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

In I Have My Mother's Eyes: A Holocaust Story Across Generations author Barbara Ruth Bluman chroniclesher mother's dramatic journey from Nazi-occupied Poland to westernBritish Columbia, where her legacy lives on. Bluman sets an urgentand intimate tone as she follows Zosia Hoffenberg from her genteelupbringing in Warsaw through the shock of the Blitzkrieg and on toher escape from Europe through the Soviet Union and Japan. Thatescape required the help of Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul inLithuania, who defied his superiors and helped several thousand Jewsto flee. Bluman also reveals how, even as she was recording hermother's tale of survival, cancer was ravaging her own body. In thisinterwoven narrative, Bluman explains how she garnered strength fromher mother's account as a refugee, as she "stared death in the face." Thesetwin narratives blossom out of salvaged journal entries and letters, andfrom the photographs of family members who have reunited after yearsof displacement. A celebration of the universal struggle for survival,I Have My Mother's Eyes offers a hopeful response to one of history's darkest times.