At 65 years old, Robert Powell celebrated his bar mitzvah at a Chabad in Wisconsin. After his mother escaped the Holocaust, she decided to hide her Jewish heritage from her children entirely. Only recently did Powell discover his true roots.
He explained what the momentous occasion meant for him: “For me, I carry my life on my back—my bar mitzvah is an arrival, an affirmation, a coming home. My bar mitzvah firmly links the past with the present. If we don’t understand where we’ve come from, how do we understand who we really are?"
Powell is not the only one whose Jewish descent was hidden from him for most of his life. During every period of Jewish persecution, there were many families that decided to hide their identities to protect and save their children.
After the Holocaust, many Jews in Poland hid their Jewishness because of the suffering they had endured under Nazism, which was followed by waves of antisemitic oppression under Communism.
In addition, during the German occupation, thousands of Jewish children were put up for adoption with Polish neighbors or institutions and grew up ostensibly as Polish Catholics.
Such stories however, date back even further than the second world war. Many Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition over 500 years ago renounced their identities too.
Throughout the Spanish- and Portuguese- speaking world, there are untold numbers of Bnei Anusim. Historians refer to them by the derogatory term “Marranos,” as their Iberian Jewish ancestors were compelled to convert to Catholicism in the 14th and 15th centuries.
There are other communities as well, ranging from the 7,000 Bnei Menashe of northeastern India, who are descended from a lost tribe of Israel, to the 15,000 Subbotnik Jews of the former Soviet Union, who are descendants of Russian peasants who converted to Judaism two centuries ago.
Powell then, is not alone in his experience. Many organizations, databases, rabbis, and synagogues are geared towards helping people like Powell "come home" to their Judaism.
“My ancestors overcame many obstacles—oppression, fear, tyranny,” Powell proudly said. “But they persevered, and they did it with dignity, bravery and the determination to keep alive our Jewish heritage. Our legacy. Our Jewishness. It only remains for me to honor them by living fully and openly as the Jews we were and always will be.”
Michael Freund contributed to this report.