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What would you do if you found out – at age 34 – that your mother was artificially inseminated, you’re half Ashkenazi Jewish, and you have at least six other siblings?
By BERNIE BELLAN Artificial insemination has been around for a very long time. “The first documented application of artificial insemination in humans was done in London in the 1770s by John Hunter,” says an article from The National Library of Medicine. Sperm banks were first developed in the 1950s.
In the 1970s the University of Manitoba Medical School began an artificial insemination program under the direction of Dr. Jeremy Kredentser.
According to an article in the November 3, 1985 Winnipeg Free Press, “about 100 to 120 couples a year” were being seen in that program, said Dr. Kredentser at the time.
The article went on to explain that “Donor sperm is collected from carefully screened donors such as doctors, medical students and others associated with the U of M.”
Under the rules of that program donors were allowed to submit a maximum of 25 sperm donations – which meant any children who were born as a result of artificial insemination from the program could have quite a few half brothers or sisters.
That program actually was the forerunner of what is now the Heartland Fertility Clinic, where Dr. Kredentser practised and was a director for many years.
But, just as is the case with many individuals who have found out later in life that they were adopted, many individuals who have been fathered by anonymous sperm donors want to know about their actual biological ancestry.
In the past few years, as a result of increasingly sophisticated DNA testing, many of those individuals have been able to discover, not only a great deal of information about their ancestry, but very specific information about relatives about whom they would likely never have known.
Such was the case with one young Winnipeg man, who will be referred to in this article simply as T, not because he insisted on anonymity, but because we wanted to take steps to protect the identities of his siblings and, more importantly, his biological father, whose identity was discovered by T through a process of sleuthing. To this point, T notes, despite his fairly recent attempt to reach out to his biological father, he has not received a response.
We had been made aware of T’s story by a mutual acquaintance. When I heard though that T had discovered he was “49% Ashkenazi Jewish” I thought that his story of discovery might make for a fascinating read – if he was willing to share it.
Not only was T extremely forthcoming in telling me his story, he was eager to have it written about. HIs hope is that his biological father might also become aware of this story and come to the realization that T’s motivation in attempting to make contact with him – as it often is with children who have discovered they have been adopted, is not at all malicious; it is a mixture of curiosity, also a desire to learn whether there are any genetic traits about which they should become aware.
A’s story begins in December 2021. What began largely as a lark turned into something quite unexpected. T explains that he and his wife wanted to take DNA tests – not for any particular reason, simply out of curiosity.
T and his wife decided to register on a site called “23andMe,” where all you have to do is send in a DNA sample (from your saliva) for testing. If someone else who has also registered on the site – and has allowed their identity to be known to individuals who turn out to be related, you will receive a notification that you have matches. (The other very popular site that offers a similar service is Ancestry.com.)
In most cases, as T noted, the results will turn up a slew of distant cousins – possibly some closer cousins, but not much more than that.
However, the story took a very unexpected twist – even before T and his wife got their results back. It was late 2021and T’s mother was over to T’s and his soon-to-be wife’s house. T says he told his mother about the DNA test that he and his wife had taken and explained to her – in a joking way he thought, that “we were gonna make sure we’re not related.”
But, his mother’s reaction took him by surprise, he says. She “showed that she was a little bit agitated.”
T says he wondered whether he was “like, oh God, adopted?”
He continues: “…and then she told me, she divulged that information, she said she was going to tell me sooner than later, but on account of this, you know, the advent of all these DNA kits and stuff, she realized that the writing was on the wall, but you know, when they did it, and …the origins of this, um, fertility company, which was in the mid 80s.” (By “fertility company,” T is referring to the program that had been run at the University of Manitoba Medical School.)
I said to T: “Because in anticipation of what you’re gonna find out, she’s gonna have to break the news after all these years (that she had been artificially inseminated) . Okay. so then how much longer did you have to wait for the results?”
I asked T why his mother had been artificially inseminated? It turns our that her husband – the man T had always believed was his biological father, had had a vasectomy prior to T’s mother marrying him – and T’s mother desperately wanted to have a child.
T explains that the results came back quite quickly – only a month later.
As T describes it, “I’m dying to find out. We’ve rolled the dice here. So we’re waiting to hear what’s going to happen. I don’t know. I had no idea about the Ashkenazi Jewish thing. Back then, I had no idea about any siblings.”
