| Betty O’Neill grew up knowing very little about her father, Antoni. She knew that he had fled Poland after World War Two, that he had disappeared overnight when she was just an infant, and that his brief reappearance when she was a young adult had been a harrowing, painful ordeal.Fifty-five years after he deserted her family, Betty is determined to find out more. What drove him to abandon them, twice? What was his story? Who was Antoni Jagielski?
Her search for truth takes Betty to Poland, where she unexpectedly inherits a family apartment from the half sister she never knew – a time capsule of her father’s life. Sifting through photos and letters she begins to piece together a picture of her father as a Polish resistance fighter, a survivor of Auschwitz and Gusen concentration camps, an exile in post-war England, and a migrant to Australia. But the deeper she searches, the darker the revelations about her father become, as Betty is faced with disturbing truths buried within her family.
About author:
Betty O’Neill is a Sydney-based writer and teacher with a lively curiosity and a passion for learning. She has an eclectic range of degrees, most recently (2018) a Doctorate in Creative Arts and is a university Lecturer in Creative Intelligence and Innovation. She wrote her doctoral thesis on her quest to understand her father, a World War II Polish resistance fighter who survived four years of imprisonment in Auschwitz and Gusen. She is a lecturer in Creative Intelligence and Innovation at the University of Technology, Sydney.
She has presented conference papers in Australia and overseas on writing family history, the Cold War, migration and the domestic space as an archive. She has published and presented conference papers and facilitated workshops in Australia and overseas on writing family history, the Cold War, migration and the domestic space as an archive. The Other Side of Absence is her debut memoir.
Hilary Harper talks to Betty O'Neill on ABC Radio
Betty O'Neill with Suzanne Leal on You Tube
Links provided by Jurek Kortynski
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