Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Lesson Plan

Tom Stoppard was born Tomas Straussler on July 3, 1937 in Czechoslovakia. When Tomas was two years old, his family fled to Singapore when the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia. A physician with the Bata shoe company, Eugene Straussler was one of many Jews to be relocated to one of his company's international outposts. Tomas, along with his brother and mother, were sent to Australia before the Japanese occupation of Singapore. Eugene Straussler remained to serve as a British army volunteer. Eugene died when Tomas was four years old, perhaps in Japanese captivity. In 1941, Tomas and his brother and mother were evacuated to Darjeeling, India. In 1945, his mother remarried a major in the British...