Inhumanity Trauma

Jews are dark, swarthy; dark eyes, dark hair, dark skin. Caucasian by default, though not Caucasian.

European Jews could be easily distinguished from other members of society; ethnic Poles, Ukraines, Russians, Italians, whatever. Or so the theory goes. And so the racist propaganda of the Nazis in Germany proposed. All Jews had hooked noses and shifty eyes to match their devious minds. But just to be certain, all Jews would have to wear distinguishing yellow stars so that other, decent people of decent descent and mindset could avoid them.

And, should they desire, with no interference from anyone in authority -- actually authority went out of its way to encourage it -- be abused verbally, physically; snubbed, derided, threatened, and beaten if the rancour was sufficiently stepped up, against such miserable specimens of degraded humanity. That was all before the round-ups of European Jews into ghettoes. Before the transport in closed cattle cars to death camps.

But of course there were also blond-haired, blue-eyed Jews, among the dark ones. Not so much a genetic anomaly as a fairly persuasive indication that the human race is interrelated, that genes are exchanged, that intermarriage is far more common and always has been than many are willing to admit. The worst abusers of Jews may have had some Jewish heritage somewhere back in their personal family roots.

There would be no willingness, needless to say, to hire a heritage-sleuth to discover those links; they represented those rattling skeletons best locked in the family cupboard. Miriam Zimmerman, a 86-year-old Toronto woman knows intimately of such things. Seventy years ago she became Mary Plochocka, enabled to do so because she was blond and blue-eyed, looking just like the proverbial blue-blond Gentile.

Which feint at fate and sacrifice of heritage saved her from the death chambers. Even though she and her family did end up - without her father who was put to death - at Buchenwald concentration camp. Held there as Polish political prisoners. "Nobody thought I could be Jewish because I looked so Gentile", she explained to a reporter recently. "I was only ever stopped by the Germans once", and then her Polish identity card and her appearance saved the day.

After bare survival and liberation she fell in love with a Canadian man whose duty it was to operate the displaced persons camp she was located in. "I told my husband I was Jewish but that I wouldn't tell anyone else. And he told me it was my life, and that I could do whatever I pleased." Their children were raised as Anglicans. "I always suspected that my mother was Jewish. My grandmother would have matzo and halva hidden underneath her dresser", commented Mary's daughter.

"It is hard for me to explain why I kept my Jewish identity secret for so long but the thing is, I became paranoid, and it got to the point during the war where I couldn't even think of being Jewish because being Jewish meant being dead -- they were the same thing to me", said Mary Gale, who lives now in a Toronto west-end seniors home. Where she finally decided to disclose her past, to make peace with who and what she is.

"I saw so many horrible things. I saw so many dead people. It is amazing what seeing these things can do to a mind. I knew I was safe here in Canada. But I just couldn't say I was Jewish."  Life can be so surprising. Her son Tom, as a university student, found himself drawn to religion, converted to Judaism, changed his name to Gershon, and moved to Israel, living there now as an orthodox Jew.

Quite without knowing his mother is also Jewish.