Ancestral Family Secrets 

by Ronit Widmann-Levy (Sunnyvale, California)

In the summer of 2013, my Swiss uncle, Albrecht, invited the extended German side of my family to visit Rostock for a family reunion and to hear from a historian who was commissioned by the city of Rostock to write the story of a prototypical Jewish family between the seventeen hundreds till today. 

Curious to learn about my family’s origins, and interested in filling in the many blanks, I accepted the invitation and flew to Germany to partake in this reunion, bringing my thirteen-year-old son and three-year-old daughter with me.

Holding my sleeping daughter in my arms, I stood at the arrivals terminal scanning the crowd for a driver who was supposed to pick us up. My eyes locked briefly with those of a short, blond-haired, middle-aged man who seemed to have recognized me upon sight and appeared, oddly, somewhat startled. Tired from our 12-hour flight, I didn’t think much of it. The man began walking directly towards me.  

“Frau Widmann-Levy”? 

“Yes, that’s me”  

“I’m Frank, your guide and the historian who wrote the thesis about your family, the Josephys” 

”I’m honored. Thank you for coming to meet us here.  I was expecting a driver,” I replied.

“I can drive too,” he quickly responded, and picked up my luggage and walked us to his car, an old, rickety Volkswagen station-wagon.

Later that day, Frank sat me down in the lobby of the hotel and showed me old photos of the Josephy family, including one of a young woman named Carla. Looking at the face gazing back at me from the faded old photo was like looking in a mirror. I felt an immediate connection to Carla.  And so began my acquaintance with a woman who had influenced my life in many profound ways long before I became familiar with her life story.  

In the following days, Frank walked us through the streets of Rostock and shared in great detail his research of our family’s history and origins. Walking the cobblestone streets of Rostock hand-in-hand with my two children that summer, the year of my son’s Bar Mitzvah, was surreal. As we were walking, Frank pointed at the still-standing homes of our ancestors. The well-restored or preserved original buildings and apartments were all inhabited by tenants who had taken over our family’s homes after they were forced out.

Frank unraveled the Josephys family’s history for us—where they had lived, whom they had married, where they had worked, and gone to school. At a certain moment, he pointed at a specific building with windows facing the street where we were standing. Leaning out the windows were tenants currently living in those apartments. Upon seeing our group, they all withdrew, clearly dismayed to see us and our animated guide. 

On the front lawn, children at play were pulled back into apartments in a flash while windows and shutters were slammed shut. Frank, who was explaining about the past while pointing at their building, was not whispering, to say the least. He shared his findings enthusiastically while sweating through his white linen shirt and smoking like a chimney.

Carla’s complete story — and the reality of how I ended up having both Christian and Jewish branches in my family — was revealed to me on my second day at Rostock when Frank, recounting more of our family’s history, mentioned an aunt, (tante) Carla Josephy, a famed Jewish opera singer in Germany before WWII. I had a  surreal image of the words coming out of his mouth and enveloping me, wrapping me in a blanket made of the sum total of my family’s journey. That was the summer of 2013.  

As our little group traversed the streets of Rostock, my great-uncle marched in front. He had been the child in the story and was now eighty years old. I couldn’t help but think again the one thought that had always popped into my head since I was a school-age girl living in Israel. Would I have survived? Would my blue eyes and blond hair have saved me? 

Carla’s story, the alias she created, saving her children by giving them to the nuns, marrying her gay colleague and traveling to Havana Cuba, made me rethink my long time assumption that my seemingly Aryan features would have been enough for me to survive the war. I understood that it was not Carla‘s Aryan features that saved her but rather her creativity and resilience. I stopped putting so much weight on external features as equating a better chance of survival. From that point on, surviving meant something completely different to me. It meant not just coming out of the experience with a pulse, alive, but rather having your soul intact and your spirit in a reparable condition. 

I knew that many people had physically survived the war. They were mere shadows of who they had been six years earlier, and they walked the earth for the remainder of their days agonizing over what they had lost, unable to move forward. After hearing Carla’s story, I understood that living meant more than coming out of the war alive. It meant not just presenting to the world the shell of who you were but truly engaging with life.

I looked at my uncle and saw the boy within, with a one-way ticket on the train to Basel the day his mother put him in charge and responsible for his five-year-old sister. Relinquishing her children may seem like an extreme and heartless choice on Carla’s part, but in fact, this was an act of tremendous bravery and infinite love. Both children would be fostered and saved by a Swiss Catholic family, and  Albrecht and Dorotea would grow up and dedicate their lives to leaving the world a better place than they found it.

My uncle’s wife, children, and grandchildren enveloped him with love and affection,  accompanying him on this self-afflicted journey that he was so determined to go through. 

The next few days would change my life forever. Every part of my being realized that in the face of an existential threat, it is the silence of our neighbors and friends that is deafening. It’s a silence that contains many shades of betrayal. 

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Ronit Widmann-Levy, a luminary in the arts world, boasts a multifaceted career spanning curation, fundraising, branding, presenting, and strategic planning. Her remarkable expertise encompasses public arts administration and cultivating global partnerships. Renowned for her captivating performances, Ronit has sung in Carnegie Hall under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas and recorded for PBS Great Performances. Notably, she serves as the Director of the Israel Museum Bay Area Council, a role that reflects her commitment to promoting art and cultural exchange. Passionate about the synergy of arts and technology, Ronit co-chairs and produces TEDxPaloAlto.  She champions art’s transformative role in fostering inclusivity, celebrating diversity, and instigating impactful change. Her career is marked by unwavering dedication to innovation, social responsibility, and exceptional leadership that fuels brand longevity and sustainability in the arts sphere. Ronit resides in Sunnyvale California.