Fears, Tears, Secrets and Successes

My parents were keeping a secret from me. Although I tried, I was not able to discover the answers to questions about my birth, until one day, some sixty years after that event, an email popped into my inbox which explained a great deal.

After reading the email, I decided to conduct genealogical research into my family.

This book is the outcome of that research. It describes the geographic origins of family members – mostly from Lithuania, Prussia, and later, Australia, England and, to my surprise, more ‘exotic’ countries such as Jamaica, Italy, Morocco, and Gibraltar.

This book is not an autobiography, nor a history describing in linear fashion one generation after another.

It is a collage, akin to a series of snapshots taken by a time traveller, of what some of my family members were doing at one time or other. This book is a saga describing the successes, failures, scandals and occasional disasters of the interwoven family from the late 18th century until the first few decades after World War II.

The families that I have written about are mostly Jews who migrated from Eastern Europe to England and Australia.

Did I discover my parents’ secret? I did. Newspapers gave me part of the story; family I had never known but who had contacted me via email told me their version and other relatives told me the rest.