My Grandmother

 My Grandmother

Here’s a photo.

It’s of Rose

on board a ship in 1922

from Boston to London

It’s the SS President Harding.

She’s standing next to a ladder

to an upper deck.

With her left hand

she holds my father’s hand

he stands next to her

trying to hide his face from the camera

wearing long loose shorts

and a dark top.

On the ladder

sit baby Wallace

holding Rose’s right hand

and next to him on the ladder

their sister, Sylvia.

This is a journey

that is going to change their lives forever.

Rose will never go back to America.

Wallace has only a few weeks left to live.

My father will go to America

but it’ll be long after his father Morris has died.

Sylvia will be the pioneer

not early enough to see her father

but even so, she’s the one who’ll 

discover cousin Ted,

Morris’s nephew

and the family out there in Connecticut

and Massachusetts.

At the end of this transatlantic crossing

Rose will take the children

into a house Whitechapel

that is already full with her sisters

brother and their parents.

It will end up with 

11 or 12 of them in a two-up, two-down 

terrace house. 

Rose looks tired 

but whatever’s gone on between her and Morris

hasn’t broken her.

Four years later

she’ll be out on the streets demonstrating

against the ‘baby starvers’ as it says on the banner

supporting the General Strike

and she buys a little brass brooch 

which is a replica of a miner’s lamp

to support the miners

who hold out after the other unions go back to work.

Now that’s a thought:

a Jewish woman in London

buying a brooch for the miners.

She can’t really work much herself

because she’s had polio and one of her arms

is weak.

She’s going to have to rely on the family

to help her bring up the children

and some of them are going to resent her for it.

Wasn’t she the clever one

with her nose in a book

politics, politics, politics

can’t keep a husband though, 

now look at her!

She brings people to the house:

a Jamaican seafarer,

a grande dame of a woman called Beatrice

who my father goes to see in her flat

in Belsize Park.

Years later

it turns out that Beatrice

was Modigliani’s partner

and he painted pictures of her.

My father will be 

the first person in the family

to go to grammar school

the first person in the family to go to university

the first person in the family to be a teacher

the first person in the family to become a professor.

Rose is very proud of him

He calls her Ma

but it’s my father’s sister Sylvia who looks after her

when she gets a stroke,

two strokes actually. 

I remember her

coming round to our flat

and giving me a red shoe horn.

My mother, Connie loves her.

My father tells me that Connie

ran away from home

and went to live with Rose

when she was finally able to move out 

of the house in Whitechapel

and moved into a flat in White City.

People called her Rosie.

Rosie Rosen.

My mother called my father ‘Rosie’ too.

She’d shout for him, ‘Rosie!’

Or she’d say to us

‘Ask your father what he’s doing

and tell him to stop it’.

And of course

if Rose hadn’t got on that boat

and come back to London

I wouldn’t be here telling you any of this.

I wouldn’t exist. 

What could possibly be motivating Israel? I reveal the secret.

 The big mystery lying behind what's going on in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria is what could possibly be motivating Israel? The thing is, it's been so secret and hidden. Like, no one can actually see or read what's been in the public documents that state what the governing party of Israel believes in. These are documents that Likud has won elections on for decades. For some mysterious reason, our newspapers and press seem unable to get these translated - or if they can - they seem unable to tell us about them.

Luckily, I've been able to do a bit of sleuthing and get to see these documents. I can reveal here that are to be found in those rare places called 'wikipedia' and the 'internet' and here you find something like this:

'...between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty. —Likud Party Platform, 1977'

Maybe, one day our media will be able to look at the Israeli tanks, bombs, guns and drones and relate these in some way or another to these secret documents. In the meantime, they are doing a great job explaining that what these tanks, bombs, guns and drones are doing is bringing back the hostages and eradicating Hamas, though even the most enthusiastic reporters who explain events in these terms, have been known to scratch their heads and wonder what exactly is going on in the West Bank.

Anyway, I hope that I haven't infringed any rules or laws by revealing this secret knowledge. I suppose it's possible that laying this out so bluntly on social media might suggest that I am a terrorist organisation. For the sake of peace, I do admit: this post should be proscribed.

Letter to the Prime Minister and Home Secretary

 Dear PM and Home Sec

I'm probably a bit too old and feeble to be able to cope with a spell in prison, so could you please guide me on certain pressing matters?

I know you are both very strong advocates of human rights and free speech because these are amongst the tenets of the political party you lead. You must be aware that there are people who speak about, and campaign for, issues that you disagree with. But more than that, it's surely part of your belief-system that you hold with the idea that though you disagree with certain beliefs, you most certainly don't disagree with the right of people to hold those beliefs.