Something else should be explained at this point. T’s mother was married fairly late in life – to a man who had been previously married, and who had two sons from his previous marriage – who are 20 years older than T. As T says, “I was pretty excited because I’ve always wanted, you know, a brother or sister, but my own age.” And here was his chance to discover that he did have another sibling, maybe more than one – much closer to his own age.
The results of A’s DNA test came back from 23andMe with the revelation that T was 49% Ashkenazi Jewish. Further, as T says, “only one sibling is showing, and then like a million cousins. Like, second, second, third, distant cousins at that point.” (It should be explained that not only do 23andMe and Ancestry.com provide names of relatives whose genetic profiles match – at least somewhat, they provide pictures as well.)
But, as T says, the results showed “nobody who looks like me, no names I recognize. And a lot of the distant cousins are presumably on the paternal side. So it’s like a lot of Jewish names in New York.”
Yet, there was a sibling – a half sister (whose name will not be revealed), but who didn’t live in Winnipeg any more. Still, T reached out to her and the half sister revealed to T that she had known since she was 15 that she was the product of artificial insemination, but nothing more than that.
Another year rolls by – it’s now 2022 and suddenly T and his half sister are informed by 23andMe that they have another half brother – who lives in Winnipeg, and who’s a year younger than T.
T and his new half brother connect. As T says, “he’s like 10 minutes away from me…but the weirdest part about this is like, I can’t find any connection with him in Winnipeg, which is weird because we’re lifelong Winnipeggers and it takes, you know how it is, it takes no time at all to find a Winnipeg connection, right?”
But A’s new half brother also tells T and the half sister that he had only recently tried 23andMe because he had been on Ancestry.com – but it hadn’t yielded any close matches. However, in 2023, after the new half brother is introduced to T and the other half sister, the new half brother receives a notification from Ancestry.com that they’ve reviewed his DNA results again – and this time they’ve found three new half sisters – all of whom live in Winnipeg!
It turns out that each of those half sisters had been aware they were the products of artificial insemination. There turns out to be one more half brother – who doesn’t live in Winnipeg – bringing the total of known siblings to seven. As T notes, however, there could be as many as 18 more siblings!
Okay, so now we know T has six siblings, and they’re all 49% Ashkenazi Jewish. How does that lead to T’s discovering who the sperm donor was?
At this point I have to be very careful not to get too specific, out of concern that identities that should remain anonymous are not divulged.
It turns out though that someone else had been on Ancestry.com – but later it emerges that the reason this person would have been on Ancestry.com was that she was a Holocaust survivor, likely looking for long lost relatives who had been separated by World War II.
This woman had reached out to one of T’s half sisters and asks her whether she is a cousin. The half sister responds: “No, I’m your granddaughter.”
Apparently, according to T, finding that out likely “spooked” the Holocaust survivor, and she “ghosted” T’s half sister. T says her “profile disappeared and has not been heard from since.”
(By way of explanation, when Ancestry.com reports a match, it indicates the level of closeness between two individuals. e.g., a parent or a child will be identified as a parent or child; a grandparent, grandchild or sibling will be identified as “immediate family. T’s half sister discovered that she had a paternal grandmother. She didn’t know that this woman was a Holocaust survivor immediately.)
T’s half brother – who had been on both Ancestry.com and 23andMe, did inform T of their paternal grandmother’s name – in 2023. It turns out that the other three half sisters, along with A’s half brother – all of whom had been on Ancestry.com, and who had found each other on Ancestry.com, had also done some digging on their own.
One of the half sisters was told about a book titled “Stories of Winnipeg Holocaust Survivors,” which was compiled by Belle Jarniewski, currently Executive Director of the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada. (At the time Belle was known as Belle Milo, which is the name given on the cover of the book.)
There is a chapter in the book devoted to the story of the Holocaust survivor who had reached out to the half sister. In that chapter the names of the woman’s children are given. It didn’t take too long for that half sister to deduce which of the women’s children would have been the sperm donor. She shared that information with her two other half sisters in Winnipeg – but none of them made any attempt to contact their biological father.
(By the way, once T revealed his paternal grandmother’s name to me I did find some references to her in the Jewish Post archives that are accessible on jewishpostandnews.ca. One of those references included the names of her children. It turns out that I knew one of those children from chlldhood.)
