Dear Jennifer,

I know an even more tragic story that of those who did not know they were (partly) Jewish until by a mere happening they discovered their father or mother was Jewish.

I had to wait till I was 19 years old to find out my father was not the husband of my mother. I was born out of wedlock (a “momzer” as some called me) and the memory of my Mother’s great love had been buried in the deepest of her heart till I started asking questions : “Ma nishtana balaila haze?”. I found a reluctant woman telling me the story of them that the “Shoah” had so tragically taken to the “working camps”(?).

It was just a few weeks before the end of 1941 that my mother, then highly pregnant and soon to be divorced from her Gentile husband, was told that the father of the child she was carrying had been picked up during one of those “razzias” made before dawn the Gestapo was so famous for.

The neighbours were kind enough (?) to tell my mother that “they” had arrested the Jewish Gynecologist and his family early that morning and that for sure they would not come back so soon. They advised her to look for a good catholic doctor.

Heartbroken my mother decided to go back to her husband. She never had realised that Jews were hated so much and now she got afraid for the baby, the Jewish “souvenir”, she was carrying. To make a long story short, deliverance was supposed to happen early December and when the obstetricians had to decided to induce the birth, they told her that the child was surely dead. No signs of a heartbeat and without the modern scanners at their disposal, what could they think. The woman was overdue and surely the baby would have suffered irreversible damages.

They were wrong because on the 16th day of December 1941 I was born and I was healthy. A strange phenomenon happened then. When the nurse presented me to her, the only thing she said :”It’s not mine. He is a redhead and nobody in the family has that color.” The nurses tried to calm her down and it was only a few days later when all the babies had been returned to their mothers and that I had not, that my mother, overcome with grief showed some affection for her new born son.

Whenever she would tell this “part” of the story, I could not understand why until later when I heard the “whole” story that I realised that my mother was afraid someone could or would relate me to my real father.

My mother went back to the man she had tried to get divorced from. All of a sudden she had become paralysed and could not get out of bed anymore. I ended up in the care of our cleaning lady who was deaf and dumb. She was going to be my foster mother for 3 years. The good woman considered me as her real child. I was hers, no doubt about that, and the little Jew was safe. No one had to know not even the little one.

Needless to say that the confession was difficult and filled with tears and regrets, but it was incomplete, for my mother refused to give me my father’s name. I was 19 and had been known by the name of my foster father for so long. There was no reason (sic) for me to look for the dead, may they rest in peace, I had to promise not to investigate any further, nor tell anyone about what she had told me. Life was to go on, for everybody we were devout Catholics, why change anything now.

The years went fast and my mother passed away. Feeling more and more Jewish, I decided to learn Hebrew and to get familiarized with Judaism. I instantly was subjugated by the “Kol Nidre”, also understood why I felt so go good in the Jewish neighbourhood where I lived for a while in Antwerp. The men in black, wearing payès and shtreimel on Shabat were not too pleased to find a “Goy” among their neighbours nor would they greet him.

This long story, Jennifer, to show the world that, yes, atavism does exist and one can be very sensitive to symbols and situations which are supposedly completely alien. I consider myself as a Jew and try to understand why Jews have suffered so much through the thousand of years of their existence. I also try to explain this to those who are too prejudiced to investigate the real reasons of their hatred. I don’t despair, although it’s not an easy task I have committed myself to.

Will you have time to tell me what you think about all this? I sure would welcome your opinion.

Shalom.