Jacque Parizeau's "Jewish" Offspring

October 30 is the tenth anniversary of the Quebec referendum when the NO side won by a hair, only by roughly 1% of the vote. It is also the anniversary of the address by the premier of Quebec, Jacques Parizeau, to the crowd of disappointed separatists—some crying, some fuming, some numb— with his now famous explanation for that loss. “It's true we have been defeated,” he told them, “but basically by what? By money and the ethnic vote”.

That statement was a shock to many people, but more so to Jews in Canada, because it suggested that Parizeau was targeting the Jews of Montreal who voted almost 100% against separation. The combination of money and ethnicity appeared to be a euphemism for Jews.

A couple of years after the referendum had taken place, I accidentally learned that Parizeau himself had a very close personal connection to Jews. In sum, and to my amazement, it turns out that Parizeau’s two children are Jews, if only in accordance with halachic interpretation.

My story begins one evening when my husband and I were invited to meet Irene, the bride of a widower friend of ours named Peter. Irene is a stunningly attractive woman, a very successful business woman, vibrant and full of energy for a woman who had passed the age of seventy. Or so I learned over cocktails at her charming home in Florida.

In the course of our conversations, having learned that my husband and I were Canadians, Irene began to ask me questions about Jacques Parizeau, about the Parti Quebecois, and about the referendum. She wasn’t merely raising questions, she seemed to know a great deal about matters concerning Quebec. So much so, that I was amazed. How come, I wondered, when most Americans know practically nothing about Canadian politics and can rarely name the Prime Minister of Canada, Irene was cognizant of the premier of a Canadian province and much more. I put that question to Irene. It was then that she told me this incredible and interesting story.

Irene and her cousin Alice were young, Jewish Poles when Hitler invaded Poland. Together they averted the horrors of the concentration camps and survived by passing themselves off as Christian girls. That Irene could successfully so disguise herself was not too surprising, at least on the basis of her blond, blue-eyed features. I presumed that her cousin was similarly endowed. When the war was over the two of them made their way to Paris. Irene had expectations to migrate to the United States because her brother had fortunately been stranded there while working on the 1939 New York World’s Fair and was by then an American. Her cousin at that point not was eligible for sponsorship by her brother.

In any case Alice enrolled in the Sorbonne where she flourished and where she met a Canadian who asked her to marry him. He arranged for her to follow him to Canada, which she did. However, she decided not to marry that original admirer, but instead she met and married Jacques Parizeau, a young, bright student of economics.

Having seen and heard Parizeau on that fateful night when he blamed money and ethnics, I had to ask the obvious question. “Did Parizeau know that Alice was Jewish?” Of course, I was assured. And do their son and daughter know that their mother, who had died in 1990, was a Jew? Again, Irene stated positively that they did, because they were in contact with Irene and her own children, their cousins, who definitely identified themselves as Jews. After all, said Irene, we are Alice’s only remaining family. Alice’s family died in Bergen-Belson.

Does Irene’s account check out with official biographies of Alice Parizeau? Not if you look only at French versions which never mention her Jewish origin. One English encyclopedia includes the information that she was a “Jewish writer”. In fact, Alice Parizeau had a brilliant career as civil servant, journalist, novelist, famous in her own right, and was the recipient of many honours, including the Order of Canada.

But there seems to be some confusion in the French bios about her history through the war years. It is claimed in these that she was interred in Bergen-Belson after the Germans invaded Warsaw and that she survived that internment. The English bio says only that her father, a wealthy industrialist, died in Bergen-Belson. There is no mention here that Alice herself was sent to the concentration camp.

Whatever the truth about her whereabouts in those terrible years, there is no doubt that Alice Poznanska Parizeau was born a Jew. I believe that she abandoned her Jewish roots in the course of her life. I say that because I learned that when she died there was a very prominent and public funeral held in Montreal under the auspices of the Catholic church. That suggests to me that her children’s upbringing was in all likelihood in the Catholic tradition. Nevertheless, Jacques Parizeau had enough exposure through Irene and her family to be sensitive that language that reflects hostility to Jews can do harm, and he therefore should have known how his attack on “money and ethnics” might be seen by Jews in Canada.