My mother's last words, my father's thoughts

A few months ago, my step-mother (my father's second wife who my dad married after my mother died) came round and gave me a file with something my father had written in it. When I looked inside I saw a few lines of my dad's writing and thought that it was notes for one of his talks. As I had been to many of his talks and have a book of them (wonderfully edited by John Richmond), I thought I'd read the notes later...at some point...but it wouldn't be urgent. So I tucked it in with some other files.

A few weeks later I pulled out the file again, read the first few lines and realised that it wasn't notes for a talk. It was a piece of writing my father had done within hours of my mother dying. This was 1976, they had been together since 1936. After a few lines, I could read that my father was writing this piece from a point of trauma while saying that he didn't even know why he was writing it.

I glanced at a few pages and caught sight of one or two phrases and bits of dialogue between my father and mother, including unbelievably brave, knowing, calm things she said, even though she knew it was nearly all over. She was looking at the face of death and accepting it, while at the same time trying to cope with pain, incapacity and disfigurement.

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Again, I put it to one side. I guess I didn't want to revisit scenes where I had been with the pair of them, especially as it would force me to think about what it's going to be like when I die, and thinking about what a near scrape I had in 2020 and of course thinking about the last hours with Eddie, my son.

But today, I thought to myself, why delay this anymore? Apart from anything else I owe it to everyone else in the family as it's part of our family history. So I got down to typing it up. This was quite handy, in that my touch typing is OK but not brilliant, so I was looking at my father's writing, not the keyboard, typing just as I used to watch my mother doing, who was a brilliant touch typist, in days when mistakes had to be 'snopaked', and typed over! She hardly made any mistakes. I can even now hear the clack clack of her stand-up typewriter, sitting on its dark blue woolly mat.

So what with me making mistakes and not being able to read some key words (thanks Emma for doing some great deciphering) I was one step removed from the trauma and despair of it all. I also knew that my father managed to get out of the hole he felt he was in, and was lucky to meet the wonderful Betty, with whom he spent the rest of his life.
At this stage, I don't feel ready to share it in public but there's one bit that jumped off the page at me. He is at one point, in effect looking at my mother's emaciated body and he writes 'Auschwitz, Auschwitz, Auschwitz'.

I remember him saying that during the nightmarish nights that he spent with her as she was dying, he did blur the reality of my mother and the images that he remembered from films and TV of 'the camps'. Mostly, as my brother and I were growing up, our parents kept their horror at what had happened, to themselves. With one exception: when we were in Weimar in 1957 and they went off 'somewhere' where we weren't allowed to go because it would be too awful for us to go. It was Buchenwald. When they came back, my mother in particular, was silent with the horror of it.

So what with one thing and another, seeing these words, I wondered whether my father had not shared with us how these images had persisted in his mind. That said, I remember with huge fondness and gratitude, the night him and me stayed up late and watched the whole of 'Le Chagrin and la Pitié' which tells the story of the Nazi occupation of France. I remember him turning to me at one point and saying, 'That's what must have happened to my uncles.' From then on, we could always refer to 'Le Chagrin et la Pitié' and my excursions into that history, into his family history, is laced with my memories of that time we watched the film together.

Even so, I didn't realise that these things were so near the surface in his time of trauma with my mother.

That's all for now.

An alternative view of children's literacy

1/ Ever since I did BBC Schools Radio programmes with accompanying booklets (from 1972) I've been trying to find ways to link the spoken to the written: books with cassettes/CDs/QR codes; performances with books to buy; performances in libraries; YouTube channel of poems/stories

2/ When we show children that the stuff that can be spoken can also be written, we show them how the written code works as a way of conveying the stuff that they enjoy, are moved by, intrigued by, wonder about.

3/ I've always hoped that children can shunt between oral recordings or my performances and written forms of what I'm speaking - through books, booklets etc. Sometimes the video/audio is standalone, sometimes the written, sometimes both at the same time.

4/It's a different or complementary theory of literacy in that its starting point is not purely the written. Alongside it, I've always advocated 'scribing' children's stories/poems etc + shared reading back of the written.

Further evidence on why the 'fronted adverbial' is grammatical nonsense

Thanks to people who follow my criticisms of the GPS (formerly the SPaG) test. It's possible that its time is up, because this government has signalled in its Curriculum Review that it is an unsatisfactory test and is having a harmful effect on children's writing.

Here on this blog I've critiqued the test in several ways, in particular each year I've done an analysis of the test that has been set. I look forward to doing the same this year. 

One small feature of the test that has attracted attention has been the 'fronted adverbial'. It attracted attention because many people familiar with traditional grammar (eg me) had never heard of such a thing, prior to the invention of the SPaG test. Rumours flowed that it was a last-minute addition to the SPaG requirements, thrown out almost frivolously by one of the linguists hired by Michael Gove. 

