After the Smoke Cleared

Andrzej H. Mrozewski is a librarian in the Public Services Department of
the J-N DesMarais Library at Laurentian University.

Jankel Kuperblum was born in Poland in 1932. Child of the Holocaust
(1978) told the story of his miraculous survival among the peasants in
the Pulawy region during World War II. This sequel opens in the city of
Lublin. Thirteen-year-old Jankel, now living in a Jewish orphanage,
begins his quest to find his father, who escaped to the Soviet Union.
Along with other orphans, Jankel is smuggled out of Poland by a Jewish
organization. In a German DP camp, he discovers an uncle; he finds
another one in Brussels. Longing to have a family, he chooses to go to
Belgium instead of a kibbutz in Palestine. His final destination is
Canada, where he gradually transforms himself into Jack Kuper, a
playwright and filmmaker. Eventually he is reunited with his father.
This poignant and insightful memoir is punctuated with doses of black
humor.