Exposed Family Secrets Can Cause Dramatic Changes In Our Lives

Sometimes the elders of a family pass down partial truths to their children, keeping family secrets hidden from the younger generations. This was certainly true in my family. We thought we knew everything about my paternal grandfather but what we knew turned out to be a compilation of facts he felt comfortable sharing with us. The truth was that he had spent his whole life running away from his past and disowning his roots, the specifics of which will become clear in a few moments, but first, here's the facts as we-- my parents, siblings, aunts, uncles and grandmother, knew them back in 1966, the year my grandfather passed away.

Grandpa was born in Prague Czechoslovakia around the turn of the the 20th century. As a young teenager he worked his way across Europe until he earned enough money to travel to America. In the old country he spoke 5 languages, including English and Yiddish which, we were told, was common in Europe. He loved classical music, played the violin and dreamed of becoming a famous violinist. Instead, the harsh realities of immigrant life in New York City led him to work in a succession of kosher deli's even though he wasn't Jewish. At work Grandpa easily blended in with the Jews because he knew how to speak their language and had a lot of knowledge about their customs and religious holidays.

But at home, he often cursed the Jews, displaying a prejudice that shocked and upset my mother when she was dating my father. Dad also cursed the Jews during their courtship, but when he and my mother got married and started having kids, Mom made Grandpa and Dad promise not to do so in our presence. To their credit, both men kept their word and for that I'm grateful for instead of learning hatred and intolerance, I was taught respect for people of all races and religions, which is a wonderful gift to give a child.

The truth about Grandpa's past came out when he was on his deathbed right after Mom told him what she thought would be good news-- that there was to be another birth in the family because "Bunchy, Bunchy" (his pet name for my sister, Jeanne) was pregnant. Grandpa's eyes always lit up whenever there was a new baby on the way but this time they didn't for there were a number of complicating factors. Jeanne was only 16, had conceived out of wedlock, and the baby's father was barely 18 and Jewish. Phil's parents, who were orthodox Jews, were threatening to disown him if he married Jeanne. Even before Jeanne got pregnant, they'd tried to cut the budding romance short by forbidding Phil to see her, but he'd disobeyed them, choosing instead, to meet my sister in private, clandestine places.

Now Phil's parents offered to foot the medical bills for the baby's birth and also pay child support, but only if Phil disowned the baby and broke off all ties with my sister. "You're young," they told him. "You need to go to college to fulfill your dreams of becoming an architect, then find a nice Jewish girl to settle down with. Don't let this mess you've gotten into with a gentile girl ruin the rest of your life."

This total rejection of their first grandchild-to-be and my sister might seem like a harsh, unloving act to those who aren't Jewish, but to orthodox Jews it was an important, emotionally wrenching custom rooted in Jewish law that was meant to ensure the Jewish race continued without being weakened by interfaith marriages. The way I understood it, Phil's whole family would be shunned and ostracized by their orthodox congregation if he married a gentile.

Phil told his parents that he was in love with Jeanne, could never abandon her, and was going to marry her no matter what they threatened to do. "If you cut off my funding for college, I'll work my way through school and I'll support my own wife and baby."

I was only 13 and thought my new brother-in-law-to-be was like a knight in shining armor rushing in to save my sister's honor by marrying her. Though I was ashamed that she had gotten pregnant out of wedlock, I was greatly relieved that Phil had chosen to do the right thing, and for the only reason that truly mattered--love!

In my impressionable young mind, my sister and her fiance' were like Romeo and Juliet, or Maria and Tony in West Side Story, but without the tragic ending. It was heady stuff for a young girl to witness and I was captivated by the romantic drama that was unfolding in our family, right before my very eyes, and passionately rooting for the lovers to live happily ever after, thereby proving that love bears all things, believes all things and survives all things.

But Grandpa saw things in quite a different light and the expression on his face when he heard the news of Jeanne's pregnancy and the difficulties with Phil's family was one of sadness and great pain.

"They'll break her heart," he whispered. Due to the heart failure he was in, it was hard for him to breathe and talk at the same time because his lungs were filling up with fluid. Mom thought he might be getting confused from the lack of oxygen getting to his brain and she was having difficulty figuring out exactly what he meant. Was he implying that the rejection by Phil's family would break Jeanne's heart?

"Who will break her heart?" she asked, trying to get clarification.

"The Jews, they'll break her heart.......just like they broke mine."

"What Jews broke your heart? The ones from work?" she asked, still not quite understanding.

