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(Scroll to the end of the comments for my findings.)
1. No, Reform.
2. No.
3. Yes, all of them were born in the US.
1. I'm not orthodox.
2. My grandparents were not survivors.
3. My grandparents were all born in America, yes (but on one side they were what today would be called 'modern Orthodox').
I believe that many more of the German Jews, who were less often Orthodox, managed to emigrate during the rise of National Socialism in Germany, in contrast to the more Orthodox eastern European Jews who had no chance to escape as their countries were taken over.
Also the waves of immigration to the USA in the decades before the Shoah were, I think, more dominated by German (i.e. less Orthodox) Jews. Some of my great-grandparents belonged to this group.
I am curious to hear the genealogies of the Orthodox OOTOB readers. Are you descended from eastern European Orthodox survivors (who must be relatively few); or are many of you far more Torah-observant than your own grandparents; or are many of you descended from Orthodox immigrants from Israel (or Israel's predecessors)?
Nearly all my Orthodox friends growing up were grandchildren of survivors. I thought grandparents came from the factory with an accent.
1. No
2. No
3. 3 of 4 yes
Am I Orthodox? Yes.
Are my grandparents survivors? My grandparents didn't survive. My parents were survivors.
My father was a lapsed Satmar hassid turned Modern Orthodox in America. My mother had never been religious and stayed secular all her life.
We were allowed to make our own choices. I ended up in Bnei Akiva and stayed frum. My brother can't even remember when it's Yom Kippur.
1. No
2. No
3. 3 grandparents born in the Ukraine, all left between WWI and WWII. 1 born in the US who's parents left Poland (Thank G-d!) before he was born. He voluntarily left his family for 4 years to fight in WWII and later ran guns for the Israeli army.
That's highly admirable!!
1. No
2. No
3. 2 born in USA, 1 born in Russia but moved to Israel, 1 born in Israel
1. Raised Conservative, now Orthodox.
2. No
3. All born and raised in Canada – great grandparents (on 3 sides) came over in 1914 – one side, my maternal grandfather came with great-great grandparents & great-grandmother was an infant came to Montreal in 1896 to escape the pogroms. We know that my maternal grandmother's family were all Orthodox – she was raised Orthodox but dropped it when she married my grandfather – they compromised on Conservative Judaism. Other set also Conservative – all kept kosher and active members in their synagogues but I'm not sure if my paternal great grandparents were Orthodox when they lived in Poland. I'm pretty certain that my buby's mom and dad were Orthodox in Poland, I'm also pretty certain that my zaidy's mom and dad were not – as far as I know, none were Orthodox by the time my dad and his siblings were born.
To answer should be working: As my mom says – my generation (me, and 2 of my 1st cousins) are swinging the pendalum back to being Orthodox, although my aunt (father's sister) decided when she was bat mitzvah (so we're talking about the late '60's or early 70's here), that she was going to keep kosher/shabbat. That's when my dad's family started keeping kosher. So yes, more torah observant than my grandparents but I would say only by a few rungs on the ladder.
My husband would answer like this:
1. Yes
2. 1 zaidy is – other set escaped Germany to England in 1939
3. All grandparents were born/raised/stayed Orthodox and born in Germany or Hungary (the survivor Zaidy), but the buby was born in Dublin.
Are you trying to do your own census work, now that the official one is out?
In any case:
ME
1) Raised Reform, now Orthodox
2) no
3) (sorta n/a, but) No (both paternal), Yes (both maternal)
Mrs. EdibleTorah:
1) Raised Reform, now Orthodox
2) no
3) (sorta n/a, but) Yes/No (Maternal grandfather born in Russia), no (both paternal)
As for what I think, while there is probably a statistical correlation between a family's WWII/Shoah experiences and modern-day levels of observance, I think a more accurate framing of the question might be:
"Are modern adult children of holocaust survivors more likely to adhere to the surviving family member's "type" of Judaism than their peers who were less personally affected by the holocaust?"
Or looking at it from the opposite angle:
"Do modern adult children raised in families where there was no personal connection to the Shoah feel free-er to explore other levels of observance than their peers whose families were more immediately affected by the events of the holocaust?"
Or:
Were Holocaust survivors, whose childhood was spent in Europe, more likely to transmit a strong sense of tradition to their progeny, than those that became Americanized sooner?
Good question, but then you could ask, is it a matter of grandparents having lived childhood *as Orthodox* in Europe that would make 'our generation' more likely to be Orthodox, or is it instead a matter of *having survived the Holocaust* (which does not necessarily correlate to Orthodoxy, as I suggested above with regard to assimilated German Jews)?
