I Have My Mother's Eyes: A Holocaust Memoir Across Generations.

Susan Merskey is freelance writer in London, Ontario.

Barbara Bluman tells the story of her mother Zosia, starting with her comfortable childhood in a good-class Polish-Jewish home before the Second World War.  She and Natel married and eventually reached Vilnius in Lithuania. Only weeks before the German invasion of Lithuania, they managed to get visas to go to Japan, thanks to Chiune Sugihara, the consular official who, in the course of six weeks in the summer of 1940, issued visas to between 6,000 and 10,000 Jews.

Natel eventually got a Canadian visa because Canada needed his expertise—but they had to plead hard for a second visa for Zosia. Barbara and her two brothers were all born in Vancouver.

In 1947, Zosia heard from her sister-in-law, Olga, that none of the rest of the family survived; her letter gives a graphic account of how they all died.  In 1968, Zosia discovered that her uncle, Sam, her father’s brother, had actually survived and was living with his family in Paris.

As a child of survivors, Barbara had little interest in learning more about her parents’ experiences until each of her own children in turn interviewed their grandmother as part of an elementary school project to write about their “hero.” Then she, too, became interested.

The writing progressed slowly at first—Barbara was a busy lawyer in Vancouver, and also fighting breast cancer.  Only when the cancer spread did she quit work in favour of treatment and continue to write this memoir for as long as she was able.

In an afterword, Zosia pays tribute to Barbara and her steadfastness in preserving her story.  In a further afterword, Barbara’s daughter, Daphne, pays her own tribute to Sugihara and also completes her grandmother’s story, with her death from cancer in 2004

Written in an easy to read style which in no way detracts from the serious theme, this is a moving memoir, and a tribute to Zosia’s story, Barbara’s interest in that story and Daphne’s dedication in completing the work her mother had begun. The references to modern day events in the family’s life in Canada add immediacy to the basic story.  Recommended.