About my father's writing his book

My father was an avid reader and a good writer. He was reading every day - especially books about WWII and detective stories. He also liked solving crosswords where he was able to use his vast knowledge.

We - his family and friends - were always encouraging him to write a book about his tragic experience from WWII, especially what happened to him in Auschwitz. Somehow he wasn't too keen on doing it even though his typewriter was always waiting with a clean sheet of paper. Perhaps it was too painful for him to go back to those tragic years and re-live those beatings and other sufferings and so many situations in which he could easily got killed or die from cold, hunger, sickness, etc.

Interestingly, my father decided to finally write his book when he was well over 70, during his visit in Canada when he learned how to use the computer. It was a little easier for him to use the keyboard instead of the typewriter, although not too easy because he was writing his story in Polish and the keyboard didn't have Polish characters! And there are quite a few more special characters in Polish alphabet...

Anyway, that's how my father finally wrote his book - between 1996-1998, more than 50 years after those tragic events had happened. But to make the book a bit "lighter" he also added some funny stories from his childhood and high school years. We edited his material, checked out the names, places, dates, etc. , added photos from our family archives and promised my father that we would publish his book. Easier said than done...

It wasn't so easy to publish "Living Shadows" - as he decided to call it, but we finally were able to do it - both in English and in Polish (it's called "Zywe Cienie" in Eugeniusz's mother tongue) at CafePress.com. The English version is available here and the Polish version - here.

My father was very happy and proud to see in print his memoirs. Unfortunately, soon after he got the books he died - on March 18, 2006.

Ilona

Technorati tags: Auschwitz, Auschwitz-Birkenau, political prisoner, WWII, Nazi camps, Holocaust, concentration camps, death camps, Eugeniusz Tytyk