The Missing - Michael Rosen tells us about his Uncle Oscar & Aunt Rachel murdered at Auschwitz and reads his new poem as a tribute to their memory 'Dear Oscar & Rachel'
Jan 27, 2020, 11:25 AM
Cambridge HMD civic event 2020 at Cambridge Corn Exchange
Artistic Director, Helen Weinstein
Dear Oscar and Rachel
Oscar and Rachel,
you escaped from where
they pinned a yellow star
on you.
You escaped from where
they took all you had.
You escaped from where
they made you put a sign
on your market stall,
saying “Jewish business”.
Oscar and Rachel,
You heard it was safe
In the great resort of Nice
On the other side of France,
because the Italians in Nice
were refusing to send Jews like you
away on trains to the East,
to a place no one was coming back from.
So you both ran
(I don’t know how)
all the way there.
Oscar and Rachel,
in Nice,
the Italians put you in a grand old hotel
that no one was using because
there were no tourists coming to Nice
now that it was war.
You were waiting in that hotel,
thinking you were safe.
Thinking you were about to get on board
and sail away, across the sea to North Africa,
and you would be safe till the war was over.
Until you saw the Italians leave.
Until you saw one of the worst,
most violent Nazis of all
march into Nice.
Until his police
found a few thousand of you
waiting in the hotel,
and wrote your names down
and put you on a train to Paris,
and then on a train to the East
where no one was coming back from.
Oscar and Rachel,
you were so close,
so near
to the waves that would take you away,
so near
to where the war couldn’t reach you.
I sometimes think how
on holidays in France
when I was a boy,
I might have met you,
Oscar and Rachel.
And I would have listened to you telling stories
about your great escape
across the sea.