Suddenly Jewish

Jews Raised as Gentiles Discover Their Jewish Roots

Barbara Kessel

• Publisher: Brandeis University Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781611683028
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Sociología

One woman learned on the eve of her Roman Catholic wedding. One man as he was studying for the priesthood. Madeleine Albright famously learned from the Washington Post when she was named Secretary of State. "What is it like to find out you are not who you thought you were?" asks Barbara Kessel in this compelling volume, based on interviews with over 160 people who were raised as non-Jews only to learn at some point in their lives that they are of Jewish descent. With humor, candor, and deep emotion, Kessel's subjects discuss the emotional upheaval of refashioning their self-image and, for many, coming to terms with deliberate deception on the part of parents and family. Responses to the discovery of a Jewish heritage ranged from outright rejection to wholehearted embrace. For many, Kessel reports, the discovery of Jewish roots confirmed long-held suspicions or even, more mysteriously, conformed to a long-felt attraction toward Judaism. For some crypto-Jews in the southwest United States (descendants of Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition), the only clues to their heritage are certain practices and traditions handed down through the generations, whose significance may be long since lost. In Poland and other parts of eastern Europe, many Jews who were adopted as infants to save them from the Holocaust are now learning of their heritage through the deathbed confessions of their adoptive parents. The varied responses of these disparate people to a similar experience, presented in their own words, offer compelling insights into the nature of self-knowledge. Whether they had always suspected or were taken by surprise, Kessel's respondents report that confirmation of their Jewish heritage affected their sense of self and of their place in the world in profound ways. Fascinating, poignant, and often very funny, Suddenly Jewish speaks to crucial issues of identity, selfhood, and spiritual community.

Hidden Children

When we got to the partisans, I was weak with tuberculosis. They shaved my head because I had lice. They took away my crucifixes and told me I was Jewish. That was the lowest point in my life. I grabbed the scissors and didn’t know who to kill—myself because I was bald, sick, and Jewish, or my mother because she was the cause of it all.

Once upon a time, a frightened but courageous Jewish mother placed her newborn baby boy with a non-Jewish family to save him from the wicked king’s edict condemning all male newborns to death. Hopeful that the tyranny would end in her lifetime, she remained optimistic that her son would ultimately be reunited with his people.

And so he was. He grew up free of self-hatred, free of the humiliation of subjugation. He grew up with the self-esteem of a prince, having been raised as a royal son by a loving foster mother in the Egyptian Pharaoh’s house. According to the Bible, Moses’ birth mother was his wet-nurse, and as such stayed with him during his formative years. What the Bible does not tell us is at what age Moses discovered he was a Hebrew. But when the time came to rejoin his nation, he did so as their leader. His allegiance as an adult lay entirely with his biological people, and he identified with them wholeheartedly.

Three thousand years later, another despot came to power. He, too, had a Final Solution for the “Jewish problem.” More than one million children perished as part of his plan, but a few hundred were saved by the non-Jews who raised them. Many were so young when they were placed in foster homes that later, when they were reclaimed by their parents, they did not remember them. These children were traumatized twice: first when they were removed from their parents, and again when they were reunited. Even if they were preverbal, the wrenching removal was still baf?ing and profoundly horrific. Not only were they transferred from home to home, but when they rejoined their Jewish parents, they had to leave the Church, which some of them had learned to love. Any sense of security or belonging or permanence was imperiled.

One form of damage to children who have been separated from their primary caretaker and/or subjected to multiple placements in successive homes, with foster parents or in institutions, is known as attachment disorder. Children with attachment disorder have difficulty trusting others. Some lose the ability to form loving relationships. After all, they have not had a consistent model of a lasting bond. They need to create self-protective barriers in order to avoid experiencing again the devastating loss of a loved one.

Not all children subjected to early separation suffer attachment disorder. Some, like Moses, receive so much affectionate nurturing in their infancy and early childhood that they develop the resources to withstand the trauma of change. Michael Lewis of the Institute for the Study of Child Development has been quoted as saying that events subsequent to the first year of life can be just as critical to psychological development. Children can learn not only to adapt, but to take initiative. They assume leadership roles and develop interpersonal skills, which they apply to their personal and later to their professional lives.

Among my interviewees, I found both types: people who were psychologically injured by their experiences, and people who emerged from their traumatic backgrounds with enhanced strengths and talents.