Once T was informed by his half brother in Winnipeg of their paternal grandmother’s name, but without having learned that the three Winnipeg half sisters actually knew who their biological father was, he began his own search online for information about the Holocaust survivor who was their paternal grandmother.
He didn’t turn anything up until he, too, discovered the same book, “Stories of Winnipeg Holocaust Survivors, ” that had been key to one of his half sisters discovering who their biological father was.
As T says, “I found the book online, read it, and I found the (children’s) names. And then I looked up her (son’s name). And after a half an hour I found, like, the timeline for (son’s name).” and the timeline for this particular individual and what he would have been doing in 1985, which is when T’s mother was artificially inseminated, fit perfectly.
T says that once “I figured out who the guy was, I found a picture, and I’m like, okay, this man looks like me, this is the guy, and then once I started connecting with the other sisters, they all confirmed that, in fact, was the guy.”
But, before attempting to reach out to their biological father, T wanted to make sure that each of the other siblings was on board with what he was attempting to do. As he says, “At this point, before I reached out to the donor, I wanted to make sure that I had consent from everybody else.”
A received everyone’s permission and T proceeded to write a hand-written letter to their biological father, which he sent in March 2024. As A says, “I get the guy’s address. And I decide that I, like, I really want to reach out I’m just dying of curiosity. Nobody else has (reached out) yet. I don’t understand why. And I’m like, okay. So I write him a handwritten letter that basically just introduced like who I am and that we understand that we might have a connection to him We’re grateful for him.
“And if he has any interest in contacting us, here’s how we can be contacted But otherwise, we’re not going to bug you. The ball’s in your court. We have no interest in ransacking your life because at the end of the day, we’re all grateful for, you know, what you’ve done for us, and we all have great lives, and thank you, that kind of thing.” To this point T says he has not received any response.
Something I wondered about – and what I’m sure you’re also wondering about, is the revelation that the genetic make-up that T and each of his siblings is carrying is 49% Ashkenazi Jewish. I wondered whether finding that out has made any difference in the lives of T and his siblings?
In fact, the answer – if T and his siblings are truthful, is that it hasn’t made any difference at all. T says he “grew up in the United Church,” but doesn’t consider himself religious. Perhaps somewhat ironically, T says that “half of my friends are Ashkenazi Jewish guys.” In fact, he’s very familiar with Jewish culture and has been to the Shaarey Zedek Synagogue many times. (I should note that the person who put me on to this story is Jewish and has known T for years.)
There are many other twists to T’s story – about how closely connected he is to so many aspects of Jewish life, but again – for the sake of confidentiality I won’t reveal them here. Suffice to say that T could very easily immerse himself into the Jewish community here without missing a beat – if that’s what he chose to do.
As for his siblings – well, that’s a different story. T says that finding out they had Jewish genes seemed more like a matter of curiosity to them than anything particularly important to their sense of identity. One should bear in mind that many of the individuals who go on to sites like Ancestry.com or 23andMe find out very surprising things about their ancestry, but it hardly changes their own concept of who they are.
T, though, looks upon the revelation that he’s half Jewish with a certain sense of bemusement, but also an explanation for some aspects of his own identity. As he says, “I think it makes me more interesting, and honestly, when I look in the mirror, and what I’m seeing is like, my physiology is turning into a frumpy old Jewish man. My dad (or at least the man T thought was his dad and who raised him) is, like, 6’2. My brothers are 6’1; they’re tall.”
T says though that he has “freckles and a skinny Adam’s apple. And I’m, like: ‘Why do I look like any of these (Jewish) guys (who are his friends)? So, anyway, it just, it clicks, it makes a lot more sense for me. It really helps, it helps me kind of make a little… a piece of the whole situation.”
But there are other aspects to T’s past that are more troublesome. He’s had some issues that might have been inherited – as does one of his brothers. T says that “I’d love to just talk to this guy for an hour. See what he’s like, you know, see if he’s musical,” for instance.
