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Share‘Suddenly Jewish’: a family’s surprising past
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By SCOTT FOX
Irving I. Stone Editorial Intern
On August 4, 2008, Roma Baran’s past irrevocably changed her future.
That day, she received an email from France asking her to identify heirs to a cousin’s estate. Baran, 63, who was born in Poland and immigrated to Canada in 1951, at first thought the email was a variation of the Nigerian Prince scam. But then she realized there were some personal details that few could possibly have known. Oddly, the letter indicated she had immigrated to Canada via Israel, not Poland, and said she was Jewish.
Baffled, she flew from her home in New York City to Montreal to show her uncle the contradictory email (her father had died in 1988, and her mother had late-stage Alzheimer’s at the time). After her uncle read it, out came the truth. Baran, who thought she was descended from Polish Catholics, is actually the daughter of Jewish Holocaust survivors.
Everything changed for Baran immediately upon her uncle’s revelation. “It was suddenly like I had never seen (my uncle) before,” she says. “He looked like a rabbi. He looked so Jewish.”
On Aug. 4, the two-year anniversary of her “being Jewish,” Baran will address the Jewish Genealogy Society of Cleveland about her research into her family’s past and how she’s dealt emotionally with the sudden identity change. For the last two years, Baran, an attorney, music producer and musician, has preoccupied herself with government documents, family photos, and maps to track her lineage. What she has unearthed, with the help of her uncle, other relatives and friends, is astounding.
Roma’s parents, whose names were originally Roza Kluger and Jakub Cytryn, were born in Poland. During World War II, they hid themselves as Catholics Maria and Jan Baran to escape the Nazis. In 1944, they were married under the name of Baran and continued to use this cover after the war because all documents identified them as Baran. While her parents survived the war, the Nazis murdered most of her father’s family and many relatives on her mother’s side.
“I think they had a classically horrific time surviving,” Baran says, explaining her parents’ decision to ignore their Jewish heritage and live as Christians after the Soviets liberated Poland. “They were assimilated Jews. They just thought, ‘Who needs it?’”
Her father was a successful, private civil engineer around the time Baran was born. However, the growing Soviet influence upon Poland forced the nationalization of industries and made her father’s private business illegal. After Jan was implicated in a car accident, the Barans knew they had to leave Poland.
The family tried to immigrate to North America, but strict quotas would have forced them to stay in Poland for years. Instead, they reassumed their Jewish identities and took advantage of the new state of Israel’s Law of Return. They settled in Jaffa and Jerusalem but were unhappy because during the ration-filled, difficult early days of the Jewish state, they could not replicate the upper-middle-class lifestyle they had led in Poland. When Roma was 4, the family left Israel for Canada.
“They decided to revert to Plan A,” says Baran. She believes that her parents decided to reassume their gentile identities in Montreal because they would face fewer restrictions due to anti-Semitism under those names.
Baran has also discovered her ancestors played major roles in Jewish history. Her great-uncle was revered Resistance fighter David Guzik, who helped secure funds for those in the Warsaw ghetto to survive and fight back and who later became director of The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s (JDC) operations in Poland after the war. He died in a plane crash in 1946 while on a relief mission. Her great-great-grandfather was Shlomo Kluger, a famous Polish rabbi and scholar.
Baran has done much of her research with the help of the JDC’s files as well as the digital archives of Polish and German governments. She also traveled to Israel to study the government’s archives there and to visit newly discovered relatives. She hopes to travel to Poland soon to find out more.
Although Baran is saddened by her parents’ choice to hide her Jewish identity from her all these years, it has helped put her difficult childhood in perspective.
“I went through the five stages (of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) of being told you were Jewish,” she explains. “When I found out, I was grateful to spend my whole life not living with this thing. And then there was a sense of loss, but now I feel closer to them. I can imagine my father spending his whole life with the image of my grandma running to the gas chambers. It tortured him, and it tortures me.”
