Jewish holidays is passed unknowingly to her
daughter who learns the reason through the act of translating her mothers diary. Thus, it was with
surprise that I read Suzanne huge regret was that I did not get to translate her memoir while she was
still alive. We never had the chance to journey and emerge together from her trauma. Now, as
someone who had the good fortune to travel to Auschwitz Birkenau with my mother on the occasion
of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the camps, I have learnt that it is not really possible to to
emerge, either individually or together, from the massive trauma endured by survivors. Rather, I
now believe that at best we incrementally repair such trauma, neither to emerge nor heal the trauma.
I believe it is through the acts of remembering, whether while survivors are alive, or after their
passing, that this critical act of repair may takes place. In the case of translation, I believe that
Suzanna has followed in her mothers footsteps which she described as at great risk to her safety
and sanity that my mother entered the world she suppressed for so long. Like her mother, reading
this remarkable translation, is ample testimony to her daughters equal measure of courage: to enter
that world, to enjoy the legacy bequeathed to her and her daughter to live with hope in the future.
That is how it was meant to be in the end, the beginning of the new generation it is Beshert.

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-Eibuszycs

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 mothers diary, makes it eminently clear as to the need for yet another memoir.
Roma Talasowicz-Eibuszc 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, Romas
mother, widowed at an early age battles to make a life for her family. She shares with the reader the
strength of her mothers 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 familys 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.

Its one of the most moving pieces that Ive had the honor of sharing on The Jewish Writing Project
site, and I hope youll 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.

***

View more information about the book: http://memoryisourhome.com/

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EU: from Ibidem Press

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