Suzanna Eibuszyc - Memory is Our Home: Loss and Remembering: Three Generations in Poland and Russia 1917-1960s

There are many reasons why survivors decide to record their memoirs. In cases recounting the pre-Holocaust and Holocaust periods, memoirists are often explicit: to bear witness to human cruelty; to speak on behalf of those who were killed; to help successive generations understand what happened to families and a people; to describe how they survived; or to warn about the possibilities of injustice and therefore to seek justice. All these reasons are represented in this memoir, but I am particularly inte r ested in one apparent reason that memoirists, as a rule, dont mention: memoirs give victims a "voice." Memoirs are expressive as well as instr u mental. They play a key role in memoirists transition from victims to surv i vors. They achieve standing by reconstituting their self-respect after per i ods of profound humiliation, helplessness, and traumatic fear. As such, survivors memoirs are important for deliberating on life after ambient death. No other genre is dedicated to exploring this surprising reversal of the natural order.

This memoir, however, is unusual. It is not only the result of a co n versation between mother and daughter; it is also constructed in two voi c es. We learn about the past and the present, or more technically, about i n tergenerational 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 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.

This story takes place after Poland gained its independence in 1918. Roma was born the year before. We overhear Roma telling Suzanna about her family and its Jewish traditions, her romances, and her Jewish and Catholic neighbors. We learn about the familys economic hardships and struggles for its livelihood. These stories matter to Roma, but she co n cerns herself with the deterioration of life for Jews in the 1930s as a result of popular and organized anti-Jewish hostilities. She reflects on the d e struction of Polish Jewry during her and her sisters relocation to Russia during World War II. As acute as her observations are, they are deeply emotional. Suzanna tells us that her mother suffered irreparably: "She was forever haunted by horrific memories.She never stopped mourning." R o ma, herself, recalled the "unrest" she felt each day. Virulent anti -S emitism would surely explain that, but it didnt help that she played an active part in the political opposition to the ascendant fascist National Democratic Party: "The mailman looked at me suspiciously. I was sure that police inspection would follow. Being guilty by association was one of the biggest fears in those days."

Suzanna writes about inheriting the emotional burden. One of the significant narratives in this double memoir is the urge for both mother and daughter to remain invisible, to live in psychological hiding, or, as Suzanna commented about her own life, "to be unseen and to be afraid, lest be su b ject to some kind of harassment." Being invisible was, indeed, the price Roma paid for self-protection from political reprisal and anti -S emitic attack. The fatal paradox of Romas predicament indeed, for all members of a vulnerable minority, whether by political choice or by dint of pedigree was the exigent condition of secrecy, for a furtive existence fuels a vicious cycle of suspicion and further self-concealment.

Romas story provides testimonial confirmation of a landmark scholarly argument for local culpability in the destruction process during the Nazi era. Launched in 2000 by the Polish-Jewish migr intellectual Jan Gross, the case for villagers turning against their Jewish neighbors has revised the standard view, which is still salient among students of the su b ject, that the central Nazi state was exclusively responsible. As she r e minds us, Jews felt vulnerable before the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. She tells us about her neighbors' dedicated hostility. Indeed, Roma o b served that Poles did not see Jews as true Poles, a reality reflected in the distinction she made significantly, in passing between a Pole and a Jew. She referred to her childhood's building's courtyard as a self-imposed "prison" where she felt safe. It's surely not by chance that she devoted considerable space to actual prisons where local officials detained her p o litical comrades. Life before the Holocaust became progressively restricted for Polish Jews. Suzanna ratified the account: "Poland, as a nation, has to face its demons."

Importantly, Roma also recalled feeling hopeful. We often read su r vivors' memoirs as testaments to human degradation, and, indeed, Roma felt "an obligation to bear witness." As Suzanna rightly states, her mother's memoir is a story of tragedy and triumph. But for Roma triumph was not something to declare. Her decisive inclination to look forward, even as a n guish darkened her daily existence, was evidently important enough for her to recall that she did so in great detail. Congruent with her time, Roma was a true believer. Her cause was the achievement of human and common national fellowship. We get hints of this early on in these pages: her yout h ful zeal for learning the Polish language, or her love for the movies and Polish (not Polish-Jewish) literature that opened her eyes "to [the] world outside my immediate surroundings." Her description of Warsaw's streets was particularly evocative the magic of its beautiful boulevards and el e gant store windows. After returning from Russia, she reminisced about "my once beloved city" and her "beloved Poland," a disposition that Suza n na confirmed, for herself as much as for her mother.

Roma joined organizations before World War II that promised a f u ture when Jews and Poles could "coexist." The Socialist Bund movement represented her commitment to making Poland a great country "for all workers." She also joined a workers Esperanto movement to help promote communication across social factions. She participated in the currents of the Jewish Haskalah, or Jewish enlightenment, that, from the 18 th century on, redefined Jewish tradition in terms that could ease modern Jewry's i n tegration into secular society. For Roma, this meant affirming her Polish patrimony, but also following a Jewish way of life that, for example, permi t ted her to venture out to the movies on a Friday night, the Jewish Sabbath that traditionally proscribed such activities, or to regard romance and ma r riage as a matter of love and not as a means of preserving religious or et h nic boundaries (though she respected those boundaries for herself). A member of her family elected to live in a Polish (Christian) neighborhood. As Suzanna remarked, "My mother's homeland never stopped being part of her very essence."