I say to T: “I’m not interested in outing him. You know, if he wants to remain anonymous, let him remain anonymous, but maybe he’ll have second thoughts about it. If someone happens to contact him and says, ‘Hey, uh, we read this story or we heard about a story – and it might be you they’re talking about in the story’.” After all, there must have a fair number of men who donated their sperm in that University of Manitoba Medical School program back in the 1970s and 80s. Wouldn’t some of them be curious to learn what the results were from their donations?
Of course, there have been stories about children of women who were artificially inseminated who have gone after the sperm donors. As T concedes, “I kind of assume his reticence kind of lies in that very kind of thing. There’s a whole bunch of Netflix specials that have come out, and there’s some movies over the last ten years, and I’ve watched all of them.”
Still, despite the assurances that men like T’s biological father who donated their sperm may have received that their identities would remain anonymous, advances in genetic testing have shown that those assurances have been made moot. If it were up to me I’d want to own up to my having provided the sperm that ended up helping to produce a child. Otherwise, now that T’s father has received the information that his identity is known to at least seven of the children that he was responsible for fathering, he’s going to have to live with the possibility that one of those children may show up on his doorstep one day.
One final note about this story: T tells me that he and his six known siblings are all on good terms and communicate with one another. In fact, they all had a get-together this past summer where many of them met each other for the first time. I’d have liked to refer to is a reunion – but that would be a misnomer. How about calling it a “kum zeets,” which is the Israeli term for a get together?
Features
Expelled Oberlin Chabad rabbi says he ‘made a mistake’ with explicit social media chats
A police report obtained by the Forward sheds light on the removal of a Chabad rabbi from the campus of Oberlin College last week, after the school administration became aware of a police report that alleged he engaged in sexually explicit conversations online concerning minors.
Rabbi Scott (Shlomo) Elkan, former co-director of Oberlin Chabad, allegedly received sexually explicit texts, photos and videos through the messaging app Kik concerning three young people, ages 7, 12 and 13, according to the report.
In December 2025 messages to an adult on the platform, Elkan allegedly responded to photos of someone giving a child a bath. The person he chatted with alluded to touching the child’s genitals and said he had been aroused when the child was sitting on his lap, the report stated.
According to the Oberlin Police Department report, Elkin shared photos of girls as part of the chat. The department closed the case after a 20-day investigation, with no charges filed.
In a phone interview with the Forward, Elkan said he regretted his participation in the chat, but that his messages were not based on real events. He did not address the photos.
“To be clear, what had happened was an online chat with an anonymous adult on purely fictional, you know, fantastical things that’s not rooted in any kind of reality whatsoever,” Elkan said. “And I entered that, and I should not have, and I take responsibility for that.”
Elkan added that he has been engaged in “professional care and spiritual counseling to deal with all of the stresses and all of the factors that led me to engaging in an unhealthy behavior.”
According to the report, in an interview with police, Elkan confirmed the Kik account belonged to him and said the chats were “escapism” from the stress of his everyday life. He denied ever viewing or possessing child pornography.
Elkan told the Forward that “oftentimes people think of rabbis as godlike and infallible,” and he “made a mistake in one of the weakest few moments of my life.”
“There was no crime. Nothing illegal. Poor judgment, yes,” Elkan said. “And there’s not a victim. The victims here are the Jewish community and my family.”
The fallout on campus
Oberlin president Carmen Twillie Ambar wrote an email last week alerting students and staff of the news that Elkan, who had worked at Oberlin Chabad since 2010, had been banned from campus — without sharing specifics.
“In the police report, Elkan admits to egregious actions in his personal life — including engaging in online sexual conversations concerning children and objectionable behavior,” Ambar wrote. “This behavior violates Oberlin’s values, shocks the conscience, and makes it clear that we cannot allow him continued access to our campus and community.”
Elkan criticized how Oberlin handled the situation, saying the email that the college sent to the community about his departure was vague and allowed speculation to spread. He also said the email was made public during the meeting in which campus officials informed him that he had been banned.
“That’s where my hurt, and I think so much of the hurt of the community lies. Because every time we stuck our neck out for the college, and every time we work for the best interest of them and the community, what feels like the very first opportunity they had to show us that same support, they chose a very different route,” Elkan said. “So I take responsibility for my actions, and I hold the college incredibly responsible for how this has played out.”
Andrea Simakis, a spokesperson for Oberlin, said in a statement that representatives of the college met with Elkan via Zoom just prior to releasing the campus message “to let him know we were going to send it, why we were sending it, and that we were banning him from campus.”