If anyone can be called a modern-day Moses, it is Abraham Fox-man, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Whenever there is a hiccup in the world Jewish community—a bias incident, a political development in Israel, a diplomatic brouhaha—the media turn to Abe Foxman for the Jewish reaction. But he is not just a spokesman who delivers pronouncements. He is a proactive leader who translates his vision of justice into policy and programs.

I met the fifty-eight-year-old, robust-looking Foxman in his Manhattan office in June 1998. When I walked in, he was in shirtsleeves, packing an already bulging briefcase with “homework.” On his desk was a two-inch stack of messages. As I sat down, he shook my hand, quickly reread my letter of introduction, and started talking. He seemed very much in control of his remarks, but not rehearsed or stilted. On the contrary, he was warm and gracious. He talked about issues, rather than simply recounting his experiences. (His parents hid the infant Abe with his Catholic nanny, and when they came back for him five years later, she sued for custody and temporarily kidnapped him when she lost.) It was as though he were constantly taking care of business, the business of combating discrimination. His remarks were positive and thoughtful.

My Jewishness I had no choice about. Had my parents not survived I would have stayed Christian. I was five when they came back for me. There was a fierce custody trial, and if I’d been older, my caretaker would have won because they would have asked me to choose. I’m Jewish today because my parents made that decision. I think people have a tendency toward faith. People tend to be more believing. That doesn’t mean they hold on to it all their lives. I was raised believing. I wore a crucifix. I went to church regularly. I cried when they called me Jew.

Now my father, the first time he took me to synagogue was on the holiday of Simchas Torah. He figured I’d like it because it’s a joyous festival full of singing and dancing. (You can imagine that Simchas Torah in Vilna 1945, a city of one hundred thousand Jews that had three thousand left after the Liberation, was only relatively happy.) On the way there, I passed a church. I crossed myself, I greeted the priest, I kissed his hand, and my father understood. The Jewish children picked me up and danced with me, and I came home and told my mother, “I like Jewish church.”

Little by little, he took off my cross and replaced it with arba konfos [a fringed ritual undergarment]. As long as I had substitution, I was happy. I used to say my prayers in Latin; he taught me to pray in Hebrew. Both languages were Greek to me. I was happy. I had substitution. He just said, don’t kneel. Fine, it didn’t matter. For a while, I went to church and synagogue. I prayed to God. It didn’t matter which God. After the trial, I got into a Displaced Persons camp that was filled with Jews, a totally new environment for me. Becoming Jewish was a growing process.

My parents had wisdom beyond the normal. I asked my father once, why was my nanny so hateful at the end? After all, she loved me so much that she tried to kidnap me back from them. She had no other children, no husband. She had tried to get rid of my father under the Soviets. We sent her packages after the war. She signed for them, but never acknowledged them to us. He said, anything in excess is no good: too smart, too rich, too beautiful. She had too much love, and too much love gets perverted into hate.

I have photographs of her. When we crossed the borders, we went as displaced Turks. You had to discard any identifying belongings. I was told to play deaf and dumb because of the language. Later I realized that my father had smuggled out pictures of me and her. When I understood that that could have destroyed us, I asked him why he took the risk, and he said, “I was never sure if you would remember her without photos, and I wanted you to remember her. Not only did she risk her life to save you, but she saved us. We would have been much more vulnerable as a couple with an infant. A couple with a child can’t move quickly, can’t make decisions, can’t take risks.”

If my parents had perished, I would have been raised to be a priest. My caretaker believed in the Church. I was a good Catholic. In a courtyard after the war, my parents identified several children they knew to be Jewish orphans. In some cases they were successful at repatriation, sometimes not. Some of the families resisted because they loved the children or because they got money for keeping them. Ever since Madeleine, many more have come to the surface.

I’m convinced there are thousands of Jews who don’t know they are Jewish, especially in Poland. Poland was the worst. There were more children at risk and therefore there were more opportunities to save them. Every day we lose potential Jewish souls there because their foster parents die without telling them they had Jewish parents. Either because they don’t want to discombobulate their lives or because of the stigma of having saved Jews or because they feel guilty for not having told before. All these things conspire against truth-telling. Our agency tries to celebrate the idea of rescue in Poland. We try to make rescuing lives a value. We go there and applaud what they did so that it will be easier for the truth to come out. If the shame of helping Jews is removed, more revelations can surface. I’ve visited Poland three times, each time for a public effort to recognize Christian rescuers, and each time more Jewish children emerge.

