One fine day in 1941, Jankel Kuperblum, nine years old, returned home to find his family had been captured by the Nazis- everyone was permanently “missing.” To stay alive, the child realized he had to pretend he was not a Jew. For the next four years, Jankel wandered through the villages and fields of Lublin, Poland, living an odyssey made all the more harrowing by the authors dry, matter- of- fact narration. Staying with families only slightly less frightened than himself, Jankel assumes a “Christian” disguise which becomes all too convincing. Tormented by the fear of being discovered, he gradually comes to believe his own deception - to forget his language, his religion, and sometimes his real name. The consequences of his metamorphosis form the proper climax to a story that recalls both Anne Frank's diary and Michel de Castillo's Child of our Time; as in both those documents, Child of the Holocaust explores the meaning of the Nazi terror by striking deep into life - and heart - of a child. -- From the book jacket.