Simakis added that the language in the campuswide email “reflects the information in the police report, which we obtained through a public records request.”
Along with serving as a Chabad rabbi, Elkan also certified Oberlin’s kosher kitchen and sometimes led Passover services and other religious celebrations on campus, according to Ambar’s email.
Chabad rabbis are not typically employed by universities, instead operating independently through the Chabad umbrella, with Chabad functioning as recognized campus religious organizations.
Elkan resigned from his position with Chabad last Friday, a Chabad spokesperson told the Forward. Chabad did not provide further comment.
In the email to the community, Ambar said Oberlin had not previously received reports concerning Elkan’s behavior and was now asking a third party to investigate whether members of the campus community had been affected.
Ambar added that the news would be especially difficult for “those who sought spiritual leadership and guidance from Elkan,” but “the seriousness of this matter requires clear and swift action.” Rabbi Allison Vann, who had led High Holy Day services on campus with Cleveland Hillel, will work with students for the remainder of the semester.
The post Expelled Oberlin Chabad rabbi says he ‘made a mistake’ with explicit social media chats appeared first on The Forward.
This story originally said that Elkan posted images of children in a bath. He was a recipient.Features
A Christian Debate About Israel
By HENRY SREBRNIKThe Western neo-Marxist attacks on Israel, in league with Islamism, are of course a grave political and military danger, but their ideology can be rebuked by anyone with the slightest knowledge of actual history. “Jesus was a Palestinian”? “Israelis are white settler-colonialists”? These are almost jokes.
Such people don’t even know that the Zionist movement in fact rejected what was called “territorialism,” the project to build a Jewish homeland anywhere – in Argentina, western Australia, and elsewhere in the world. This included the so-called “Uganda Proposal” in east Africa, which was voted down at a World Zionist Congress in 1905.
Another territorialist plan, pushed by Communists in the 1920s, was for a Jewish Autonomous Region in the Soviet Union known as Birobidzhan. This came to fruition but ended up a complete failure. Jews were not interested in places outside their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel.
Antisemitic rhetoric today appears on the progressive left in rhetoric that casts Zionism as malevolence, but also on the populist right in conspiratorial language about hidden power and divided loyalty, some harkening back to religious language we though was long gone.
The left’s arguments are shallow and, while extremely concerning, are fallacious. But the theological debates on the right are more alarming, because they will affect America’s relations with Israel. They go right back to genuine issues regarding the place of Jews and Christians in their respective religious worldviews and interactions. They are at the heart of “everything” in western history.
So-called Christian Zionism, found particularly in Protestant theology, sees the creation of Israel as part of God’s plan to hasten the coming of Jesus as the messiah at end times. Obviously, this is not congruent with our understanding of the messianic age, but politically it has been largely beneficial to Israel.
There is a deeper theological divide separating Catholics and evangelicals, the latter among the Jewish state’s most fervent supporters. Evangelicals tend to see Israel as the fulfillment of God’s pledge to the Jewish people, and they view that fulfillment as intertwined with their own religious identity. In contrast, most Catholics do not believe they have a theological obligation to support Israel.
Classical Christian antisemitism (really, anti-Judaism) is rooted in two propositions: that Jews bear the guilt for Christ’s death, and that when the majority of Jews rejected Jesus (who was a Jew, as were all his early apostles), God replaced the covenant with the children of Abraham with a new covenant, with Christians. This idea of a new bond that excludes the Jewish people is called “supersessionism” or “replacement theology.”
It consists of the claim that the Church has replaced the Jewish people as God’s covenanted, or chosen, people. According to supersessionism, Jesus inaugurated a new conception of “Israel,” one open to all, Gentile as well as Jew, because it was predicated on faith rather than the rejected markers of biological descent and observance of the law.
The Roman Catholic Church modified this stance with its historic document Nostra Aetate, promulgated in 1965 at the Second Vatican Council. It expressed some recognition of the Jews’ special relationship with the God of Israel. Though the statement recounts the fact that most Jews did not “accept the Gospel,” it also declares that “God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their fathers.”
