Now that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has written the gripping story of her early years, Prague Winter, a Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948, she still doesn’t know why her parents never revealed that they were Jewish after leaving Czechoslovakia before the Nazi takeover.
Raised a Catholic in London and Denver, becoming an Episcopal when married, Albright was shocked to learn her roots from a reporter in 1997 as she became Bill Clinton’s secretary of state.
Discussing her subsequent research for the book, Albright said the switch wasn’t to hide from the Nazis since the family fled to London before her home fell to Hitler.
So she can only surmise that the family wasn’t very religious. “I guess they chose it because it seemed safer to protect the children,” she said. But Albright feels confident that had the choice come after the Holocaust was known, “they would not have done it.”
