Daughter desires to publish mother's memoir

FAMILY HISTORIAN—While a student In New York in the 1970s Suzanna Eibuszyc, right, shares a moment with her mother Roma Talasiewicz-Eibuszyc, a Holocaust survivor. It wasn't until after her mother's death two years ago that Suzanna Eibuszyc found the 220page handwritten book. It was her mother's story of survival during the Holocaust, found inside the woman's Calabasas home.

"I knew she was writing, but I never saw the backs of those single sheets of paper," said Eibuszyc, who also lives in Calabasas.

Although her mother, Roma Talasiewicz-Eibuszyc, talked about the contents of the book, Eibuszyc wishes she could ask her mother questions about her life.

"I feel so terribly guilty about it because my own life got in the way of something so important. The day she died (the book) was like a magnet. I knew exactly where to go to find it and open it," Eibuszyc said.

Eibuszyc spent two years translating the manuscript from her mother's native Polish into English. In April, Eibuszyc received notice that her mother's memoir had been accepted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., as part of its permanent collection.

In December, Eibuszyc published excerpts from the memoir in Scribe, a California writer's magazine, and on allgenerations .org, a website for survivors and their descendants. A serialized version of the book will appear on the website "Women and the Holocaust—a Cyberspace of Their Own."

In addition, the Shoah Memoirs Collection in New York City has accepted the memoir as part of its collection. Eibuszyc is working with an editor to publish the book. Eibuszyc has written an epilogue that tells what happened to the family after the Holocaust.

Titled "Beshert—It Was Meant To Be," the story follows Roma's survival as a child and a teenager in Poland from 1917 till 1939, and as a young woman in Soviet Russia from 1940 till 1946.

Born in Poland, Eibuszyc's family remained in Poland until 1967, after her father's death. She, her sister and their mother immigrated to New York City, where an aunt lived. While at a New York City college, Eibuszyc studied under Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel.

"It was then that I understood the importance of my mother's incredible memory and her obligation to tell what happened to her and to the family she loved. I begged her to write it all down," Eibuszyc said.

Eibuszyc left New York for California in 1979 to earn a master's degree at the University of California, Los Angeles. Eibuszyc and her family moved to Calabasas in the mid-1980s where her two children graduated from high school. Her mother followed in 1993, moving from New York.

"My father was the sole survivor of his family. He never uttered a word about it, I think because of guilt. My mother took a different approach. She had such a memory for detail," Eibuszyc said.

Eibuszyc recently returned from a visit to Poland. The last time she had been there was in 1980, when the country was still under Communist rule.

"Life in Poland today is definitely better—it's more vibrant; you can get anything you want; it's not so gray anymore—but nothing is maintained; everything is broken. No one cleans things up. Trains are horrendous, not maintained since I left," Eibuszyc said.

Eibuszyc hopes her mother's experience will educate others about what happened during World War II and the Holocaust.

"There are chapters that deal with the German invasion of Warsaw and my mother's dangerous journey east on Nov. 7, 1939, to a region occupied by Russia," Eibuszyc said. "It's a very moving story."