The Missing: The True Story of My Family in World War II

by Michael Rosen

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.

Genres: War, Nonfiction, History

128 pages, Paperback

Published August 20, 2024

About the author

Michael Rosen, a recent British Children’s Laureate, has written many acclaimed books for children, including WE'RE GOING ON A BEAR HUNT, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, and I’M NUMBER ONE and THIS IS OUR HOUSE, both illustrated by Bob Graham. Michael Rosen lives in London.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Catherine Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short book aimed at younger readers. The author writes a fitting memorial to family members who were killed in the holocaust.

[Carol Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This easy-to-read account of Michael Rosen's search for his ancestors, some of whom perished and some who survived during World War II, is heartfelt and instructive. His family had been living in Poland at the onset of the war, and some ended up in France, England, and the United States by the end. Others perished in Auschwitz. Michael writes sensitively for the young reader, avoiding some of the more upsetting descriptions of the camps and the horrors of the war. He alludes to the excesses of the Nazis, but obliquely, and he also mentions that the US and other countries could have done better in protecting victims of the Nazis than they did. (He mentions, for example, the boat The St. Louis, which attempted to bring Jewish refugees to the new world but was sent back to Europe by the U.S., dooming its passengers to certain death.) He also mentions that the victims of Nazi persecutions included others besides Jews, and that there have been other similar instances of race-based violence since World War II, and for these inclusions he is to be commended.
In general, this is a good introduction to the history of Nazi atrocities during the war, as well as of one man's search for information about his ancestors and their lives. At times, this reader found it difficult to keep the names of the various uncles and aunts straight, although Rosen does include a family tree at the beginning of the book.
The details in this book may be a little bit hard to follow for the young reader, and for this reason the book might best be shared with an adult who can help sort out the specifics of Rosen's family members.
In this reader's opinion, the poetry did not do much to enhance the narrative, other than to remind one that Rosen is primarily a poet and seek out his other work.