Robert Dawson became a journalist and crime, police specialist. Later, he retrained as a teacher, retiring as a head. Since then he has written full time and is an acknowledged authority on British Romanies.

The Holocaust, the final solution for Jews, is infamous in history. Robert Dawson’s Leaves in a Holocaust Wind is the story of another community that suffered in the Holocaust: the Gypsies. Told by Demeter Fox and Zuzzi, Leaves in a Holocaust Wind follows their journey to freedom in the German occupied territory of Slovakia. From the horrors of slaughter in the woods, the lies of a safe future, the concentration camp of Majdanek and the hiding away in the countryside, Fox and Zuzzi must come to terms with what they have witnessed and find the courage to survive until freedom comes. It is a novel of the playful mind-set and culture of the Romanies in the face of a most brutal regime, and in which most of the major events are based on real incidents.

Smith was wowed and commented that he was in for a page-turner, from the opening lines through to the final page, he was completely overcome by the raw, eye-opening drama that pulled and tugged him through this book.  He said he was transported on a journey that nightmares are made of! This book is a brilliant portrayal of what happened, it reaches out and touches every decent person who know, that to violate humanity is a dark road to follow and will never heal or help the world.  It is Robert’s masterpiece, a work of art and the accumulation of a lifetime researching and discovering the history of Gypsy/Roma people across the world.