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Uncovering Jewish Heritage

Uncovering Jewish Heritage

Monthly Archives: October 2014

Conversion

21 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Family, Jewish Culture, Poland

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What was it like for a Jew to become a Christian in Poland in the early 1920s? For my grandmother, it meant a total break with her family, her past, and her heritage.

Her own father sat shiva, the seven-day mourning period following a death in the family. In other words, by converting she became dead to him. I can only approximate the date; My mom remembers being left with Auntie Nunia at a very young age. She says she was two (which would make it 1924 or 5) but I wonder if she could have been a bit older since it would be highly unusual to have vivid memories so young. Uncle Sig was born in 1927 so it probably happened before then.

BTMQ1OcQra4VP1wzh9ZjvgzgwLboLrS_jJ0lt4fN87g

Hiel Majer Piwko, c. 1908

There was another part of the story. I’ve known this for a while so it’s possible my mom told it to me at some point. When Babcia’s father became ill, she visited him on his deathbed, kissed his feet, and begged him to forgive her. He refused to acknowledge her despite her pleas. This would have been in 1929, so just a few years after her conversion. Babcia did, however, reconcile with her mother, who lived a few more years until 1933. Mostly, mom resisted talking about this history. Only once, she expressed bitterness to me that because of her mother’s actions, she never knew her grandparents. This suggests to me that contact between my branch and other branches of the family remained strained and infrequent, with the notable exception of Auntie Nunia.

Thinking more broadly, Aleksander Hertz (Żydzi w Kulturze Polskiej, 1961) sheds some light on the meaning and experience of conversion for Polish Jews. He describes pre-20th century Poland as a caste society, meaning there was a closed system of social groupings comprised principally of landed gentry, peasants, and Jews. Each caste had clearly defined boundaries reinforced by myriad external (dress, customs, economic roles, language) and internal (culture, religion, sensibilities, morality) factors. Further, caste is closed from both the inside and the outside (p. 125). The only way out of the Jewish caste was through christening and conversion.

During the Interwar Period in Poland, Jews faced blocks against full equality within Polish society. In many ways, regardless of how well they spoke Polish, how much wealth they accumulated, or how much education they had, they remained categorically different (and lower in the social hierarchy) than Catholic Poles. Those who assimilated were still viewed as members of their caste (92), and those who sought to integrate the most (via conversion) were often viewed with the greatest distrust (125).

About the psychological experience of conversion, Hertz writes “The change of religion in every specific case [excepting those for whom it was a purely pragmatic decision] marked a strong shock of massive proportions for a Jew” (130). There was a great deal of pride within the Jewish community; Jews felt they were the “chosen nation” and in many ways superior to the “goys” around them (132-3). Conversion meant a radical break with a whole system of life and the associated social environment (środowisko); “The neophyte was someone who didn’t only abandon their caste, but also denied its ideals, everything that was part of its soul and reason to exist. He was a defector and a traitor” (131). Within the Jewish community, converts were thus viewed harshly.

Conversion was never common, but it became more so in the 19th century. For wealthy Jews in particular, it became a means of shifting class and becoming part of gentry culture (178). They had little in common with orthodox Jews, and often identified more with the values and practices of the elite (Poles in central Poland, Germans in western Poland) (148-50, 155). Mixed marriages also became more common during this period. However, exit from caste actually became harder as anti-Semitism grew in response to the increasing similarity between Jews and non-Jews via mass education, adoption of Polish (or German) language, and modern styles of dress. While some assimilated without rejecting their Jewishness, breaking out of the boundaries of caste often also entailed changing names and erasing all traces of Jewish heritage (153, 167). Essentially, the culture that was adopted was not only Polish, but also noble culture (156). The reassertion of caste during the Interwar period was “particularly painfully and dramatically felt by assimilated Jews” (174). Some became overzealous in their perfection of the Polish language and customs, their commitment to the cult of Polish literature and art, and their fanatical nationalism. They became “more Polish than the Poles” (175). Nevertheless, the “shadow of caste” fell on them, and they were never sure if their performance of Polishness, no matter how perfect, would be recognized as good enough (176-7).

My family fits this pattern described by Hertz to such a degree it is painful to me. My mom used to mock my grandmother for being “More Catholic than the Pope,” but she herself adopted a fierce Polish patriotism and worked as hard as anyone in the family to deny their Jewish roots. They tried to integrate completely with gentry society, and in most ways they succeeded. For instance, even after forty-five years of communism, Poles treated my mom with deference; those from humble backgrounds in particular responded to her refined manner of speaking by enacting persistent class/caste relationships. But this life performance came at a cost, and probably contributed to my mom’s hyper self-consciousness and battle with insecurity.

Why we grew up Christian

18 Saturday Oct 2014

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Catholicism, Family, Jewish Culture

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What really happened is hard to reconstruct. I’ve asked my brothers, my cousins, my aunts, and each tells the story a little differently. Still, the general outline remains the same. I will call Babcia Halina because that’s the name she used in the US (I’ll discuss the fluidity of names in another post). Halina was a rebel. One of the youngest in her family, she resisted the constraints imposed on her by her conservative father. She even ran away and moved in with an older sister in Warsaw. My cousin Krysia remembers that the main reason Halina left was because her father would not let her go to college. In Warsaw, she attended university. Still, Halina’s parents persuaded her to marry an older man who was a friend of the family. It was an arranged marriage, not a love match, and the two turned out to have very different characters. I think she found him stodgy and conservative.

Halina was already the mother of two small children when she met Zygmunt on a train. Well, one cousin heard she was on a tram not a train. But everyone else says it was a train; some say she was on her way to her country estate, or to visit relatives, or maybe to visit friends. But anyway, they met. It was an instant attraction, and by the end of the journey, Zygmunt told her, “I see you weeping on my grave.” That’s what Chris remembers he said, and I like it better than my version.

Zygmunt Bereda was a wealthy businessman, a wheeler-dealer, a man of big passions, and a Catholic. He became part of Halina’s social circle. Maybe he turned out to be a neighbor of the friend she went to visit; maybe he was a business partner of her husband (again, different people explain it differently). They ended up divorcing their spouses and running off together (though perhaps this happened in the opposite order). Halina became a Catholic. Uncle George and my mom were baptized. They took steps to bury their Jewish heritage. They all took the name Bereda and had false papers made that changed Halina’s maiden name from Piwko to Barylska, and Mama’s birthplace from Warsaw to Wilno (Vilnius). Zygmunt and Halina’s son, Uncle Sig, was born in 1927. They hid the truth well, leaving my generation to find out by accident.

Babcia’s conversion was not just pragmatic. She embraced Catholicism with her heart and soul. She performed a kind of mystical faith. She believed in blessings and visions. She kept the cross and the Madonna on her walls. I get the sense she had retreated from Judaism long before her love affair provided an opportunity and a reason to become Christian.

Of course there were many other reasons she might have preferred to be Catholic in Interwar Poland. Anti-Semitism made it a bad time to be a Jew. And then, during the Nazi occupation, being Jewish would have been a death sentence. But those are subjects for another post.

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All original text and images are copyright © Marysia Galbraith. Please contact the author before quoting.

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