The Missing: The True Story of My Family in World War II
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
An award-winning author and poet traces the history of his relatives lost in the Holocaust in a personal, powerful narrative with resonance for readers today. “They were there at the beginning of the war, but they were gone by the end. I suppose they died in the camps.” That’s all young Michael Rosen, born in England just after the end of the Second World War, was told about the six great-aunts and great-uncles who had been living in Poland or France at the beginning of that war. This wasn’t enough for him. So, as an adult, he started to search. He asked relatives for any papers they might have. He read book after book. He searched online, time and again, as more information was digitized and suddenly there to be found. In a unique mix of memoir, history, and poetry, scholar and children’s literature luminary Michael Rosen explores his family history, digging up more details than he ever thought he would and sharing them with readers so that now, a lifetime after the Nazis tried to make the world forget the Rosen family and the rest of Europe’s Jews, his readers can do something essential: remember. With an extensive list of titles for further reading, maps of France and Poland, a family tree, and an introduction by lauded author and anthologist Marc Aronson, this immensely readable narrative offers a vital tool for talking to children about the Holocaust against the background of the ongoing refugee crisis.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This poignant memoir documents the author and poet's genealogical detective work to discover his relatives' fates during WWII. Growing up in England, the former British children's laureate heard about great-aunts and -uncles in France and Poland who had disappeared by the end of the war. As an adult, Rosen becomes determined to find out what had become of them. In the first-person, the author compellingly illustrates how the Nazis sought not only to extinguish the Jewish populace, like Rosen's family, in concentration and death camps, but also aimed to erase their existence from memory and that discovery spurs him onward, through family interviews and discovered letters. Alternating between prose and poetry, the accessible narrative includes poignant poems that underscore the search and deepen understanding of both Rosen's family and his drive to uncover the truth. Supplemented by black-and-white photographs, a comprehensive family tree, and an extensive list for further reading, this multifaceted tome offers a potent, personal look at family history and the Holocaust, with a rousing call against ongoing prejudice and contemporary crises. Ages 10 14.