WHAT: “Suddenly Jewish”: Roma Baran presents her hidden heritage
WHO: Jewish Genealogy Society of Cleveland
WHERE: Menorah Park’s Miller Auditorium
WHEN: Wed., Aug. 4, at 7:30
That day, she received an email from France asking her to identify heirs to a cousin’s estate. Baran, 63, who was born in Poland and immigrated to Canada in 1951, at first thought the email was a variation of the Nigerian Prince scam. But then she realized there were some personal details that few could possibly have known. Oddly, the letter indicated she had immigrated to Canada via Israel, not Poland, and said she was Jewish.
Baffled, she flew from her home in New York City to Montreal to show her uncle the contradictory email (her father had died in 1988, and her mother had late-stage Alzheimer’s at the time). After her uncle read it, out came the truth. Baran, who thought she was descended from Polish Catholics, is actually the daughter of Jewish Holocaust survivors.
Everything changed for Baran immediately upon her uncle’s revelation. “It was suddenly like I had never seen (my uncle) before,” she says. “He looked like a rabbi. He looked so Jewish.”
On Aug. 4, the two-year anniversary of her “being Jewish,” Baran will address the Jewish Genealogy Society of Cleveland about her research into her family’s past and how she’s dealt emotionally with the sudden identity change. For the last two years, Baran, an attorney, music producer and musician, has preoccupied herself with government documents, family photos, and maps to track her lineage. What she has unearthed, with the help of her uncle, other relatives and friends, is astounding.
Roma’s parents, whose names were originally Roza Kluger and Jakub Cytryn, were born in Poland. During World War II, they hid themselves as Catholics Maria and Jan Baran to escape the Nazis. In 1944, they were married under the name of Baran and continued to use this cover after the war because all documents identified them as Baran. While her parents survived the war, the Nazis murdered most of her father’s family and many relatives on her mother’s side.
“I think they had a classically horrific time surviving,” Baran says, explaining her parents’ decision to ignore their Jewish heritage and live as Christians after the Soviets liberated Poland. “They were assimilated Jews. They just thought, ‘Who needs it?’”
Her father was a successful, private civil engineer around the time Baran was born. However, the growing Soviet influence upon Poland forced the nationalization of industries and made her father’s private business illegal. After Jan was implicated in a car accident, the Barans knew they had to leave Poland.
The family tried to immigrate to North America, but strict quotas would have forced them to stay in Poland for years. Instead, they reassumed their Jewish identities and took advantage of the new state of Israel’s Law of Return. They settled in Jaffa and Jerusalem but were unhappy because during the ration-filled, difficult early days of the Jewish state, they could not replicate the upper-middle-class lifestyle they had led in Poland. When Roma was 4, the family left Israel for Canada.
“They decided to revert to Plan A,” says Baran. She believes that her parents decided to reassume their gentile identities in Montreal because they would face fewer restrictions due to anti-Semitism under those names.
Baran has also discovered her ancestors played major roles in Jewish history. Her great-uncle was revered Resistance fighter David Guzik, who helped secure funds for those in the Warsaw ghetto to survive and fight back and who later became director of The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s (JDC) operations in Poland after the war. He died in a plane crash in 1946 while on a relief mission. Her great-great-grandfather was Shlomo Kluger, a famous Polish rabbi and scholar.
Baran has done much of her research with the help of the JDC’s files as well as the digital archives of Polish and German governments. She also traveled to Israel to study the government’s archives there and to visit newly discovered relatives. She hopes to travel to Poland soon to find out more.
Although Baran is saddened by her parents’ choice to hide her Jewish identity from her all these years, it has helped put her difficult childhood in perspective.
“I went through the five stages (of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) of being told you were Jewish,” she explains. “When I found out, I was grateful to spend my whole life not living with this thing. And then there was a sense of loss, but now I feel closer to them. I can imagine my father spending his whole life with the image of my grandma running to the gas chambers. It tortured him, and it tortures me.”
WHAT: “Suddenly Jewish”: Roma Baran presents her hidden heritage
WHO: Jewish Genealogy Society of Cleveland
WHERE: Menorah Park’s Miller Auditorium
WHEN: Wed., Aug. 4, at 7:30
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