My First Guatemalan Connection

Written Wednesday, December 7 and updated today.

Another Monday, another crop of new students, another new teacher for me. This marks teacher number three and it led to an interesting development. About midway through my first class, my teacher, Maria Eugenia de Soto, asks me if I have any friends at home who I am able to practice with. I respond that I do but not really sure who speaks Spanish well but that I can practice with my two friends from Guatemala City. Her eyes went big and then she said in these exact words, “Oh you are Avi, I know who you are!” I am immediately taken aback and wonder what the hell is going on. She then begins to explain to me that she knows who my friend, Lorena, is in Guatemala City because her husband is best friends with Lorena’s uncle and they know the Bianchi family well. I had completely forgotten but the Bianchis had given me the name of what turns out to be her husband to call if I ever needed a new place to stay in Xela. So, I had the telephone number of my new teacher! You really need to tell me if you can think of anything that is a stranger coincidence than this. So I know one family in the entire country and it turns out that my new Spanish teacher has heard about me from them and already knows a bit about me! Seriously, this world is tiny!

Today, Wednesday, I was invited over to my teacher’s house for lunch in order to meet her husband and the rest of the family. We had a nice lunch and afterwards I began talking with Quique, her husband, about his family originally being Jewish. In class, I had already talked about Judaism with my teacher and then she began to tell me this bizarre story about her husband’s ancestry. Anyways, as I would talk to Quique about, his grandfather was Jewish and his great aunts and uncles were killed in the Holocaust. Yet, the family never learned about any of this until well after his death when an Israeli investigator started writing letters to his mother about the ancestry of his family. This investigator named Mordechai Arbell was doing research on Caribbean Jews and had traced back his family to the 1700s and then tracked down his mother to learn more information. Quique also showed me all the letters that were exchanged between his mother and the investigator in the early 90s. He also told me a chilling story that the only way his grandfather found out about the deaths of his siblings in the Holocaust was by receiving a letter with “Salvame”, Save Me, written on the back of the stamp. If all of this is confusing you at all, then rest assured that I am also still a tad confused but the story is incredible.

Now, the family is Christian, partially due to the fact that his grandfather never revealed his true identity to anyone. Apparently, this is the case for many people in Guatemala. A lot of people of Jewish origin came here fleeing Germany and then completely renounced their Judaism and converted to Christianity. But I did learn that there are a few Jews left in Xela who never converted and Quique is going to try to set up a meeting with one of them. He said that none of them practice Judaism anymore but still it would be interesting to hear their stories.

Update from today, December 17: Quique also was still interested to learn more about his ancestry so I contacted the World Jewish Congress, who Mordechai Arbell worked for, to see if he was still alive, etc. Today I received an email back from them saying that he was still alive and remembered the family well and would be happy to help. So I am sure there will be more updates to come. All of this is just incredibly fascinating to me.

Moral of the Story: The world is connected in the most bizarre of ways. And the more people you talk to, the more you learn about these connections. Never, ever assume that your history has not crossed the history of another or that your paths will not cross in the future.