Hiding Places: A Father and His Sons Retrace Their Family's Escape from the Holocaust

by Daniel Asa Rose

Growing up in 1950s Connecticut, author Daniel Asa Rose had always felt alienated from his Jewish roots. Though his mother, a Holocaust survivor, told him stories of the “Not-sees,” these villains seemed as unreal to him as the ogres from his fairy-tale books. Safeguarded by American suburbia, there seemed little need to conjure up horrific stories from the past.

Decades later, feeling unmoored by a painful divorce, Rose takes his two young boys on a quest to reclaim this forgotten history. Arriving in Belgium, equipped only with a tattered diary written by his uncle, they seek out the barns, wine cellars, brothels, and other shadowy places where their relatives hid from the Nazis almost fifty years before. Along the way, Rose struggles to explain the realities of the Holocaust to his impressionable yet precocious sons. Combining childhood flashbacks, family lore, and absorbing travel adventures, this is a story of one family’s triumphant reconnection to their heritage.

Genres: Holocaust, History, Memoir, Nonfiction, War

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Author of "LARRY'S KIDNEY: Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China With my Black Sheep Cousin and his Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant ... and Save His Life" (Morrow). Called A satisfying, hysterical page-turner that will captivate fans of travel writing and family narratives, with special interest for anyone who's helped a love one through serious illness. Publishers Weekly (starred review) "

Reviews

[June · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book because it fits in with the whole Jewish genealogy theme that I am usually interested in, but I just couldn't. I read about half and then stopped. It might have made a good essay, but not a whole book.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

a little ho, lotta hmmm, kinda glad when I was done.