In other words, the fact of having survived the Holocaust is not in your latter reformulation significant for your question; instead the issue is whether fewer predecessor generations in the US is a predictor of Orthodoxy in the present (middle-aged, I guess) generation.
Whether the grandchildren of Orthodox Holocaust survivors are more likely to be Orthodox than the grandchildren of Orthodox people who were not directly affected by the Holocaust–that would be a separate but interesting question, i.e. whether the fact of surviving that event intensifies the transmission of Orthodoxy to succeeding generations.
I don't know if I'm saying this clearly. But I am interested in the constellation of Orthodoxy-Shoah survivorship-transmission of a particular tradition.
1. yes
2. yes
3. born in Germany and Russia
I am going to mess with whatever correlation you are expecting to find 🙂
1. Yes, I am Orthodox.
2. Nope. They were all on this side of the ocean, Thank G-d.
3. Yes. I am a sixth generation American on one side, third generation on the other.
My parents gradually shifted from their Reform/Conservative upbringing to their Conservadox position today. I consider myself the first Orthodox Jew in at least eight generations in my family (on one side). But I've got the genealogy to show that they were all Jews who lived as Jews, no conversions along the way in either direction.
On the other side, my great-grandparents who immigrated from Lithuania around 1900 were frum, so it isn't so far back. But there are only two of us in my generation who are observant. The rest have all assimilated to various degrees.
1.yes i am
2. yes all 4 are bh
3.born in Hungary and Romania- all born and raised orthodox
Yes
Yes
Warsaw and Vienna
Yes
No
No (Dads – Born in Salonica) Yes – Mom's (Born in South Carolina)
No
No
3 born in the US (all their families had been here a long time, too). Paternal grandfather born and raised in Berlin, escaped with his mother in the early 1930s after his father was murdered by the SS.
Yes
Two out of four were survivors, as is my mother
N/A, however, neither of my parents were raised Orthodox. They chose to be so as young adults.
Yes.
Some.
Maternal grandmother escaped after Kristallnacht. Maternal grandfather born in Israel fought in WW2. Paternal grandmother born in USA and grandfather in Russia also came before the war and fought during WW2.
1.Not yet
2.Yes, they actually survived because my grandma's brother made them evacuate from Kiev, they were very resistant (little kids, paralyzed mom, etd.) . The next day after they left, all remaining Jews died in Babiy Yar in Kiev.
3.No.
Wow… what a story.
Not currently Orthodox
All of my grandparents were born in the USA, so not survivors.
1. yes
2. no (all american born)
3. N/A (see 1.)
1. Yes
2. No
3. No
I took a class once with a rabbi who talked about his two grandfathers, both concentration camp survivors. One grandfather remained Orthodox after the war and the other "eats ham and cheese sandwiches on Yom Kippur" (although I'm not sure if he meant that literally or figuratively). The rabbi commented that both responses to the horrors of the Shoah raise their own set of questions for those of us who weren't there, questions which he didn't feel qualified to answer and barely qualified to ask. That class has stuck with me for about 12 years now.
Wow. Thanks for sharing that.
1. Yes
2. In a sense, my dad's parents are. They made it to Palestine (following another brother's lead) but their entire families were murdered back home in Lithuania. Grandad was pretty anti-religious, grandmom kept "kosher" (although we didn't eat there growing up) and made holidays a big deal. My dad became religious in his college years at Yale and went to yeshiva in NY and then Israel where he met my mom – a born and bred Orthodox Israeli.
3. So no grandparents born in America – paternal: Lithuania, maternal: Israel.
All 4 of my Grandparents were born in Cleveland and would have considered themselves very reformed Jews, were not spiritual at all and were very American and assimilated. They barely went to shul except for High Holidays(sometimes) and celebrated major holidays with festive meals, lots of family, traditional foods, but no rituals or prayers.
One set of my Great grandparents were Orthodox( Taylor Rd, shul, Kosher, Shomer Shabbat), but as a young girl my Grandma was embarrassed that they had accents and were from another culture. When she had her own home she did not follow these observances.
Hope that helps with your research. Happy to share more.
xo shari
1) no
2) no
3) every grandparents and all but two greatgrandparents, are/were Americans. The European great grandparents were either German or French depending on the year/geo-politics. As of now, the area- Alsace/Lorraine, is French. It does appear, from this poll at least, that those who had family members in the Holocaust are more observant than families rooted in the US for more than a generation or two.