This has been further elaborated. Pope John Paul II said that the Catholic Church has “a relationship” with Judaism “which we do not have with any other religion.” He also said that Judaism is “intrinsic” and not “extrinsic” to Christianity, and that Jews were Christians’ “elder brothers” in the faith.
Pope Benedict XVI explicitly rejected the idea that the Jewish people “ceased to be the bearer of the promises of God.” The Catholic Church states that “The Old Testament is an indispensable part of Sacred Scripture. Its books are divinely inspired and retain a permanent value, for the Old Covenant has never been revoked.”
But now we see some of those earlier positions re-emerging, and not just among antisemites like Tucker Carlson. This is troubling and should not be ignored. On Jan. 17, for example, the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches of Jerusalem, an assembly of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox leaders, released a statement referring to Christian Zionism as a “damaging” ideology.
The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles, a Catholic commentator with more than two million YouTube subscribers, released a video in which he reiterated the older position on Israel: “I don’t think that the Jews are entitled to the Holy Land because of some religious premise. I don’t think that’s true. In fact, being Christian, I believe the Old Testament is fulfilled in the New Testament; Christ is the new covenant.” Catholics are not supposed to believe that Jews have a divine right to the Holy Land because, Knowles stated, Jews do not enjoy God’s favour and are not in fact God’s people any longer.
As Liel Leibovitz, editor-at-large for the website Tablet Magazine, cautions, in “Letter to a Catholic Friend,” published Feb. 16, “What happens if good men and women don’t take up the fight and vociferously reject” such comments? “What starts with the fringes soon takes over the supposed mainstream.” For Jews, for Israel, and for America, that would be an unmitigated disaster.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Features
Jews & Jazz: Baroness Nica of New York City
By DAVID TOPPER This true story is a sequel to “Jews in Strange Places.”
In the summer of 1964, living in Pittsburgh, I attended the city’s first International Jazz Festival. I remember sitting alone, high in the Civic Arena, looking down on the concert below. I would need to go on-line to retrieve names of who the musicians were that I saw that night – save for one. Sometime in the middle of the show, the entire arena went dark, except for a single overhead beam of light shining down on a solo pianist directly below. It was Thelonious Monk.
To describe Monk’s music to a general audience, I need to speak of dissonance, angular melodic twists, hesitations, and even moments of silence. It was also fascinating to watch him play. With his hands splayed out flat (breaking all the rules of piano etiquette) he jabbed at the notes, as if he was seeing and discovering the keyboard for the first time.
One of the most interesting examples of appreciating Monk’s playing was demonstrated by the experience of a particular jazz critic (but I can’t recall who it was). Having at first only heard Monk’s music, he didn’t like it. But after he saw him playing, he began to understand and eventually to like it.
At that 1964 concert Monk played “Don’t Blame Me.” Not only is it the only thing I remember over the entire evening, but it is, I’m sure, the only piece that made me cry. Yes, I was that moved by his playing. It was a magical musical moment in my life that I’ll never forget.
I don’t know which came first: that concert or my buying the record album on which the tune appears. The record is CRISS-CROSS (Columbia, 1962), and it features Monk’s quartet at that time, with that song being the only solo track. From the liner notes we learn that when Monk left home for the studio, he was asked if he was going to play “Don’t Blame Me.” He said: “Maybe, it depends how I feel when I get there.” At the studio, he sat down at the piano, played a few dance tunes – and with the recording equipment still on – he went straight into that tune. Interestingly, in the liner notes, the writer calls Monk’s music “pure magic” – a phrase, I see, that I also used above.
The writer of these liner notes was Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter, the focus of this story. Born in the UK in 1913, Kathleen Annie Pannonica (Nica) Rothschild, the youngest of four children, grew up in a quarantined life within manor estates. From an early age she showed talent in drawing and painting, later studying art history and branching off into photography (she became obsessed with the new Polaroid camera in the 1950s). It was her brother Victor who introduced her to jazz, particularly the work of Duke Ellington. This was probably in the late 1920s – and she was hooked.
Ever searching for excitement, Nica learned to fly an airplane. It was through flying that she met Baron Jules de Koenigswarter, ten years older and a widower, whom she married in 1935. They eventually settled into a 17th century chateau in north-west France. Over their years together they had five children.
Nica’s adult life is clearly divided into two parts. The second part, her role as the Jazz Baroness Nica in New York City (NYC), is the focus of this story. Nonetheless, some of the highlights of the first part provide some insight into the complexity of this fascinating woman.
