Memory is Our Home: Loss and Remembering: Three Generations in Poland and Russia 1917-1960s(Edition Noema)

"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 richly-textured 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.

About the Author :
Suzanna Eibuszyc received degrees from the City College of New York where she studied with Elie Wiesel and the University of California. She lives in Los Angeles.

Review :
This book is such a tremendous accomplishment. The small details of Eibuszyc`s mother`s survival constantly amazed me. 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 importance of not forgetting, or ensuring that the Jewish legacy survives, that the Jewish culture and contribution to Poland are not erased. Marcy Dermansky, Author of the Bad Marie "This is an important autobiography, the kind one seldom finds nowadays. … 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. Her descriptions are so vivid that one can actually touch the poverty and feel her immense loss when her mother dies-twice. … Roma Talaszowic-Ejbuszyc has written a most compelling and illuminating memoir. In her straightforward style, she encompasses life in its totality. It is highly recommended."—Judy Weissenberg Cohen, editor of Women and the holocaust. "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. [...] The book is noteworthy for the description of a Jewish refugee's attachment to Poland; its extensive description of prewar life in Poland, wartime experiences in the Soviet Union, and postwar fates; its account of class differences; and its inclusion of the voice of the next generation. Also striking are the descriptions of desperate poverty, before, during, and after the war."—The Russian Review "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."—Rabbi Barbara Aiello, Serrastretta, Calabria, Italy "Memory is Our Home underscores the importance of remembering and giving voice to victims in order to restore their dignity by validating their memories. The book powerfully conveys the need and responsibility to preserve one’s identity and heritage and to tell the story of a once-vibrant cultural life destroyed in the course of the Holocaust. Equally important, it also calls upon readers to keep the memory of past atrocities alive as a way of preventing future injustices."—Tanya Narozhna, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Winnipeg "This Memoir fascinates from the early paragraphs. … 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."—Rudy Rosenberg, author of And Somehow We Survive. "Unforgettable and highly recommended."—Prof. Matthew Feldman, Teesside University