1. no
2. no
3. yes
Interesting!
1)Yes, I'm Orthodox
2)no, my grandparents all left Europe before the war
3)Do you only want to know where they were born if we're not Orthodox? I'll tell you anyway, mine were born in Russia, Hungary/Romania, and Israel.
1. Yes (modern)
2. No
3. 3/4. The fourth was born in Lithuania and immigrated in the 1920s. I believe all of my great grandparents were born in Europe (Lithuania, White Russia, etc.).
1. no
2. none, but all were born in Europe and had previously emigrated to the US or Canada. My maternal great-grandfather (along with the entire town my maternal grandparents came from) was murdered in the Holocaust.
3. no
I really like what Amy Newman Smith shared. I cannot imagine the horrors of the Holocaust, but I can see how a survivor would decide to become very orthodox or very secular or atheist. Both make complete sense to me. I bet that was a really interesting class you took!
1. Yes
2. My paternal grandparents were both survivors. My father was raised modern orthodox. However, all of my grandparents' siblings who survived were not orthodox after the war and none of their children or grandchildren are orthodox. It's not totally clear if they were orthodox before the war. I do know that my grandfather was considered "the frum one" in the family even before the war.
3. My maternal grandfather was born in America and he was not orthodox growing up. He was second generation American. His European grandfather was orthodox. My maternal grandmother was also born in America, but she grew up Catholic and later converted to Judaism. They belonged to an Orthodox shul later in life and after my mother met my father, she and my grandparents became Orthodox.
1. No
2. No
3. Yes and No–my maternal grandmother was born in Russia; my grandfather in Boston. Both grew up in orthodox homes, were married in an orthodox synagogue. They produced one non-practicing and one practicing (Reform) Jew. My paternal grandparents grew up in America and attended Reform synagogues. They produced one practicing (Reform) and one nonpracticing Jew.
1)No
2)Yes
3)No, my maternal grandfather was born in Poland. I think my grandma in Belgium.
This is interesting!
1) No
2) No
3) Yes, all 4 of them.
My mom told me about how she would go to her Grandma's house. She was very frum. Her own mother married a Christian and they moved away and no one knew she was Jewish. It was 30's then, and she said it was better that way. My mom told me that it was best for me not to tell people about my Great Grandma. I was raised with this is ham, it isn't kosher but eat it anyway. We didn't celebrate Christmas, but we also did not do any Jewish holidays either.
And then we have my Dad's side who back in the 1860's left the east Jewish and arrived in Iowa as Christians. They changed their names and I guess started a new life.
I am sure there are lots of other people out there with that kind of family history.
I'm not orthodox.
My grandparents were not survivors.
My grandparents were all born in either Poland or Romania.
Wow! Thanks everyone for your responses! I find everyone's genealogy so interesting. Every single human being is the product of an incredible series of circumstances. I'll be assembling and analyzing the date and will let y'all know what I come up with.
Now that the responses have slowed to a trickle, I've put together some data. At first I suspected that there was a correlation between having Holocaust-survivor grandparents, and being Orthodox today. But the numbers did not bear that out. What I did find suggested that I re-formulate the question: Does having European-born grandparents (irrespective of where they were during the Holocaust) make it more likely that you will be Orthodox? Answer: most definitely – more than twice as likely.
The numbers:
47.5% – Orthodox Jews with European-born grandparents
30% – non-Orthodox Jews with American-born grandparents
15% – Orthodox Jews with American-born grandparents
7.5% – non-Orthodox Jews with European grandparents
So interesting.
This demonstrates so clearly the amazing perseverance of those who came from Europe and did everything they could to pass down the Jewish pride to the future generations.
The stories give me chills when I think about them: They were made fun of for keeping Shabbos, Kosher, covering their hair. They took the little kids to cheder while the older kids & adults weren't interested.
I could go on…
Very interesting!
I'm not Orthodox.
2 grandparents were in America before the war, 2 never got here – my father escaped in time, his parents didn't.
I'd be interested in the ages of your respondents. Nearly everyone in my generation (boomers) had European-born grandparents. And there were lots of Jewish kids (literally half my high school), but NO Orthodox for miles around when I was growing up. It may have more to do with when the grandparents came over.
1. yes.
2. yes.
1. Orthodox
2. No
3. All grandparents from Montreal
My husband's grandfather was a survivor, and wasn't remotely religious.