Living in France in September of 1939, she experienced the start of World War II. Jules immediately joined the Free French Army as a lieutenant. Nica opened her doors to refugees and evacuees, until the Nazi army was advancing on Paris. Jules urged her to escape, and she did: with her children (she had the first two at this time) she got on the last train of refugees heading toward the English Channel. From the UK they went to the USA, settling in New York.
Jules was now in Africa. Nica (after leaving the children safely with friends in the Guggenheim family, on Long Island) joined him in January 1941 in equatorial Africa. She first worked as a decoder of intelligence, then a radio host, and finally an ambulance driver for the French Division in the North African Campaign. Having survived a bout of malaria in Africa, she was with the troops as they advanced on Rome. At the war’s end she was in Berlin and was decorated for her work.
If Nica hadn’t crossed the Channel in 1939, she may have suffered the fate of some of her family members who stayed in France, such as an 80-year-old aunt who was beaten to death in Buchenwald. Also, Jules had pleaded with his mother to get out, as Nica did, but she dismissed him. She died in Auschwitz, along with most of the rest of Jules’ extended family.
After the war, Nica and Jules were united with their children. Jules was then posted as a diplomat in French embassies – first in Norway and then in Mexico. During this time, their three other children were born. From Mexico City, Nica made occasional trips to NYC to listen to jazz, often alone. It seems that what became Nica’s obsession with the music was, concurrently, a major source of antagonism with Jules. He didn’t like jazz and said so. When they would fight, he would break her records. Inevitably, it led to their separation.
In 1953, Nica moved to NYC (taking along her oldest child, Janka, a teenager). After settling into a suite in the Stanhope Hotel in the Upper East Side, she bought a Rolls-Royce with which to jaunt around to the jazz clubs in the city; since she liked to drag race, she later traded it in for a faster Bentley. This was the era of the famous Five Spots Café, the Village Vanguard, Birdland, and other jazz joints. In a short time, with her upper-class British accent, she became known as the Jazz Baroness, having friendships with and being the patron of many jazz musicians.
Thus begins the second part of her life – and the reason for my story.
But before we venture there, we need to deal with drug addiction. Sadly, drugs played a major role in the lives of many jazz musicians in this era, and I need to discuss it, especially to put in the context of the endemic racism of the times. There were drug laws that the mainly white cops were ever anxious to enforce; and they didn’t hesitate to use their billy clubs to strike any black man’s head, if he resisted arrest. I am not exaggerating: several jazz musicians’ lives were shortened due to a severe beating by a cop. Moreover, the drug lords (some of whom owned the jazz clubs) were mainly from the Sicilian Mafia, who had access to an endless supply of heroin from Turkey, and they specifically targeted the black community. Blacks were easy targets, with their marginal existence within white society. Cramped in ghettos (such as Harlem) they could readily escape with drugs – and, sadly, too many of them did.
It was the bane of the otherwise flourishing development of modern jazz – as it evolved out of the bebop movement into cool jazz, then hot jazz, and on through hard bop and beyond. The names constitute a canon of innovative brilliance: Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, Kenny Clark, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Teddy Wilson, Art Blakey, Bill Evans, and more. Nica was at the center of all this in NYC – living among these major players all those years.
Nica too was hooked. But not on drugs. She was addicted to alcohol, which probably shortened her life: specifically, Chivas Regal, the exclusive aged scotch whiskey – a bottle of which she inexorably carried in her purse.
Her hotel suite became a place where musicians could get a restful retreat after a gig (sometimes sleeping overnight), a meal (courtesy of Room Service), money (to buy groceries or pay outstanding bills) – and, of course, a place to have after-hours jam sessions. Black musicians (which most of them were) could only avail of these amenities by using the Service Elevator. Dealing with the endemic racism within the social fabric of NYC became part of Nica’s daily life.
