Barbara Rogasky, AS '54, was never as acutely aware of her Jewishness as when she began writing Smoke and Ashes, her highly acclaimed history of the Holocaust.

"You cannot begin to imagine what is not in the book," Rogasky says. "Some part of me has been permanently changed by the experience of researching this book. It took over my life. I'd be working at my desk and someone would come into the driveway and I'd have a hallucinatory moment thinking, 'They've come for me.'"

Only after writing the book did Rogasky discover that at least 50 members of her family perished in the Holocaust in Russia.

Rogasky wrote Smoke and Ashes: The Story of the Holocaust (Holiday House, 1988) for young adults, a task Ari L. Goldman in The New York Times Book Review called a "formidable literary obligation." Among the numerous accolades the book has received: "Notable children's book" by the American Library Association; a "best nonfiction book for young adults" by Publisher's Weekly; "Best of the Best" listing in the School Library Journal; and "the most outstanding book in secondary social studies" by the Society of School Librarians International.

The first edition of the work was translated into several languages, including Dutch and Japanese. In November, Rogasky was guest of honor at a special ceremony in Berlin to mark the release of the German edition and the publisher's donation of a copy of Smoke and Ashes to every German library. The event was hosted by President Johannes Rau at his residence, Bellevue Castle.

The event was given considerable play in the German media, and the book received excellent reviews. Many Germans approached Rogasky to share their personal reactions, which ranged from shame expressed by some of the older generation to boredom of the younger generation, for whom Holocaust study has been mandatory throughout their schooling.

Smoke and Ashes is a stark, powerful and comprehensive treatment of the Nazi-sponsored genocide. Rogasky traces the dark roots of the Holocaust to the early years of Christianity to show that anti-Semitism has been rampant for millennia.

The book addresses all the questions a teenager (or many adults, for that matter) might have about the Holocaust: Did it happen to other people? Why did it happen? Couldn't anyone stop it? Why didn't the Jews fight back?

Rogasky describes the Special Action Groups, the ghettos, the deportations and the concentration camps. The extensive use of quotations from Nazi officials as well as actual photos makes the account all the more chilling. "The true horror of the Holocaust," Rogasky says, "is that human beings did this to other human beings."

A second edition of the book is scheduled for release in 2001. The newest unsettling revelation is that the British Secret Service had cracked the German code--the so-called Enigma Code--early in the war. Thus, they had decoded German orders and comments about the slaughter of Jews, but did not reveal that information to the U.S. government or even to Churchill, Rogasky says. Their knowledge was hidden even after the war ended and Nazi perpetrators were brought to trial by the U.N. War Crimes Commission, she says. Only now is the British Secret Service's cover-up coming to light, Rogasky adds.

The revision of Smoke and Ashes also will look at the role of the regular police and the regular army in the Holocaust and will address Holocaust denial and the rise of neo-Nazis.

Rogasky did not publish her first book until 1982, when she was nearly 50 years old. She had worked in the publishing field since 1955, gaining experience in various departments while climbing the ranks at Macmillan Co. and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich publishing firms, serving as senior acquisitions editor and director of special publications. She moved to rural New England in 1978 to escape what she terms the "insanity" of Manhattan, but continued her career as a freelance editorial consultant and ghostwriter.

"I always wrote, but I never thought of myself as a writer," Rogasky says. "I thought of myself as an editor, as a literate human being, as someone who had a way with words, but not as a writer. I certainly never thought of myself as someone who would write for children."

Yet, writing books for children and young adults is precisely where Rogasky has found her niche. Her first two books, retellings of the fairy tales Rapunzel and The Water of Life, were illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman, a Caldecott Medal-winner whose work Rogasky had long admired. Hyman had clout, so when Hyman proposed collaboration with Rogasky, publishers were willing to give the novice author a try.

"Trina got me started," she says. "It was very hard to get into publishing then. It's even harder now. I would never have thought to write Rapunzel if Trina hadn't suggested it."

The two later collaborated on Winter Poems, an illustrated collection edited by Rogasky, and The Golem, a version of an old Jewish tale about a clay giant created by a rabbi to help the Jews of 16th-century Prague fight persecution. The Golem won a National Jewish Book Award.

In keeping with her interest in Jewish history, Rogasky's most recent children's book was inspired by the Jewish concept of reincarnation, Gilgul in Hebrew and the book's working title. The concept includes the belief that "a person is reincarnated in a form appropriate to the sins committed," Rogasky explains. The story follows a single soul in seven tales through various guises that serve as punishment for the seven deadly sins--pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth. A cantor in love with the sound of his own voice, for example, is reincarnated as a crow. The eighth tale is one of redemption. The work will be published next year, as will a book called Autumn Poems.

Rogasky says she sees her work as a way of preserving her heritage. "The tone in The Golem is the tone of my father or mother telling me a story," Rogasky says. "My parents were very typical Eastern European immigrant Jews. Though I resisted my Jewishness for many, many years, I came to appreciate what they were and the heritage and culture they reflected.

"What my parents and other Eastern European Jews represented is dead, murdered. In a sense, therefore, when I write of Jewish themes, it is in their honor--to preserve who they were and what they represented."