Martin Rozen, My Father's Uncle

In the early hours of January 31, 1944, 
four French policemen

knocked on the door of Madame Bobières

in the village of Sainte-Hermine in the Vendée.

Later the policeman in charge 
wrote a report explaining 
what happened next:

“Martin Rozen opened the door.” 
He was,

the report said,

“… born on 18 August 1890 
at Krosniewice in Poland.

Jeweller, son of Jonas and Rachel, 
naturalised French, Jewish race. 
1 metre 62

brown eyes 
oval face 
straight nose 
regular mouth

dressed in yellow cotton trousers

and grey cotton jacket

wearing a Basque beret and low-heeled shoes.
Scar on his left cheek.

He was taken to the Parish Hall at La Roche-sur-Yon.”

What they didn’t go on to say

was that this was the first step on a journey 
that would take Martin Rozen

first to Drancy, the prison for Jews,

and then to a station called Paris Bobigny, 
where he would be put in a cattle truck 
and sent to Auschwitz,

where he was killed.

Though these facts are missing, t
he writing is very neat.

In fact,

everything seems to have been done properly.