Children of the Rainbow

Children of the Rainbow tackles a subject rarely mentioned, the plight of Central and East European Gypsies in the shadow of the Holocaust. Through an absorbing combination of fact, fiction and mythology, Farhi tells the story of Branko, a Roma Gypsy baby born in the Auschwitz concentration camp, who receives the prophecy that he will be his people's saviour. Named Branko, after an inmate who has been compiling the Gypsy Bible, he is smuggled out of the compound and entrusted to a Red Cross official.Some thirty years later, on the death of his adoptive father, Branko sets out to remould his identity: he witnesses first-hand the relentless persecution of the Roma and comes to hear of the Gypsy Bible that his namesake had miraculously reclaimed from the collective memory of the Roma in Auschwitz. Hidden and awaiting discovery, the powerful book prophesies Branco's leadership, under which the gypsies will be reunited and led to Romanestan, their mysterious homeland.