The story Grandma told the Catholic priest about Grandpa’s baptismal certificate was indeed a fairytale! (See the story “In the beginning.”) Grandpa had never been baptized, neither in a now burned down church nor in any other. Instead of being baptized as an infant he had made his Bar Mitzvah at age 13 in May 1907. Grandpa was Jewish! However, we never talked about this. When asked about certain facts in our family history, Grandma would reply, “We don’t want to rehash that again!” We grandchildren could never quite understand how you could “rehash” something that you had never talked about.

No, Grandma never mentioned anything about Grandpa’s religious background. She lived the fairytale of his gentility. My father, John Philip Bloomfield, also went into a state of denial whenever I asked him about being Jewish. He often explained that the “Jews” and their families that he knew from school were people that he didn’t want to be like or be associated with. He found them arrogant and too much interested in money.

I went to a grade school where lots of my classmates were Jewish. During the Advent and Christmas season we learned not only Christmas carols but also Chanukah songs. “Drehdl, Drehdl, Drehdl, I made it out of clay,” is firmly fixed in my memory. Later, I went to school with a Kathy Bloomfield who was Jewish. People kept asking me if we were related or if I were Jewish, too. I had learned to answer that not all Bloomfields are Jewish. Today I know, however, that all of the Bloomfields with German roots – as is true of my family – are or were Jewish.

Dad could behave very unpleasantly when confronted with our Jewish heritage. During his last visit to St. Gallen, Switzerland, before his death, we reserved a table at his favorite Wienerschnitzel-Restaurant. When Irma called to make reservations, she reserved a table for four persons in the name of Bloomfield. “O.K., I guess you can say it that way, too,” was the response of the person at the restaurant. Irma was a bit confused by this response but thought nothing of it.

While eating, we noticed that a family of four sitting at a near-by table kept looking at us. After we had finished our meal, the father came over to our table and introduced himself. He said his name was Rolf Blumenfeld and explained that our reservation had confused the people at the restaurant. They thought that Rolf had called and made a joke by reserving in the name of Bloomfield. They found it odd that he then called (again) and reserved in his own name of Blumenfeld. At first the owners, whom the Blumenfelds knew quite well, only reserved one table. Then they thought that perhaps there was, in fact, a family Bloomfield that also had reserved a table. Both the owners and family Blumenfeld were anxious to see if this indeed were the case. That was why he came over an introduced himself.

During this conversation, I was hoping that Dad, who understood no Swiss German, was not getting a drift of what our conversation was about. We told him later that it was just someone we knew that wanted to say hello. We didn’t say anything about the name Blumenfeld and their being Jewish. It would have ruined the evening!