Suzanna Eibuszyc, at The Blogs

Apply for a Blog

May 12, 2017, 7:48 AM

My Father Hid Behind a Wall of Silence, My Mother Did Not Stop Talking

What I remember most vividly from my childhood years after the war in Poland is how my mother always watched the door, always hopeful, never giving up that a loved one would enter, come back from the dead. Later,...

May 2, 2017, 8:46 PM

A Harsh Exile in Russia Proved to be for Polish Jews the Answer for Escaping the Catastrophe that Engulfed Europe During WWII

At the end of November of 1939, after traveling separately, my mother from Warsaw and my father from Lodz they had arrived in Bialystok. From Bialystok they traveled once again, after signing up for mandatory work inside of Russia....

Apr 29, 2017, 7:42 PM

Life in Poland After WWI, Orthodox Jews and Poles of Jewish Faith

My mother’s family in Warsaw after WWI observed strict Sabbath and celebrated all the other Jewish holidays, yet they dressed in the Western-European fashion. Warsaw was home to many acculturated Jews who dressed and looked like Polish nationals. A...

Apr 20, 2017, 6:25 AM

Out of Warsaw, with tradition and trauma

How her mother clung to her identity as both a Jew and a Pole, despite losing faith in God and humanity

Apr 15, 2017, 7:40 AM

In Poland, After the War, It Was How Others Saw Us and Not How We Saw Ourselves

The French Philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and his notion of ethics and relation as determined by the encounter with the other comes to mind. His model of how others see us serves to understand the Jewish system of belonging and...

Apr 3, 2017, 11:41 PM

May Their Memory Live On Forever

For our family there exists only one photograph from before WWII. That of my father and his cousin/fiancée, taken in their city of Lodz. Both my parents survived the war years throughout the Russian territories. They survived and clung...

Mar 29, 2017, 9:03 PM

The Pessimists Fled and the Optimists Stayed Behind

This expression comes to mind when looking at my own parents and survivors like them who ended up among the living. My parents survived against all ads in Soviet Russia and Uzbekistan. Running east proved to be for most...

Mar 28, 2017, 9:40 PM

What Will it Take For Our People to Stop Living in Denial

In the last decade, before her death, my mother became progressively distraught. It was the knowledge that she was running out of time of ever finding out the truth, of how and where her family perished. She spend hours...

Mar 22, 2017, 10:59 PM

Crossing Paths with Professor Elie Wiesel

Let us travel back in time, to where I lived, after the war. To the southwestern corner of dreary communist Poland where Polish Jewish citizens after surviving throughout Soviet Russia were forced to settle. To our prewar apartment, with...

Mar 20, 2017, 2:57 AM

Poland the cradle to Poles of Jewish faith and orthodox Jews.

After the war, my mother pondered deeply, however, admitting to herself that a system of convictions she held so dear turned out to be deceptions was intolerable. It was simply easier to cling to the old falsehoods. I always...

Load more

About Me

Suzanna Eibuszyc, born in Communist Poland, came with her family to the US in the late 1960s. A graduate of City College of New York and UCLA. While at CCNY her path crossed with Professor Elie Wiesel at the department of Jewish studies. He inspired her in making sure the dark period in the chapter of the Jewish history is not forgotten. Suzanna worked in business but for the past decade has dedicated herself to ensuring the remembrance of Jewish life in Poland. Her essays and stories have been widely published; her book chronicling her mother’s story and their life in Poland after the war. “Memory Is Our Home”, was published in 2015 in English, and “Pamiec Jest Naszym Domem” in Polish in 2016. http://memoryisourhome.com/