In previous blogs, I've tried to point out that fronted adverbials are a) not grammar, they're 'stylistics' and b) the category is dubious.

In regards of b), I've tried to argue that some phrases that we say or write, and which come 'in front of' the main clause seem to me 'adjectival'. That's to say, they seem to modify or qualify the subject of the main clause, which is by definition a noun. 

You can try making one up. How about: 'Deep blue from birth, his eyes scanned the room.' Normally, we would think that a word like 'blue' is referring to 'eyes'. In that sense, we would say it's 'adjectival'.

So, I put this to one of the architects of the SPaG grammar and said to him, 'If you're going to have 'fronted adverbials' as a category, shouldn't you also have 'fronted adjectivals'?' He wasn't happy. He described my question as 'challenging' and never came back to me with an answer.

Today, I was in the process of writing a letter in French and had to use the phrase 'ci-joint'. It means 'attached' in the sense of attaching something to an email. So, in English, we might, say, 'You'll find the instructions, attached.' In French, I've noticed that some people put the 'attached' word ('ci-joint') at the front of the sentence. They 'front' it.

As I wrote it, I started to wonder if 'ci-joint' should 'agree with' the word 'instructions'. In French (and other 'Romance' languages), words have to 'agree' with each other as regards their 'gender' (masculine, feminine in French) and also whether they are singular or plural. In this case, I wondered, should 'ci-joint' agree with the word I was going to use 'coordinées'? If it should 'agree' then 'ci-joint' would be adjectival. (Adverbs don't have to 'agree'.)

My first instinct was that I should write 'Ci-jointes, vous trouverez les coordinées'. I am adding there an 'e' (for feminine) and an 's' (for plural). 

BUT, because of the certainty of the great grammarians who designed the SPaG (which has bedevilled primary education for the last 10 years and wrecked children's writing), I hesitated. I thought to myself, if it's adverbial, I'll have to write 'ci-joint', if it's adjectival, I'll have to write 'ci-jointes'. 

So I checked in as many places as I could and sure enough, I found that they said it was 'ci-jointes' in this example on account of the word it was qualifying is feminine and plural.

Now English is not French. And French is not English. We have to be careful about hopping across from one language to another and assuming that what is the 'rule' in one language must apply in another. In this case though, I'm not talking about a 'rule' as such. I'm talking about an underlying process of what kinds of modifying we have at our disposal when we talk and write. In short, what modifies what. 

I think with this example, the French is the same as the English. The modifying is the same process. The 'fronted' phrase ('ci-joint'/'attached') is doing the same work in both languages. 

QED, you can have 'fronted adjectivals' as well as 'fronted adverbials'. 

(One note of caution - and don't laugh - there will be some grammarians who will agree with me on this, but will say that the 'adjectival' I've come up with is an 'adverbial' on account of a secret fiddle they pull out of their grammar bag which goes like this: 'adverbials' are not really all those words, phrases and clauses that modify verbs. An 'adverbial' is an adverbial because of the way in English we have a category of word, phrase or clause that we can move around in a sentence in an almost free way. Consider, for example a word like 'only'. Make up a sentence. Put 'only' in as many different places as you can. It's very movable, isn't it? 

So hang on to your seats, and wait for a grammarian to read this and come back to me and explain that a 'fronted adjectival' is a 'fronted adverbial'. I kid you not.) 

How my father's uncle was arrested on this day in 1944 and deported to Auschwitz

(On this day)
At 2.30 in the morning of January 31, 1944, my father's uncle Martin Rozen was arrested by 4 gendarmes. He was living in a room in the house of a widow, Madame Bobières in the village of Sainte-Hermine (Vendée).

This arrest was carried out because the Prefect and the Sub-Prefect ordered it. They ordered it because the local Sicherheitspolizei in Poitiers ordered all Jews in the area to be arrested. He ordered it because the Nazi High Command in Paris ordered it. He ordered it because Eichmann, by 1944, was demanding that the Vichy government hand over more Jews in order that the 'Final Solution' could be carried out in areas that the Nazis controlled.

By luck and persistence, I was able to find out what happened to my father's uncle. After his arrest, he was handed over to the Nazis in the nearby town. He was then transported to Drancy, the Nazi transit camp near Paris. Then after that he was deported to Auschwitz on a cattle train Convoy 68.

The present Mayor of Sainte-Hermine, Philippe Barré came to know of the story of what happened in the village and over several months and more research, he and the village decided to put Martin Rozen (Rosen)'s name on the village war memorial and to name the local park after Martin too. I was honoured to go to the village for the two naming ceremonies.

When the story of Martin became known, this testimony came in. It's my translation.

