Conference back40::soapbox

    
    Albright is a jew?  Did she know and won't tell anyone?

    Every time he opens his mouth...

    How come the Washington Post knew and she didn't?
    
    ...and why do they care?

Slow news day?

    Albright was raised Roman Catholic by her parents.  They apparently
    realized that the antisemitism of the time made for strange
    requirements.  They are not unlike many families who emigrated from
    Europe during that time and also in the late 1800's.  

It's a very interesting and strange situation.  It's odd that [she claims]
her parents never told her, particularly because three of her grandparents
were exterminated because they were Jewish.  Here's Jeff Jacoby's column
from yesterday's Globe:

     The deceiving of Madeleine Albright

     By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist, 02/11/97

     This is a column I intended not to write,
     on a topic I intended not to explore.
     Better to leave this story alone, I
     thought. Better to let others, more
     dispassionate than I, deal with it.

     But by now, one too many persons has asked
     me, ``Are you going to write about
     Madeleine Albright?'' Each time I am asked,
     I think anew about her story. And the more
     I ponder it, the more my mind fills with
     questions and doubts.

     It seemed, at first, a simple if poignant
     tale:

     A little girl is saved from the Nazis when
     her parents flee occupied Czechoslovakia.
     Later she is saved from the Communists when
     her parents defect to the United States.
     The little girl grows up American; she is a
     great success. At age 59, she becomes the
     US secretary of state.

     Suddenly it transpires that her family was
     Jewish, and that many of her relatives died
     in the Holocaust. ``All this was a major
     surprise for me,'' she says. ``I have
     always thought of myself as a Czechoslovak
     Catholic.'' She recalls her parents
     reminiscing about life in Czechoslovakia.
     ``They talked about getting ready for
     various holidays, for Easter and
     Christmas.'' But it was all a fabrication -
     a fiction they invented so she wouldn't
     know the truth. The discovery jolts her.
     But she will not second-guess her parents'
     motives. ``My parents,'' she says, ``did
     wonderful things for us.''

     I have much esteem for Albright as a public
     official. She is assertive and principled,
     a welcome contrast to the timid Warren
     Christopher and the arrogant James Baker. A
     loathing of appeasement is her foreign
     policy rudder. ``The mindset of most of my
     contemporaries is Vietnam,'' she has said.
     ``My mindset is Munich.'' Those are the
     words of a potentially great secretary of
     state.

     But something rings false in her reaction
     to the news that her family was Jewish. Was
     this really a bolt from the blue? Did she
     honestly have no inkling until this month
     that the Nazis murdered three of her
     grandparents, her aunt, her uncle, and her
     11-year-old cousin Milena?

     ``A major surprise for me,'' says Albright.
     Yet for years, it turns out, people had
     been sending her letters with information
     about her family. Four times the mayor of
     her father's hometown in Bohemia had
     written to her, enclosing detailed material
     about her parents and grandparents.
     Albright never replied; her aides say she
     was too busy to see the letters. Perhaps
     she was.

     Perhaps she was also too busy to correspond
     with her first cousin Dagmar Simova, who
     had lived with Albright and her family from
     1939 to 1948. Simova still lives in Prague;
     it was she who in 1945 uncovered the
     horrible fate that had befallen their
     relatives. She often visits the Pinkas
     Synagogue in Prague, where 77,297 Czech
     Holocaust victims are memorialized. ``My
     children,'' she told The Washington Post,
     ``know very well every detail.'' Perhaps
     Albright, though she didn't leave Prague
     until she was 11, never knew what her
     cousin had learned.

     Perhaps, when the FBI investigated her
     background before she became ambassador to
     the United Nations, her family's tragic
     history went undetected. Perhaps it never
     occurred to this very bright daughter of
     well-connected parents to wonder why so
     many people thought her roots might be
     Jewish. Or how her grandparents had
     disappeared.

     Perhaps. Anything is possible. But I cannot
     help thinking that most people in
     Albright's position would have moved heaven
     and earth to root out the truth about their
     past. It seems to me that if anyone would
     be ravenous for the details of her history,
     it would be a former child exile, a refugee
     from Nazism and Communism whose world was
     thrice upended before she was 12.

     I only wonder. I don't accuse. The
     dislocations and contradictions may have
     been more than the young Madeleine Albright
     could bear. She was safe and Catholic; her
     relatives were Jewish - and dead. Maybe the
     mind of this little girl, bewildered and in
     pain, simply walled off the whole matter,
     obscuring everything in forgetfulness and
     apathy.

     But what excuse did her parents have?