"No, the Jews from my hometown. I was born a Jew and lived in the Jewish Quarter of Prague, but after my father died the whole village shunned and ostracized us because my mother took up with a gentile. Though I blamed my mother for bringing this shame on our family, I couldn't bear the way the orthodox community treated us and ran away. Don't let Jeanne marry Phil. Even if she converts to Judaism, the Jews will never accept her and it will break her heart."

It was a stunning confession and Mom did her best to reassure Grandpa that everything would be okay. The important thing was that our family would welcome the new baby into our lives and help Jeanne and Phil raise the child.

I don't know if that answer gave Grandpa any peace, but I do know he made Mom promise to pass his bible onto Jeanne. He died the next day and his wishes were honored. In my own heart I believe that leaving Jeanne his bible was Grandpa's way of asking God's blessing for his eldest grandchild and unborn great-grand-child. No matter what happened, he wanted God to look after them.

Phil's parents had kept their own family secrets and in their efforts to persuade him not to marry Jeanne, they finally revealed them. Phil had always suspected they were holocaust survivors, but that was a topic that was never spoken about in their home. Now horrific details and tremendous fears poured out of them with the velocity of water bursting through a dam.

They rolled up their sleeves and showed him the numbers that were engraved on their forearms. "This is all we were to the Nazis, a sub-human without a name, only a number that could be easily tracked after they exterminated us. Jews can never trust non-Jews and all Jews must stick together for their own survival."

His mother told him that they each had been married to other people before World War II broke out, and that she had 2 children, a baby girl, named Roz, and a small boy by her first husband, and Phil's father had a son with his first wife.

"They would have been your siblings if the Nazis hadn't murdered them in a concentration camp. My infant daughter, was torn from my arms as I begged for them to spare her life, but all the Nazis did was pry my 3 year old crying son from me and send them both into the gas chambers. I was young and still healthy, strong enough to work and be of some use so my own life was spared, at least temporarily. But for a long time I wished I was dead because the pain of having your children killed is horrific."

Phil's father spoke of the young son that had gone into the women's side of the camp with his wife and how he didn't know for sure, until after the war, that neither had survived. He too, had little will to survive after the war ended, but the Jewish survivors banded together and reminded each other that they must live and build new families so that their loved ones would not have died in vane and the Jewish race would still live on. A matchmaker brought Phil's parents together and shortly afterwards they got married and had Phil and his younger brother.

"Love is family sticking together, Jews helping other Jews. You think you love this gentile girl but it's an infatuation that will quickly fade and then you'll be trapped in a marriage that will destroy your whole future."

Phil was incredibly moved by their story, as was my own family, once we heard it, but he didn't share their distrust and fear of gentiles.

His parents, seeing that he was still holding firm in his decision to marry Jeanne, finally agreed to accept her and the baby if she would convert to Judaism. That way the baby would be Jewish because in Jewish law, the baby's religion is the same as the mother's, not the father.

Jeanne did agree to convert and Phil's family accepted her as a daughter-in-law and for the rest of their lives they doted on the beautiful baby girl that was born a few months later. According to Jewish custom, a new baby is given the name of a deceased person in order to honor the ancesters who have died. Phil and Jeanne named my new niece, Roz, to honor Phil's deceased half-sister.

I read The Diary Of Anne Frank the year Roz was born, and being the same age as the heroine, and having recently discovered that I myself had 1/8 Jewish blood in my veins-- a fact that would have met the definition of a Jew under Hitler's laws, I really related to her story and the profound words that she wrote. One quote gave me great hope, "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."

I saw a picture in a textbook of a huge room filled with violins that had been confiscated from the Jews who lived in Prague when their owners were sent to the concentration camps. It reminded me of my grandfather's dreams to become a concert violinist. How many others who had perished in the camps had shared those very same dreams, and was anyone of them a gifted musician who could have brought exquisite music into the world, scientist as brilliant as Einstein, or nurse as dedicated as Florence Nightingale? We'll never know of course, the gifts and accomplishments that the 6,000,000 could have brought to the world.

Anne Frank wrote, "Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!"

She never had the chance to develop her potential, but I've been given that chance, dear reader, and so have you. Let us make the most of the freedom and time that we've been given.

Please click on the Paper Clips Documentary preview video to see how students in a small southern town in America started a project of tolerance and understanding that spread throughout the world. This project gives me great hope that another quote of Anne Frank is still true, "Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart."