Kalisz - A Journey of Return | Austin Macauley Publishers

History has a way of showing up without being invited and relatives can be hidden for decades, but when the truth is revealed, changes emerge. It is without intention that Rose turns up in Kalisz, Poland, her father’s ancestral home. But it is not the same Kalisz her father grew up in. The large welcomed Jewish population was emptied and left silent by the holocaust. But for Mr Masjewski, Rose’s visit unlocks a hidden past. And an extraordinary connection between the two families is unveiled from its dark hiding place. Kalisz is a sweeping drama, travelling between worlds of time and place through a rich culture’s rituals and traditions, from Poland to Palestine and through generations of two world wars and beyond.

Rosalind Brenner was born in Sydney, Australia, 1957, to immigrant parents. Her father was a Polish Jew and a holocaust survivor, and her mother was also Jewish, from England. Brenner married at a young age and lived on the Central Coast of NSW as a fulltime wife and mother.

In 2005, she began her studies as a writer. On her first visit to Kalisz in Poland, the hometown of her father, she sat in a courtyard overlooking the Square when she realised a story needed to be told. Over the following four years, Brenner wrote the visions appearing in her mind and the story of Kalisz unravelled.