I Have My Mother's Eyes
by Barbara Ruth Bluman
Vancouver: Ronsdale Press (co-published by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, 2009, ISBN 978-1-55380-070-5, 125 pp., $21.95 paper.

I Have My Mother's Eyes, subtitled A Holocaust Memoir Across the Generations, is exactly that--a memoir of a young woman [Zosia Hoffenberg], written mostly by her daughter [Barbara Ruth Bluman], but completed by her daughter [Danielle Bluman Low (Schroeder)] after the untimely death of Barbara Ruth Bluman. At the same time this book is more than a Holocaust memoir, for it is also the story of Bluman's own battle against the cancer that finally caused her death. And it is the story of how she came to see how her own struggles and misfortunes sometimes mirrored those of her mother. The story is told in two time frames, in alternating sections, with the Holocaust story in the third person, and Bluman's story in the first person.

The story begins in the 1920s with Zosia as a young child in Warsaw, Poland, the youngest of four in a devout Jewish family, apparently fairly well off, though sometimes struggling to maintain their way of life. Although there is some discrimination against Polish Jews, overall, Zosia's family is happy, and, even when war with Germany threatens, sees no reason to leave home and business behind.

By 1938, Zosia is seventeen and enjoying life in Warsaw. Her older sisters had followed the old tradition of being introduced to various suitors by a matchmaker, before choosing one to marry. Zosia, however, had always insisted that she would choose her own husband, and when she and Natek Blumen become interested in each other, she had to fight parental pressure in order to be allowed to consider him. Natek, however, is committed to going to America for a year to study American business practices. While there he comes to understand the seriousness of events in Europe, but Zosia will not agree to leave her family to join him there. In the summer of 1939 he returns to Warsaw to convince her to leave, arriving before the German invasion on September 1--coinciding with Zosia's nineteenth birthday.

The story follows the pair's efforts to endure the bombing of Warsaw and then to escape. The journey is a long one, via Soviet-held Poland, then Lithuania, east across Siberia to Vladivostok, then by boat to Japan, and eventually to Vancouver. Interesting details about the escape are given, particularly the story of how Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Lithuania, dared to disobey his superior officers in order to help Zosia and Natek, and over 6,000 other Jews, flee from the Germans by providing them with travel visas.

In alternating sections, the story of Barbara Ruth Blumen is woven in, although many of its details are lacking. What Blumen seeks to do is to show how in some ways, besides inheriting her mother's eyes, she has had similar struggles, though perhaps not such desperate ones. For instance, she, too, had to argue with her parents to accept the man she wanted to marry, Drew Schroeder, because he was a Gentile. Later in her life, her struggle against cancer, and her determination never to give up, could in some ways be seen to mirror Zosia's struggle to escape from Nazi Poland. As she questions her mother to learn more details about the escape, Blumen gathers the strength to fight her own battle.

In some places, however, the details about Blumen's life almost become intrusions into Zosia's story. Details of a camping trip with her husband seem out of place in the story, and later the break-up of Blumen's marriage and the period afterwards--while tragic in themselves--intrude on the other story.

Zosia's story, the main one, is well worth reading, though it is told in a fact-based way, without much emotional depth. I would also have liked more details about the ride on the Trans-Siberian Railway. The many pictures really add to the story, as do the maps and the family tree. The latter is necessary because of the large cast of characters. I would certainly recommend this book.

Donna Gamache is the author of Spruce Woods Adventure (Compascore Manitoba) as well as many short stories for both children and adults.

Buy this book at McNally-Robinson Booksellers.

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