However, recent acts being taken by your government - and now by the police - are leading me to be concerned that perhaps you don't hold to these tenets anymore. It feels as if you have departed from that idea.

With this in mind, I'm in urgent need for your guidance. Could you please say in easily understood ways, what it is I am allowed and not allowed to say about Palestine, the Palestinians and people who support them? Could you also make clear that if ever I depart from what it is I am allowed to say, will it be the duty of good citizens to report me to the authorities? Presumably, if this is the case, you would be in favour of this becoming some kind of civil guard, ensuring that, in the event of my breaching the code on permissable behaviour, that I should face whatever it is the authorities might want to throw at me. However, as I say, I am trying to avoid a prison sentence, so I will do all I can, not to say or do anything that infringes the law that you have put in place.

Can I say, in passing, that this must surely represent some kind of progress? Only a few years ago there was a great danger that your Party would have favoured a whole raft of views about Palestine including the one that implied that Palestinians are human beings. In your capable hands, you and the Labour Party have - thank goodness - put all that behind you.

Hope to hear from you soon,

Regards

Michael Rosen

Freedom has no warning lights - poem

 

Freedom has no warning lights

when it slips away

it doesn’t flash red.

When they start saying you can’t

speak your mind

and you weren’t doing harm

that’s it again, slipping away

but it’s not flashing red

When they start to talk of how

some people are born bad

that’s freedom slipping away

but it’s not flashing red

When they say you’re the wrong kind of person

to go to school

that’s it, slipping away

but it’s not flashing red.

When they say that you can’t work here

you’ve got the wrong face

sure enough, that’s it, slipping away

and it’s not flashing red.

When they start locking people up

without giving them a fair hearing

there it goes, slipping away

but it’s not flashing red.

When people start disappearing

and they don’t come back

that really is it, slipping away

but it’s not flashing red.

freedom has no warning lights

when it slips away

it doesn’t flash red.

[A poem I wrote for the projects run by Professor Helen Weinstein and History Works TV for our work with school students on refugees.]

All reaction

1

A short play for schools, colleges and drama groups about Oscar and Rachel (my father's uncle and aunt) who were deported from France to Auschwitz

 NARRATOR - ('MICHAEL ROSEN'): 

This is the story of two stories.

One story is the story of what I know really happened.

One story is the story of what I imagine happened.

These are the stories of Oscar and Rachel

Oscar and Rachel live in Poland.

OSCAR: I am Oscar 

RACHEL: I am Rachel

OSCAR: It’s the First World War.

I am in the Army

I wear a red cross on my arm

It shows that I am in the medical corps

I care for the sick, the wounded and the dying.

I send a photograph of me in my army uniform

to my brothers in America.

My brother Martin is in the Army.

He’s in the Army

But he’s on the other side.

Is he my enemy?

Could it be that one day we will meet on the battlefield.

And we have to kill each other?

What is this madness?

NARRATOR: The war comes to an end

The great powers sign a peace treaty to end all wars.

OSCAR: I move to France.

Here I will be safe.

Here I mend clocks.

I mend watches and clocks.

Clocks and watches.

Here I meet Rachel.

She’s from Poland.

She is beautiful and I love her.

RACHEL: Here I meet Oscar

we get engaged.

I am so happy.

We are both so happy.

We send a photo of us getting engaged

to Oscar’s brothers in America. 

OSCAR: We’re going to have a beautiful life.

We get married.

Martin is the best man at our wedding.

Just think

One year I could have killed him

he could have killed me.

Now he’s the best man at our wedding.

We are so happy. 

RACHEL: But we hear that there is going to be another war.

Germany is going to invade.

So we flee from our home.

OSCAR: Our brother Martin flees too.

RACHEL: We go west

with hundreds, thousands, millions of others.

OSCAR: We are in the town of Niort

Martin is not far away.

RACHEL: The Germans invade.

OSCAR: People talk of ‘The Fall of France’

People talk of France being ‘occupied’.

The Occupation.

 What does it mean?

RACHEL: It means there are soldiers on our streets.

It means that they start to draw up lists.

We are on one list.

We are Jews.

We are on the list for Jews.

OSCAR: What does it mean?

It means that we have to wear yellow stars on our coats.

On the yellow star it says, ‘Jew’.

It means that we have to give away

nearly all our belongings

We have to give away nearly all our money.

Here we work in the market, 

selling second hand clothes.

RACHEL: People are poor and hungry

and they buy and sell

and sell and buy 

their old clothes,

they sell

the clothes of people who die.

