A Family Mystery Solved — At Last

My father kept secrets and routinely lied about his past and his family. Not that I knew about the lies … growing up, I figured he was smart, cultured, and routinely honest. But as I reached 20, I understood he often cheated on his marriage; just before my mother’s unexpected death in 1981, he’d meant to straighten out and start over with her.

The little brothers in their new British boarding school uniforms.

When I asked him in the 1990s, his 70s, why he kept cheating on the Philadelphia woman who’d been his “girlfriend” for many years, and who clearly loved and pampered him, he answered, “I can’t commit. I have Survivor Syndrome.”

This seemed ridiculous, since he’d always told me not to worry about the Holocaust — “nobody from our family died in it.” Sure, his parents had left Germany when life there became impossible for Jews. And before they moved their own home, they enrolled their two little boys, ages nine and ten, in a boarding school in England.

Bookplate in Dad’s hymnal at Bedales School. “Chimpo” (top left) was his nickname.

At age 50, I stepped into my own magical final marriage, the kind I’d always longed for, with someone (DK) who could bring me to a happy balance of joy, love, and discovery. Understandably, DK was curious about my family, and he began to point out the components that remained…