The other thing we try to change is to get the Vatican to make available baptismal certificates so that those who suspect they are Jewish can go to the Vatican and find out. I was baptized, but my records have vanished. Either the Communists destroyed them or they were moved to the Vatican.

Circumcision also played a big role in survival. At the Hidden Children Conference, I looked out at the audience and noticed it was 90 percent women. That struck me for the first time. It was too dangerous to save boys. Some of the men were raised as girls. I was circumcised and therefore I couldn’t play with anybody. It was too risky. My foster mother watched me like a hawk.

I asked Foxman how it happened that he devoted his life to Jewish community leadership as opposed to throwing up his hands and giving up on humanity.

I don’t know. No idea. Anybody who tells you they know why they are in it is making up a story. My father must have had a lot to do with it. He was always active in Jewish life. He was a public figure before the war, during the war a bit, and after. Activism was in the house. He spoke, he wrote, he organized.

“You were never bitter?” I asked.

Who knows. I once consulted another survivor, a prominent therapist. Should I get therapy, I asked her. What for, she said, so you’ll find out you resented your father? I’ll tell you right now: there were two women who loved you and in order to reunite you with your father, you had to be separated from one of them so, yes, you resent your father. There. Now you know. Next?

So, who knows. It’s nice to fantasize about why I do what I do. I deal with two elements of my formative years: I fight hate and I try to build bridges of understanding—which is what kept me alive. It sounds good, but I don’t know how much is coincidence and how much is because of my background. I’m doing what I want to do. In my youth I wanted to be an engineer because Israel needed engineers and I wanted to move there. But I didn’t like engineering and Israel didn’t really need engineers, so I went to law school instead. Meanwhile I got married to someone who wanted to make her life in the States. In law school I decided I didn’t want to practice law; I saw people who don’t like what they do even though they make a lot of money. Sometimes kids rebel, sometimes they mimic their parents.

The Holocaust was always a subject in our house. My parents dealt with it. A lot of people didn’t. My parents used to say, “Look at this—we lived it, and we still read all the books and see all the movies. And people who never lived through it say they can’t bear to read about it or see the movies!”

I asked whether he knew Madeleine Albright.

We’re friends. I understand her better than most, I think. Even if she knew, she didn’t want to know. How could she? Her father converted when she was two. Think of it this way: Let’s say I was raised as a Catholic, as she was. Let’s say my parents perished and I’d become a priest, eventually a cardinal. Now my cousins from Tel Aviv write me a letter saying, you can’t be a cardinal; you’re Jewish. What would I do? I’d probably throw the letter in the garbage. If not, you put the lie to everything you have lived in the last fifty-some years, to everything your parents told you. And don’t forget, hundreds of thousands died in Auschwitz who weren’t Jewish, so dying in Auschwitz was no proof her grandparents were Jewish.

I joke that I’d like to put up signs that say, “Don’t be anti-Semitic; after all, you, too, might turn out to be a Jew!”

The one thing hidden children had within their control was their silence. Their silence is what saved them. To this day, there are parents who will not discuss their experiences with their children. Then they go to a hidden child conference or they hear a talk by a survivor, and they open up.

Abe Foxman was only five when his parents came for him, but he was old enough to have formed an intense bond with his caretaker and her religion. It took time for him to transfer his loyalties, but with the help of supportive, patient, understanding parents, he succeeded in reclaiming his identity.

Many of the insights social psychologist and psychotherapist Eva Fogelman articulated with so much compassion in her essay, “Religious Transformation and Continuity,” apply to those who told me their stories.

When, in a desperate attempt to save their child from an imminent death, Jewish parents had the fortune to find a Christian family, or a convent, monastery, boarding school, or orphanage in which to hide their little one, placing the child was achieved with the utmost of love. Nevertheless, to the boy or girl, being placed felt like an abandonment and, indeed, often feels that way for the rest of his or her life.¹

William Trost, a sixty-one-year-old antiques dealer born in Prague, was reunited with his parents at age four, but they had already rejected their Jewishness and put it behind them without ever telling young William about his heritage.