'Memories, sad memories
We used to come from school to Sainte-Hermine. Coming into the village, on the right was the police station, (which has become 'Le Macis’ cafe). Opposite the police station - a large house where an old lady rented out furnished rooms (today the Bank Crédit Agricole). One of her rooms was lived in by a very, very old gentleman - old to my eyes - more or less 8 years old. Every morning, he waited for us by the side of the road. We didn't ever miss saying to him, 'Good morning, Mr Martin' and he would reply, 'Good morning, children. Always work hard at school'. And in the evening, he was there for us saying, 'Good evening, children. See you tomorrow maybe.'

How I found him to be so nice with his white hair, his blue eyes and his gay smile when he saw us and so sad when we left! And then I was fascinated by this enormous yellow star sewn on to the black coat that he always wore. I didn't know anything at all about the significance of it.

And then one day, there was no Mr Martin anymore, nor the next day or the days after that. I learned from one of my little friends that he had been arrested by the police. Then I forgot about Mr Martin. When you're 8 years old, someone arrested by the police can only be a thief or some other kind of bad person.

And then one day in March 1952, just when I had got a job at the town hall as a secretary, a letter came containing a judgement announcing the death of someone of the name Rozen Chil Mayer, known as Martin, whose last place of habitation was Sainte-Hermine. And everything came back to me of a face and I got to know this terrible story. The only crime committed by Mr Martin was that he was a Jew. He died because he was deported to Auschwitz. He was 54 years old. His death certificate contained the sentence: 'Died for France'. Later, in May 2001, a document came to the Town Hall, asking to add an official statement on his death 'Died in deportation' [as a consequence of being deported?]. 

It is important that Mr Martin's name is on the war memorial in the village. It's very unusual that I came this way these days, on the way to Luçon, without lifting up my eyes to the window of his room (first on the left on the first floor), and it seems as if I can see him there smiling...so sadly.

Jeanne Baradeau
School child in Sainte-Hermine
Secretary in the Town Hall, 1951-1994.'

Holocaust Memorial Day - thoughts from a BBC studio where I was being interviewed.

Today I spent an hour and a half in a studio at the BBC, talking to 12 local radio stations, one after the other, about Holocaust Memorial Day. I talked about people in my family (Jews) who were arrested, imprisoned, deported and killed in Auschwitz. I talked about how I got to find out the details of how each of them was trapped as the net closed in round Jews in France (where my father's uncles and aunt lived.) I talked about how the Nazi project was to not only eliminate living Jews but to try to remove them from German history and that my project to 'find' them and write about them, was to not let them disappear from memory, or from being known.
Several themes emerged in the interviewers' questions and the answers I gave - and in my thoughts.
1. The Holocaust was a way of eliminating people. It wasn't a war in the usual sense of the word. It wasn't a fight between two or more combatants. You could say that it was a war on people.
2. The Holocaust was carried out by the Nazis and their collaborators. If we say 'Never again' or anything similar, one of the things we have to do is investigate what it was that the Nazis did, before they came to power and during the time they were in power. This involves facing up to the fact that they were the largest political party when they won power, that they brought in two key acts of parliament (the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act, which mean that a) they had total dictatorial power and b) that they eliminated most of the political opposition through terror, imprisonment and violence). That their 'project' progressed as their rule progressed and as the war progressed. In short from persecution to genocide.
3. Much as we'd like to say that the Nazis were 'beasts' or 'animals', the really distressing and difficult thing to say is that they were human. And not only that, some of them were clever. We have to try to understand what does it mean to be the kind of clever human who can be someone who can organise, run and enact genocide - several genocides.
4. There was a Nazi project. They wrote about it and explained it. They enacted it. It involved on the one hand producing a new kind of human, one that would require them to eliminate elements that they thought prevented this human from becoming its true form. On the other hand, it involved creating an empire by absorbing lands in the east. In order to achieve this twin aim, the Nazis had to 'get rid' of people. Millions and millions of people.
5. If we say 'never again', it is possible to say, this means 'never again for Jews' or 'Jews must never again be targeted in that way'. It is also possible to see 'Never again' as a hope or wish that there should never again be that kind of genocide for anyone. I'm of this second school of thought, which is all well and good, but since 1945, when that aspiration surfaced there have been acts of genocide. One of the reasons we can and should say it's about all of humanity and not only Jews is that the Nazi project involved killing millions of people who were eg Poles (ie non-Jewish Poles), Roma and Sinti people, Russians, gays, mentally ill and physically disabled people, Afro-Germans, and even people who refused to swear an oath of loyalty such as Jehova's Witnesses, and thousands of civilian oppositionists - socialists, Communists, trade unionists, in camps like Dachau and Sachsenhausen.
6. For those that say, there have been many other terrible acts of genocide down through history, shouldn't we commemorate them? I say yes. I wish there were other Days when we mark the transatlantic slave trade and plantation slavery, or the Bengal Famine or Stalin's starvation of the Ukrainians, or the Famine in Ireland etc. There should not be any kind of league table. Each of these terrible moments of mass suffering should be moments we dwell on, investigate and learn from. How did they happen? Why did they happen? I guess I think, it'll be hard to progress unless we do investigate and understand these things.

