You can never tell anyone....

“You can never tell anyone. Ever.” My grandmother was whispering, and I didn’t understand what she was saying or why she was whispering, but I knew it was bad. I nodded solemnly.

After my parents became engaged, my father told my mother he had something to tell her. He confessed that he was Jewish. (My mother later told me she already knew.) He said it was a secret and he never wanted to speak of it again. He swore my mother to secrecy and made her promise that she would never tell any of her family or any children they ever might have. I have often wondered how he thought that would work, considering my entire extended paternal family is/was Jewish.

There was a method in the madness. According to Jewish law, Judaism is passed through the mother. My father very deliberately married a Christian woman, believing that any offspring would be safer than if they were Jews, safer if they never knew, safer if he hid it all away. An imperfect plan, made even more imperfect when his mother decided I should know and took matters into her own hands when I was about 5 years old. I was later told that the ensuing explosion was of epic proportions but the cat was out of the bag and there was no going back.

I carried the secret throughout my childhood. It was always present, always in the background. It coloured our lives. When I was very small, I was terrified that “they” were coming to get us, but I had no idea who “they” were. Discussing it was not an option.  And so the ashes of all  the pain and secrecy covered the corners of our lives and was like a grit between our teeth.