Ghost Children

David E. Kemp, a former professor of drama at Queen’s University, is
the author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

Ghost Children is a collection of poems about the spiritual and
psychological suffering of child survivors of the Holocaust. The author,
who lived in the Warsaw Ghetto, is herself a Holocaust survivor. The
“ghost” of the title represents the childhood part of many adult
survivors who keep that part of themselves from surfacing.

In a sense, there is no language that can fully express the atrocities
of the Holocaust. In attempting to do so, these poems honor and remember
the millions of lives that were lost and ensure that the manner of their
passing will never be forgotten.

The collection is divided into three sections. In the first section, we
witness the children’s pain and suffering. In the second section, the
author returns to Europe in search of her Jewish identity, revisiting
the concentration camps and ghettoes where she once lived. In the third
section, we find resolution as Boraks-Nemetz comes to terms with her
survival and heals her spirit. One can only wonder at the courage that
informed the writing of this deeply moving, autobiographical collection.