The Mission Statement from Goldsmiths Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Team (the one they don't abide by when it comes to planning Holocaust Memorial Day)

 "Equality and Diversity at Goldsmiths

We are passionate about advancing equality and celebrating diversity at Goldsmiths.

Primary page content

At Goldsmiths, University of London, we are deeply committed to equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in both principle and practice. We work to ensure that EDI is embedded across all areas of university life from our policies and teaching to the experiences of our students and staff.

This year, Goldsmiths introduced an Staff Engagement and Wellbeing Plan (PDF) that sets out our EDI commitments for the next three years.

Creating an inclusive and respectful environment where everyone feels they belong is central to our values. We recognise that people thrive when they are seen, heard, and valued for who they are. That’s why we’re committed to removing barriers, addressing inequalities, and supporting the success and wellbeing of our whole community regardless of background, identity, or circumstance.

We know that building an inclusive institution takes sustained effort, collaboration, and openness to change. At Goldsmiths, we are approaching this work with purpose, transparency, and care because EDI is not a single initiative, but a shared responsibility.

The EDI team at Goldsmiths

We are rightly proud of this history. But there is more to do – which is why we have a team of specialists leading our work in this area on an ongoing basis.

Team roles

Waqar Ali – Assistant Director of EDI, Culture and Belonging

Stella Mavropoulou – EDI Specialist

Dinah Amuah – EDI Projects Lead

Yaz Campbell – Race Equality Projects Lead

Our aim is to embed equality, diversity, and inclusion across Goldsmiths and make it a part of everything that we do. Fundamentally, we want to provide opportunities for all staff to develop and thrive in their careers here.

Waqar Ali, Assistant Director of EDI, Culture and Belonging"

I note:

"We recognise that people thrive when they are seen, heard, and valued for who they are."

Lols

My letter to Goldsmiths Equality, Diversity and Inclusion team about the exclusion of Jewish members of staff from involvement with planning Holocaust Memorial Day.

 Dear Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Team

Since writing to you I have 'discovered' that, following the Antisemitism Report, the university made a commitment in relation to Holocaust Memorial Day.

Here it is:

'12. Holocaust Memorial Day and associated events
The inquiry recommends Goldsmiths should:
Include consultation with or consideration of Jewish students and staff at the university.”
In response Goldsmiths will:
Annual Holocaust Memorial Day - Fund and support annual Holocaust Memorial Day event led by Jewish students and staff. '

Can I draw your attention to two phrases: 

'...with or consideration of Jewish students and staff at the university.' (from the Inquiry Report)

'...Holocaust Memorial Day event led by Jewish students and staff.' (from Goldsmiths' response to the Inquiry)?

The Antisemitism Inquiry's Report was published in May 2025. It follows that you have had six months to fulfil your commitment to support HMD 2026,  'led by Jewish students and staff'. This did not happen. Why not? 

You wrote to me explaining that, "Given the breadth of scholarship and creative work produced across the institution, it is not practicable for centrally coordinated HMD activity to identify or include all relevant staff-authored publications outside of the Trust’s nationally promoted resources for the year.'

The sole reason why it was not 'practicable...to identify or include all relevant staff-authored publications...etc' was because you failed to keep to the commitment that the university gave to host an HMD even 'led by Jewish students and staff'. If you had honoured that commitment, you would have found out immediately what expertise and experience lies within 'Jewish staff'. I can't and shouldn't speak for the student body.  

Quite clearly, you are in breach of the university's commitment to host HMD 'led by Jewish students and staff', and indeed in breach of your own 'Equality, Diversity and Inclusion' terms of reference. Can I ask what you are doing in the name of equality, diversity and inclusion, if you are not observing equality, diversity and inclusion? As before, I make the remark that you are pursuing a policy defined by Miranda Fricker as 'Testimonial Injustice'. In other words, you are guilty of the very thing that your team is there to mitigate against. An analogy would be for an 'Anti-racism team' to treat people in a racist way. 

Could I also suggest that if or when you write to me, you don't issue me with recommendations as to what I should do in relation to Holocaust Memorial Day? I am thinking here of you suggesting that I should make contact with the HMD Trust in relation to my books. I found this suggestion patronising and just a little bit offensive. 

I will consult with my colleagues as to how best to take this matter forwards. In the meantime, I will continue to make this matter public. 

Regards

Michael Rosen