Many of the hidden children I interviewed had been through several successive intimate relationships, a history not uncommon among individuals who have suffered from attachment disorder to some degree. William has been married three times. To his knowledge, he is the youngest World War II refugee to travel to the United States alone. William’s father came to America first, in 1940; his mother followed six months later. Before they left Europe, his parents placed him in a kindergarten in Zurich. They arranged for the woman who ran the child care facility to take the four-year-old out through France and Spain to Portugal, and to put him on a freighter. It was a perilous endeavor, but she succeeded. In January 1941, she placed young William onto a boat full of refugees headed for New York, and asked a sixteen-year-old girl to keep an eye on him.

I remember throwing up and waking up in vomit. I remember seeing the Statue of Liberty. And I remember the harbor being full of photographers when we landed.

First we lived in Elmhurst, Queens. My parents spoke German. I still understand it. When they wanted to talk secretly, they spoke Czech. Eventually we moved to Manhattan, where my father, who had been a banker in Europe, started acting strangely. It turned out he had syphilis, which had gone unchecked a long time. He took menial jobs while he could still work, and eventually died. My mother started out working in a greeting card factory, then a watch factory. Later she became secretary to a stockbroker, and when he passed away, she took over his work. She retired twenty years ago and moved to Germany with her Texan husband, a good-looking failed diplomat. She has supported them during their entire marriage.

For first grade I went to public school, but from second grade on they sent me to Catholic school. There was no religion at home, though. When I asked my mother, she said she was Lutheran. When my father’s behavior deteriorated, they sent me to Catholic boarding schools. I hated it. I was miserable. I was also somewhat anti-Semitic as a result of what I was learning in school. In second grade, I remember there was a boy who invited me over to dinner. When he walked me home, he asked what temple I go to.

“I don’t go to a temple. I’m Catholic.”

“No, you’re not. You’re Jewish.”

“No, I’m not!”

As soon as I got home, I told my mother how insulted I’d been. “He thinks I’m a Jew. Who the hell would want to be a Jew?”

I liked Catholicism until I was twelve or thirteen. Then things began to happen. I had a teacher who was not a Catholic brother. He let us talk freely about issues. I told him I was reading Voltaire in translation. The brothers were shocked and made me stop. By the time I left grammar school at age fourteen, I was disenchanted with Catholicism. My mother sent me to an all-boys high school. I ran away and only came back when she promised to send me to a nonreligious school.

My father’s mother lived with us until the war ended. Then she went back to Czechoslovakia. My mother’s parents hid with my cousin in Nice, France. When the Germans invaded, they hanged a few people and started looking for Jews. As long as my grandparents stayed indoors, they were safe, but one day in 1944, my grandfather said, “I have to get outside. It’s a beautiful day. Nobody ever comes around here. I’m going to the tobacco store for cigarettes.” Well, they got him. My grandmother turned herself in, in order to be with him.

I enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania as an English major. They had a junior year abroad program, and I decided on England. The day before my ship left, my mother told me to meet her after work at the cafeteria on Fifty-seventh and Lexington, across from the residential hotel we lived in at the time. “You’re going to London. Your cousins from Surrey will meet you at the dock. They’ll look after you.” That’s nice, I thought. She told me their names. “One other thing. They’re Jewish.” Okay, I thought. That’s interesting. “You must understand. Since they’re Jewish and they’re related, you’re Jewish, too!” “Okay.” I didn’t think much about it.

The next morning, I got into a cab with my mother and my stepfather. That’s when I had the first massive anxiety attack of my life. It started a period of gruesome agoraphobia for twenty years, which only lessened when I began to face my anger about my withheld identity. Even though I was a lapsed Catholic, I was imbued with Catholic values, including anti-Semitism, so to find out I was Jewish was traumatic. It meant I was going to Hell. I knew I was in big trouble. With all the anxiety about my identity, agoraphobia was a natural reaction.

My English cousins told me that my mother’s parents and lots of relatives had been killed in the Nazi death camps. I started having nightmares about the camps, guilt feelings about having been spared. And I was angry. Not only did my mother hide her identity from me, but she also hid mine. And my father was her unwitting accomplice. That was so sick!

William went back to Pennsylvania for his senior year, after which he got an exchange fellowship to the University of Bordeaux as a Fulbright scholar. He married the first woman he ever dated, a non-practicing French Catholic. They had a daughter, now in her mid-thirties. They did not give her any religious education, and today she is searching for her own spiritual path. When William and his first wife divorced, his wife moved to Washington, and their daughter decided to stay with William. She was eleven, ...