They Forgot to Tell Me I Was Jewish

Memories of a Child Who Survived the Holocaust

De: Les Horan, Abigail Lumsden

Narrado por: Les Horan, Abigail Lumsden

They Forgot to Tell Me I Was Jewish is the story of acclaimed jazz pianist Les Horan, born 1941 in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.

At age three, he knows he's a boy, despite the fact that his parents dress him as a girl to avoid circumcision checks. At five, he and a gentile friend decide to become airplane pilots when they grow up so they can bomb all the Jews. At eight, now on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, he finds out in a lunchroom brawl at his Yeshiva that he, himself, is Jewish. Of all the changes he's been through - names, country, language - this is the hardest to come to terms with. It will take most of his life.

They Forgot to Tell Me I Was Jewish begins with a montage of Les' early, innocent, fun-filled memories: When his family is hiding in an underground bunker, he thinks they're camping in the woods. When Hungarian soldiers, under the impression that he's a girl, take him on a picnic, he has no idea of the danger he's in. We see Les in his Yeshiva as a confused, angry teenager, who secretly applies for, and is admitted to, the secular High School of Music and Art.

At 24, watching Shop on Main Street, Les finally begins to appreciate what his parents and grandparents - whom he's ashamed of in his adopted country - went through to keep them all alive.

Les downplays his Holocaust past until, in 1998, he is interviewed by Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation. When his children see the video tape, they urge him to go back to Slovakia and personally thank the Kustras, the family that sheltered him and his mother. There is a joyful reunion.

In 2015, he again travels to Slovakia for Yad V'shem's Righteous Among the Nations Award ceremony honoring the Kustra family. They Forgot to Tell Me I Was Jewish, sprinkled with photographs throughout, follows Les Horan's transformation from self-hating Jew, to bewildered father who doesn't understand why his children choose to become ultra-Orthodox, to loving grandfather of 10 Hasidic grandchildren. It would appeal to listeners, both young and mature, who want to learn about the effects of the Holocaust, postwar anti-Semitism - and the push-pull angst about being Jewish - bound in a uniquely personal memoir.

©2018 Les Horan (P)2020 Les Horan

warming my heart

Fantastic look inside the mind of a child trying to navigate his circumstances during the Holocaust, inside his family while growing up ~ and finally ~ as he grapples with his Jewish identity and learns to respect his observant children and grandchildren. There is truly no other book like this one!