OSCAR: I write to my brothers in America.

I ask them for help.

I tell them we are running out of money.

I send love to their children.

Did some of the children go to England?

to London? 

My nephew and my niece in London.

Yes.

We are a big family

spread out across the world

Poland, France, England, America.

I wonder what’s happening to our brothers and sister

and my nephew in Poland?

They’re in an occupied country too.

We hear that bombs are falling on London.

RACHEL: We hear stories that

Jews are being rounded up,

and put in camps here in France.

Jews are being rounded up and put on trains.

Jews are being sent away

and not coming back.

Where are they going?

OSCAR: People have invented a crazy name for 

where they’re going.

They call it ‘Pitchipoï’

We Jews say, ‘We won’t go to Pitchipoï!’

‘Nous n’irons pas à Pitchipoï!’

We hope that Martin is safe.

But we don’t know.

RACHEL: We hear that Jews are safe in Nice.

Nice is a long way away

800 miles or more.

Could we get to Nice?

Nice is grand and posh.

Beautiful film stars go there for holidays

and rich people gamble there and dance…

But not any more.

We hear that the great hotels

are full of refugees like us.

Sleeping in the corridors and on the stairs.

But they’re safe.

OSCAR: Rachel and I talk.

We won’t go to Pitchipoï

We will go to Nice.

If we go, and we’re on the road

and the police, or the army

or the special security men 

find us

we will be arrested and sent away on a train.

Do we stay here and wait for the soldiers to send us away on a train

or do we go?

RACHEL: We decide to go.

We are the only ones who know how we do this.

We don’t send a message to America.

OSCAR: Imagine us

ripping off  our yellow stars

and throwing them away. 

RACHEL: Imagine us

running in the night,

sleeping in the fields

sleeping in barns

begging farmers to take us in.

OSCAR: Imagine us

hitching lifts from a horse and cart

going to market.

borrowing bikes till they break down.

begging for food

begging for clothes

selling Rachel’s rings

RACHEL: Imagine that I tell some people

I can mend their clocks

and they give me a few francs

and we buy some bread.

But we have to keep moving. 

OSCAR: Anyone who helps us

is in danger

If the police or the soldiers

see what they’re doing

they could be arrested

or sent away

or shot.

RACHEL: Imagine us

asking people the way 

to the next town.

OSCAR: Imagine us

pretending to be someone else.

But we know we have Polish accents.

We have to pretend we are not Jewish.

RACHEL: It’s hard to know

who is helping the soldiers

and who is against them

in the Resistance, as people call it.

OSCAR: Imagine us moving in the night.

The stars watch us.

The trees watch us.

The cows and horses in the fields 

watch us.

We have to keep going.

Only in Nice will we be safe.

We won’t go to Pitchipoï

RACHEL: And we get to Nice.

We arrive.

OSCAR: Imagine us

walking the streets

hand in hand

Imagine us

pretending to be film stars

strolling on the promenade

overlooking the Baie des Anges

the Bay of Angels.

RACHEL: We see that Nice has filled up

with Jewish refugees.

We’re safe.

There are soldiers.

Italian soldiers

but they’re not going to arrest us

or send us away. 

Imagine them

sharing their rations with us.

OSCAR: We stay in a hotel

and it is, as they said.

People sleeping in the corridors.

There’s food here from the Red Cross.

We eat under great chandeliers.

We sit on the grand staircase.

We imagine film stars dancing in the ballroom

RACHEL: We wonder what is happening to Martin.

Where is he? 

Where is our brother?

What’s happening in Poland?

What’s happening in London?

OSCAR: Imagine us

Rachel and me

RACHEL: Me and Oscar

we dance in the empty ballroom

OSCAR: We pretend that a band is playing.

And we dance.

RACHEL: A waltz.

OSCAR: A foxtrot.

RACHEL: A Charleston.

OSCAR: We imagine the music.

RACHEL: We are so happy.

OSCAR: But there are rumours that

this can’t last

this won’t last.

RACHEL: We hear

that an Italian man 

has hired boats and is going to take

us to North Africa

where we will be really safe.

OSCAR: Get ready he says.

RACHEL: We are ready.

OSCAR: We imagine getting on board

sailing in the sun

to North Africa

wind on our faces

white tips to the waves.

RACHEL: We will be free at last.

OSCAR: But then

we hear 

that the Italians have to go

and the boats can’t leave.

We have to stay in the hotels

or we must run to the mountains.

RACHEL: Some of us run.

Some of us stay.

OSCAR: We decide to stay.