     To escape the Nazis, they hid, they pulled
     strings, they bribed - and they passed
     themselves off as non-Jews. For doing what
     was necessary, no one can fault them. But
     having survived, having made their way to
     freedom, having been spared what 6 million
     Jews were not spared, why did they
     perpetuate the lie? Lucky Jews, to have
     slipped through Hitler's claws. And their
     response was to deny their Jewish birth? To
     cover up their origins? To pretend the
     Holocaust had nothing to do with them? How
     dared they?

     By what right did they cheat their daughter
     of her heritage? Hitler wiped out Jewish
     children with bullets and gas, and they
     wiped out their child's Jewishness with
     deception and fraud. Shame on them. Shame
     on their cowardice. Shame on their
     cynicism.

     When Albright's father wrote a book that
     recounted his flight from the Nazis, it
     gave no hint of the family's Jewishness.
     When her mother wrote a family memoir in
     1977, it, too, suppressed that information.
     These were Jews who had been privileged to
     live - and then went out of their way not
     to live as Jews.

     ``I think my father and mother were the
     bravest people alive,'' Albright says.
     ``They dealt with the most difficult
     decision anyone could make.''

     No. They avoided the difficult decision.
     They ran from it. They rejected their
     Jewishness and betrayed their parents'
     memory. And then spent a lifetime deceiving
     their daughter.

    some people find it hard to beileve that people other than Jews were
    killed in concentration camps duing the holacast.  Gypsies, resisters
    of all sorts, homosexuals, people of unclean religions other than
    Jewishness, anyone who didn't conform to some ideal in some SS officers
    head.  Several million non-jews in Poland and Czechoslovakia were also
    exterminated in camps.  It is easy for me to see how her parents could
    have denied any connection to their ethnicity, even with having lost
    relatives in camps.
    
    meg

   Jeff Jacoby has nothing better to do than to blast Madeleine
   Albright's parents?

    It would seem not.

    > It is easy for me to see how her parents could have denied any
    > connection to their ethnicity, even with having lost relatives in
    > camps.

Me too. I can easily see wanting to forget who you were, when you narrowly
avoided Nazi gas chambers for being such.

True, it's a bit of a win for the Nazis, in coercing you to forget your
culture. People don't always do the rational thing under such circumstances,
and it's not really our business to force them to.

     Z    By what right did they cheat their daughter
     Z    of her heritage? Hitler wiped out Jewish
     Z    children with bullets and gas, and they
     Z    wiped out their child's Jewishness with
     Z    deception and fraud. Shame on them.
    
    Moses mother did something similar if I recall.
    
    Based on these incidences, I have to believe that heritage takes a back
    seat to God's purposes for an individual.  
    
    -Jack

>    Moses mother did something similar if I recall.

Jack, have you actually _read_ the Bible?    

  After reading that, my opinion of Jacoby has declined.

  bb

It's interesting that everybody here is panning the column.  I think it's
very insightful.

  .245  Second-guessing and casting aspersions on her parents
	is insightful?

When I first heard the story, it didn't sound quite right, but I couldn't
put my finger on the reason.  Jacoby's column helped me out.  Jacoby is
something of a junkyard dog, so it's not surprising that he's unkind
to her parents.

If you think it was OK for her parents not to tell her her origins, do
you think it's OK for adoptive parents not to tell their child that he's
adopted?

    I guess the notion that Albright's parents actually _converted_ to
    Roman Catholicism is out of the question?

>  <<< Note 824.247 by NOTIME::SACKS "Gerald Sacks ZKO2-3/N30 DTN:381-2085" >>>

>If you think it was OK for her parents not to tell her her origins, do
>you think it's OK for adoptive parents not to tell their child that he's
>adopted?

	I didn't say that I think it was OK.  Not knowing the circumstances
	and their motives, I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to make that
	judgment about them.  That's what I'm objecting to about Jacoby.
	He seems to think he has all the answers about what they did and
	why.

    re: .247
    
    If you believe that it is in the best interest of a family
    to allow them to raise their children in the way they see
    fit, then it is none of our business.
    
    If they chose to become Catholic, to participate in the
    Church and raise their child as a Catholic, it is not for
    us to question their motives.  They did what they thought
    was best.  
    
    Many children do not find out until they are adults that
    they are adopted or that they have other siblings.  Many
    parents do go out of their way to make sure other relatives
    do not "spill the beans".  Family secrets are just that.
    We have no business picking through the rubble of someone's
    past.  
    
    Take her to task for her actions not her past.  Besides,
    what's wrong with being Catholic anyway?
    
    Mary-Michael
    
    

>    Many children do not find out until they are adults that
>    they are adopted or that they have other siblings.  Many
>    parents do go out of their way to make sure other relatives
>    do not "spill the beans".  Family secrets are just that.

So you think it's OK for adoptive parents to not tell their children
they're adopted?

    There are circumstances where I would agree this was necessary.

Such as?

