Until Father Comes Back

It is 1942, and 8-year-old Robby Kastner is looking down at the street from a high window in his home in Bratislava, Slovakia, which has been invaded by the German army. All of a sudden, his slice of cake slips out of his hand and falls onto a Nazi soldier’s helmet. The scary events that follow change the lives of Robby’s whole family. First, he, his two siblings and their mother take refuge at his grandparents’ house. During the journey of survival that follows, he moves from town to town, country to country and from one family to another. And in each of his hiding places he has to get used to a different name, to learn new rules to save himself, and to forget everything he knew before. His father stays behind in Bratislava and works as a salesman in a store that until recently belonged to their family. Then he is taken to an unknown place together with the rest of the Jewish men, and all trace of him is lost. Robby is also separated from mother, brother and sister when he is smuggled with a group of children from Budapest to the Land of Israel. There, his uncle and aunt take him in and want to adopt him, but he refuses, still hoping that his father will come back, and he is sent to a boarding school. Later, his mother does turn up, but when she marries another Holocaust survivor, their relationship sours, and at age 14 Robby becomes virtually homeless. Must he forget his father in order to survive, or Vera, the girl he met on his journey and liked so much?

Until Father Comes Back is based on the true story of Judith Rotem’s partner, the author Moshe Bar-Yuda and commemorates the generation of children who survived the Holocaust.