RACHEL: Why do we decide to stay?

You will have to imagine

why we decide to stay.

OSCAR: And then the Nazis arrive.

RACHEL: They march about demanding to know

who is Jewish.

They grab us

and poke us 

and beat us

‘Are you a Jew?’

‘You’re a Jew, aren't you?’

OSCAR: And then they put us on trains.

Trains to a camp called Drancy.

RACHEL: We are in a camp with thousands of other Jews.

It used to be a block of flats

now it’s a camp with barbed wire all round

on the outside.

Police and soldiers and guards march up and down.

It’s filthy 

there’s hardly any food.

the toilets don’t work

Every so often a few hundred of us

are taken away.

People talk of Pitchipoï

OSCAR: People talk of some guys digging a tunnel

to get out of the camp.

But they’re discovered

and told that they are going to be sent away.

And so are we.

RACHEL: We’re taken to a station.

We’re put on a train.

These aren’t carriages

These are cattle trucks.

We’re pushed into the cattle trucks.

We have no food.

there are no toilets.

OSCAR: We’re on this train for three days, three nights.

RACHEL: We look out through the slats

in the sides of our cattle truck

looking at France slipping by

France where where we thought we’d be safe.

OSCAR: France where I mended people’s clocks.

France where we learned French

we see people sitting in their windows

eating their evening meal.

They will close their shutters

and go to bed.

RACHEL: We think of that moment when 

we thought we were free

and we danced in the ballroom

we thought we were going to sail to North Africa

the wind in our hair, 

the white tips of the waves

OSCAR: We think of Martin

We think of our brothers in America

We think of our nephews and niece 

in Poland and England.

RACHEL: Here we don’t eat.

The smell is disgusting

OSCAR: Babies are crying

children are crying

We are jammed up against strangers,.

And old woman dies.

RACHEL: Why is this happening to us?

The law says that you arrest criminals,

bad people.

We’re not criminals.

You try criminals in court.

If they do bad things

you put them in prison,.

We have done no bad things.

OSCAR: We are here because of who we are.

We are in this hell

because we are Jews.

RACHEL: Why do we humans do this to each other,

deciding that one kind of people are good

one kind of people are bad

and then try to to kill them?

Wasn’t that First World War

going to be the war to end all wars?

OSCAR: I think of my brothers and sisters

and nephews and nieces spread out across the world

in Poland, France, England and America.

RACHEL: There are whispers jumping from truck to truck

Rumours.

We hear that some men managed to escape

from the train.

the same guys who tried to 

escape through the tunnel in the camp.

OSCAR: How did they do it?

RACHEL: Imagine if Oscar and I

OSCAR: if Rachel and me

had done that.,

RACHEL: But we didn’t.

OSCAR: We arrive at a place.

A camp

I look at it.

I know where this is.

I know it.

It’s where I was born.

I was born in the town of Oswiecim, in Poland

Here the soldiers call it by its German name,

Auschwitz.

I have arrived back where I began.

RACHEL: Is this Pitchipoï?

Is this the place we don’t come back from?

NARRATOR: It is and it was.

Oscar and Rachel didn’t come back from 

Auschwitz

Their letters to America

sat in a cupboard unseen for years

Their photos sent to America

sat in a cupboard for years.

But then, much, much later

when those brothers and sisters

and nephews and nieces died, 

cupboards were opened

letters and photos were found

and shared in America and England

and 

the bare bones of this story came to light

the places, the dates,

Niort, Nice, Drancy, Paris Auschwitz

the train.

OSCAR:

And you might wonder

what became of my brother Martin?

Four policemen knocked on his door

in the middle of the night

in a village in the countryside.

They handed him over to the Nazis

he was put on a train to Auschwitz

and he never came back.

NARRATOR: That was a story

of ordinary people

in a family spread out across the world:

Poland, France, England, America.

I am part of that family.

I am the son of the nephew in London.

------

copyright Michael Rosen 2025

If you would like to use this play, please get in touch with me c/o of my agent Charles Walker and Olivia Martin on OMartin@unitedagents.co.uk

[I wrote this play for Professor Helen Weinstein and History Works TV so that school students in Cambridge and Cambridgeshire could use it to turn into a drama and/or dance piece using the words of the three characters and movement from people in Oscar and Rachel's lives. 

I also tell this story in 'The Missing' and 'On the move' both published by Walker Books.

The story of the men who escaped from the train is in the book 'One Day' also published by Walker Books.

Another story related to my family is in 'Please Write Soon' (Scholastic) which tells a fictionalised story of what happened to my father's cousin in Poland. ]