    Nothing wrong with being a Catholic.  I believe Jacoby was admonishing
    the Albrights for ducking their responsibility to continue in the
    Jewish faith.  Their departure is a slap in the collective faces of
    their kindred not to mention a cheapening of the lives lost in the
    Holocaust according to him.  I agree with with the idea that we should
    not question their motives nor berate them posthumously for their
    decision to convert if in fact that is what happened.  I also find it
    strange that Madame Secretary of State would not be aware of the
    intimate details of her past until very recently.  If you are the
    questioning kind, you might also wonder what she is capable of
    overlooking or forgetting while in her position of Secretary of State. 
    
    My opinion is that she should be left alone to do the job she has been
    chosen for.  Her childhood and the actions of her parents are of little
    consequence until someone makes a big deal out of it.  Jacoby has
    misused his position as a columnist to push a seemingly personal
    agenda and to increase the difficulty she will have in performing her
    duties as Secretary of State.    
    
    

    I see it as no more dishonest than the fabrications made up about my
    great-great-grandfather in Iowa to hide his ethnicity, and the fact
    that he bailed from his beloved Bavaria to avoid a similar problem in
    the 1800's.  Mom is still digesting the information her sister found
    that completely contradicts the oral family history.  
    
    meg

    Such as your bioparents having murdered the rest of your family and you
    had only just survived.
    
    (True case)
    
    /a

  People are way too hung up about roots, origins and the past.  This is
 more a European disease, but now it's gotten bigger in the USA.

  I admit that out of sheer curiosity, I've found out a bit about one
 branch of my tree, but then I lost interest.  Too boring.  It matters
 not.  I think you're better off not wasting time on this.

  bb

>                                                           Jacoby has
>    misused his position as a columnist to push a seemingly personal
>    agenda ...
    
What do you perceive as the role of a columnist?

    re: .251
    
    I think if we want to live in a free society, we have no 
    business telling other people how to live their lives and
    raise their children.  What I think is best and what someone
    else, who has an entirely different set of life experiences,
    thinks is best may be two entirely different things.  
    
    Can children suffer psychological damage if they aren't
    told they are adopted?  Possibly.  They can also suffer
    psychlogical damage from being bullied and taunted at
    school as well.  You can't possible legislate everything
    so no one ever gets hurt.  Some things you leave up
    to the parents.  This is one of them.
    
    Would I tell my child if they were adopted?  Yes.
    Would I interfere in someone else's decision if they
    chose not to?  No. It's none of my business.
    
    We seem to have lost sight in this "enlightened" society
    of protectionism and self-righteousness that some things
    are still, in fact, none of our business.
    

>    Such as your bioparents having murdered the rest of your family and you
>    had only just survived.

And what happens when the child finds out, as he's very likely to?

>    I think if we want to live in a free society, we have no 
>    business telling other people how to live their lives and
>    raise their children.

So it's OK to beat your children regularly?

>    Would I tell my child if they were adopted?  Yes.
>    Would I interfere in someone else's decision if they
>    chose not to?  No. It's none of my business.

Who's arguing for interference?

    
    re: .260
    
    While difficult to handle at any time, maturity gives one more
    of an ability to come to an acceptance of something like this
    (with perhaps some counseling) than childhood ever can.
    
    The truth is as dangerous a weapon as a lie can be.  Under
    the right circumstances, truth can actually cause more damage.
    

    
    What happens if the child doesn't find out, as she's very unlikely to?
    
    Why push that on a child?
    
    Have you an agenda here that says that adopted children *must* know
    of their adoption as early as possible?
    
    /a
    

    re: .261
    
    It is illegal to beat your children.  It is not illegal
    to withhold information from them about their ancestry.
    

    I find the sanctimony peddled in Jacoby's column to be misguided,
    unproductive, and unseemly. He took the tone of a Baptist preacher
    to speak ill of a dead, people who'd done nothing to him or anyone
    else, which is a sad reflection on him. He makes an awful lot of
    assumptions, and since the people he's reviling are deceased he doesn't
    have to worry about being contradicted. What a fine moral example
    picking on dead holocaust survivors is!

>    What happens if the child doesn't find out, as she's very unlikely to?

How is a child unlikely to find out she's adopted?
    
>    Have you an agenda here that says that adopted children *must* know
>    of their adoption as early as possible?

I think that in general it's best for the child to know as early as
possible.  There may be exceptions.  I think that it's always best for
the child to find out from his adoptive parents rather than a neighbor.

>    It is illegal to beat your children.  It is not illegal
>    to withhold information from them about their ancestry.

OK, do you think it's OK to cause a child's death because your religion
forbids you from allowing medical treatment?

>          <<< Note 824.257 by GAAS::BRAUCHER "Champagne  Supernova" >>>
> I think you're better off not wasting time on this.

