NEWS FEATURE: Sudden Discovery of Jewish Roots Can Be Disorienting

c. 1997 Religion News Service (UNDATED) When revelations about the religious background of Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright surfaced, many people suspected she had known all along of her Jewish roots. A woman of Albright’s intellect, they surmised, must have questioned her parents’ reasons for fleeing Czechoslovakia less than two weeks after the Nazi […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) When revelations about the religious background of Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright surfaced, many people suspected she had known all along of her Jewish roots. A woman of Albright’s intellect, they surmised, must have questioned her parents’ reasons for fleeing Czechoslovakia less than two weeks after the Nazi occupation.

But filmmaker Pierre Sauvage, who made the award-winning documentary film on the Holocaust,”Weapons of the Spirit,”has no trouble understanding how Albright, and others whose parents hid their Jewish identities, failed to uncover their religious legacies. His parents didn’t tell him of their escape from Nazi persecution until he was 18 years old. “Were there clues?”he asks. Undoubtedly.”But when you’re raised under the power of a taboo you know the areas you are not supposed to explore.”You learn early, he says, when not to ask questions.


Psychologists who work with Holocaust survivors and their offspring say that experiences such as Albright’s and Sauvage’s are far from unique. And while the responses of people who discover their Jewish heritage relatively late in life vary considerably, all are forced to deal suddenly with information that may radically alter their sense of self. “You wake up one morning and find your whole identity is different,”says New York-based psychologist Joseph Geliebter, who runs workshops for Holocaust survivors and their children.”You’ve been living a false life in some ways, false to your ancestors.” As a child growing up on New York’s Upper West Side, Sauvage had no idea that he had Jewish aunts, uncles and cousins living blocks away. His mother, he says,”never had close relatives who might have tipped me off. The price of maintaining the relationship was to keep the secret.” His parents told him the truth only when they felt they could no longer shield him. “I can’t remember whether they said they were Jewish or `originally’ Jewish. Little words like that,”he says,”you want to know later.” Others find out about their religious roots inadvertently, through newly unearthed documents, as in the case of Albright, or relatives who refuse to stay mum. “I said to my cousin: `I wonder why we didn’t see each other more growing up,'”recalls a Boston-based musician who did not want to be identified because she has not yet told her children of her background.”She said, `You know we’re Jewish.’ “I said, `I know my father’s sisters married Jewish men and converted.’ “`They didn’t convert,’ she said. `Your father converted.'” How people respond to such revelations depends both on their psychological make-up and the perceived significance of the information. Geliebter compares the experience of learning parents have lied to that of mourning a loss.”Some people mourn by getting out their feelings; some deal with mourning by withholding and internalizing, and it doesn’t hit them until years later.” A person’s initial response, says Los Angeles-based psychologist Edna Herrmann, may be to defend their parents from potential critics. Albright’s public comments of gratitude toward her parents for protecting her during the war, Herrmann says, may reflect such sentiments. “You read between the lines that she feels people are pointing a finger at her parents and saying: `You’re cowards or deserters,'”says Herrmann.”One can hear the question when one hears the answer: `My parents are very good people and they did their best.'” Sauvage reacted to the news of his roots with indifference. “I attached no real significance to it,”he recalls.”My parents … implied that it was not important. It was not part of who I was. I was under the power of (their) taboo.” In 10 years, however, his feelings changed. “What happened is I married a nice Jewish girl,”he says.”She kept insisting this was important … and she was right. The second thing that happened is that I had a child and I realized that I didn’t want him to be raised as a nothing. I wanted him to have a clear sense of identity and I had to choose. I couldn’t tell him he was Jewish and not be Jewish myself.” The process of trying to understand a parent’s decision to withhold information is ongoing, he says, and children may need to look for reasons more complex than those their parents state.

Some parents, particularly those who survived the Holocaust by assuming a Christian identity, may believe that hiding their Jewish heritage will somehow protect their children in the event of further persecution. Some concluded that the best way to leave a traumatic past behind is to forge a new identity. Still others who experienced blatant anti-Semitism in Europe and the United States feel that hiding one’s Jewishness is the only way to advance economically and socially.

Caroline Ramsay Merriam, president of The Crafts Center, a non-profit organization in Washington, D.C., that supports low-income artisans, was initially”perplexed”when she found out in her forties that her mother had hid her Jewish lineage. “She was very liberal and forward thinking for her time,”says Merriam.”She was always lecturing me on brotherhood and not making distinctions.” Later, however, Merriam came to understand more about the restrictive social milieu in which her mother’s family lived.”I remember telling my Jewish cousin that I was really mad at my great grandfather for becoming Episcopalian. He said that was very judgmental because Philadelphia was a closed society in 1860.” Sauvage, too, questioned his parents rationale for secrecy.”I don’t believe they were protecting me. We lived on the Upper West Side. Their social set was extremely Jewish.” Over time, however, he realized that his parents’ adeptness at shielding their identities during the Holocaust is what helped them survive. And years after the war, they remained”survivors in hiding.””The French turned on foreign Jews first and foremost,”he says.”My mother as a Polish Jew was extremely vulnerable. Her skill at hiding saved her life and allowed me to come into existence.” (OPTIONAL TRIM BEGINS)

Whether a person ultimately embraces, rejects or ignores one’s Jewish identity depends on one’s feelings about the tradition. According to Orthodox Jewish law, children of Jewish mothers are Jewish. But some people do not place much stock in such law or religious or cultural identity; some may have internalized subtle or overt anti-Semitic prejudices that cause them to reject Judaism; and still others may have adopted other faiths. “My life is richer because I’m connected to another culture,”says the Boston musician.”But I feel strongly rooted as an Episcopalian.” Merriam delighted in the knowledge that she was even part Jewish and began reading all she could find about her newfound roots. “I’m related to a 15th-century rabbi who was a scholar of kabbala (Jewish mysticism). The more I read, the prouder I got. I wish I’d known this my whole life.” Sauvage’s new knowledge led him to his birthplace, Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a Protestant farming village in the mountains of France where 5,000 Christians provided safe haven from the Nazis for 5,000 Jews, many of them children.

Sauvage discovered that he, too, had been sheltered at Le Chambon.

When he decided to make a documentary film about the extraordinary wartime story, his parents protested what they saw as an invasion of their privacy. “It was the work of a rebellious child, laying a claim to a part of his past … indeed to an identity he had essentially been deprived of,”Sauvage told Bill Moyers during a screening of”Weapons of the Spirit.” But over time his mother grew to love the film. “And she came to understand,”he says,”that there was something wrong about what she had done.” (OPTIONAL TRIM ENDS)

Sauvage has emerged from his experience with disdain for keeping secrets and asking others to collude. Still, when a newspaper called to interview him for his father’s obituary, Sauvage weighed whether to reveal the family’s Jewish roots. “I thought: Do I betray him now of all times? My father wanted to go to the grave with the identity he created from himself.” Sauvage kept the secret, which saddens him to this day. “My father believed, probably like Madeleine Albright’s parents, that you are entitled to create your own identity, entitled to start from scratch. I believe the opposite. I believe you build a stronger identity if you know and accept who you are.”

END LIEBLICH

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!