On the contrary, I find it rather inspiring to know what my ancestors went
through to try to establish better lives for themselves. It gives one a
certain sense of place in the grand scheme of things. It also helps answer
the "why?" questions of history... It's too easy to take everything we have
for granted when you have no tie to it.

> I think you're better off not wasting time on this.
    
     So as to more efficiently repeat the mistakes of history, one
    presumes.

    Dear Gerald:
    
    Yes, I have read the Bible.  behold....(echo voice here)
    
Z    Now a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman,
Z    and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he
Z    was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 
Z    But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for
Z    him and coated it with
Z    tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among
Z    the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 
Z    His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. 
Z    Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her
Z    attendants were walking along the river bank. She saw the basket 
Z    among the reeds and sent her slave girl to get it. 
Z    She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for
Z    him. "This is one of the Hebrew babies," she said. 
    
    Mom DID IT!!!!!!  Good for mummie!!!!
    
    -Jack

Jack, why did you stop there?  How about the next three verses?

Z    Then his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and get one of
Z    the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?" 
Z    "Yes, go," she answered. And the girl went and got the baby's mother. 
Z    Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this baby and nurse him for me,
Z    and I will pay you." So the woman took the baby and nursed him. 
Z    When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter and he
Z    became her son. She named him Moses, saying, "I drew him out of the water." 
    
    All this to point out that the result of Moses' years in the palace are
    a result of his natural mother releasing him from his own heritage in
    the name of safety.  
    
    -Jack

But his mother nursed him and let him know that he was a Jew.  Quite a
different situation, don't you think?

    Gosh....that's not the way Cecil B. DeMilles portrayed it!! :-)

    I think Jacoby may have jumped to some unjustified conclusions.
    
    
    

     (Jacoby) > But having survived, having made their way to
     (Jacoby) > freedom, having been spared what 6 million
     (Jacoby) > Jews were not spared, why did they
     (Jacoby) > perpetuate the lie?
    
    Here's where I think he goes a bit astray.  Hindsight is a
    wonderful thing, especially when there's a happy ending.
    
    But at the time, could Albright's parents reasonably assume
    that the "freedom" Jacoby refers to would indeed be permanent
    or even long-lasting?  The world was a very unstable place in
    those days, just having ended the second global war in less
    than half a century and entering an age of nuclear weapons.
    These people had experienced firsthand the oppression, hatred,
    deaths, and other nightmares.
    
    "It can't happen here", we say?  Again, hindsight.  They'd seen
    in happen in their homeland, where they'd probably never imagined
    it could have happened.  Why should they have any confidence in
    the stability of the situation in this foreign land America, not
    exactly known for its tolerance at the time (e.g., treatment of
    minorities, treatment of ethnic groups with whom they were at war,
    etc.).  Who knew what could happen?
    
    Given that they had to flee twice already to save their family,
    and given the global instability and the uncertainties of America,
    it's a tough decision.
    
    Chris

    Ralto hits it on the head.
    
    Why should Albright's parents have felt safe here?  While we weren't
    helping Jewish emigres leave Europe, while we were locking up our own
    citizens of Japanese descent?
    
    Jacoby is a sanctimonious ass.
    
    DougO

	Has anyone (especially Jacoby) considered the possibility
	that Albright's parents converted to Christianity because
	they were convinced of the Truth of its claim that it is,
	in fact, the fulfillment of Judaism's promise to bring
	God's grace to all nations?

/john

It seems to me that if that were the case, they would have told their
daughter of their epiphany.

    Maybe, maybe not. Given the perils of their (former) religion, they may
    not have been overanxious to bring it up, lest the past come back to
    haunt them. If, in fact, John's conjecture is correct, perhaps they
    felt the new understanding to be sufficient and the danger surrounding
    their former religion to be cause to let sleeping dogs lie.

    re: .278
    
    I did.

Ted Koppel is right now discussing this with Benji Netanyahu.

He's asking why two previous Israeli Prime Ministers, who were informed
of Madeleine Albright's parentage, kept quiet about it.

Did they believe, that if it became known, it would put undue pressure
on her as Ambassador to the U.N.?

Will it, now that it is known, make it difficult for her to, for example,
talk with Assad?

Of course, the fact that Albright (now an Episcopalian) and Palestinian
negotiator Hanan Ashrawi (also an Episcopalian) would presumably attend
Sunday Mass together at St. George's Cathedral in Arab East Jerusalem
should they both be there at the same time hasn't been brought up, has it?

No, only her Jewish ancestry seems important.  What a zoo this is.

/john

Is Albright a practicing Episcopalian?

    Nah, I think she got it right on her first try.

One of the newspaper articles referred to her as "a practicing Episcopalian"
and said that she "occasionally" attends church services.

/john