The most famous (or infamous) event in her NYC life involved the death of Charlie Parker, otherwise known as Bird. (The jazz club, Birdland, was named after him.) A genius who revolutionized the alto sax with his fast tempos, virtuosic technique, and far-reaching chord structures – he was a major visitor to Nica’s suite. Sadly he was heavily addicted to heroin and on March 15, 1955, he died at the early age of 34. It happened in Nica’s suite, and she had to call a doctor. Upon writing up his report, he estimated Parker’s age as 50 to 60 – that’s what the drugs did to his body. The headline announcing the death in the next day’s newspaper was: “Bird in the Baroness’s Boudoir.” Being a single woman with lots of money that she freely spent, Nica was a lighting-rod for salacious gossip such as this.
It also was the catalyst for Jules to file for divorce. Thus ended their marriage. Not surprisingly, she also was kicked out of her suite.
I recently did an inventory of my record collection and found that among all the jazz albums I have, the one musician for whom I have the most records is the pianist Hampton Hawes. I have 12 records, plus a cassette and a CD. I mention this because he is also one of the few musicians in this significant era of jazz who knew Nica and who wrote an autobiography: Raise Up Off Me (1974). I love this book. Written in Hawes’ black lingo, his account throws light upon Nica’s critical role in the jazz community, especially her friendship with Monk.
But first, a bit about Hawes’ own life. Born in 1928, growing up in Los Angeles (LA), Hawes was the son of a Presbyterian preacher. Self-taught at the piano, he had no familial encouragement to play jazz music. But listening to Bird, Monk, Bud, and others, he became good enough by the age of 18 to jam with some top musicians in LA. By around 1950 Hawes’ career took off with record contracts and (except for a two-year stint in the US Army, stationed in Japan) he continued to play and record – being voted “New Star of the Year” in Downbeat magazine in 1956.
It was around this time that he met Nica in NYC, during a gig at The Embers, a fancy nightclub, where he was well-paid. He also met Monk for the first time. Let me quote widely from his book.
Upon looking out across the tables in the nightclub, Hawes immediately recognised Monk. “Bamboo-rimmed shade, carrying a bamboo cane – he looked like … one of those African kings, strong but beautiful. … He was with a middle-aged woman who gave off a waft of perfume that smelled like it costs $600 an ounce, and when he introduced me – to Baroness Nica – I knew I’d guessed right about the price.” She left before he finished his set. But Monk stayed. “Monk drove me in his blue Buick to Nica’s hotel penthouse on Fifth Avenue. When she opened the door I could hear my album playing – the track, ’Round Midnight that Monk had written. He said to me, ‘I didn’t tell her to put that on.’ I walked into the room where Bird had died a little over a year ago. [That dates this as sometime in 1956.] A lot of paintings and funny drapes, a chandelier like in an old movie palace. Steinway concert grand in the corner. I thought: this is where you live if you own the Chase Manhattan Bank. … Her pad was a place to drop in and hang out, any time, for any reason. … She’d give money to anyone who was broke, bring bags of groceries to their families, help them get their cabaret cards, which you need to work in New York. … I suppose you would call Nica a patron of the arts, but she was more like a brother to the musicians who lived in New York or came through. There was no jive about her, and if you were for real you were accepted and were her friend.” … She gave Hawes a telephone number for a private cab. “If I was sick or fuc-ed up, I’d call the number and the cab would come and carry me directly to her pad.” According to Hawes, Nica picked up the colourful black lingo too.
As noted, many musicians’ lives were cut short due to drug addiction (and sometimes beatings by cops). Again, Nica came through – often paying for their funeral and even the plot, if the family could not afford to. She was there for them, literally, to the end.
Of all the jazz musicians who passed though Nica’s life, the one who had the most significant impact on her was Monk. Even among the wide range of idiosyncratic jazz musicians, Monk still stands out for his uniqueness. He was quirky in his talk, his behaviour, and his music as well. It’s clear that there was some mental illness involved, but it was never fully diagnosed. One doctor insisted that Monk was not manic-depressive nor had schizophrenia. Nonetheless, he had episodes where he was not living in this world. Nica’s gentle demeanour was perfect for Monk. She nurtured and fed him, especially when he became too much for his family.
Let’s bring Hawes’ autobiography back into this story. Once when Hawes was wasted on drugs and stretched out on a bench in Central Park: “a familiar Bentley rolls up to the curb. Nica behind the wheel and Monk saying, ‘Man, get in this car, a good musician ain’t supposed to be sittin’ on no bench lookin’ like you look’.”
Another time he’s in Nica’s penthouse looking for Monk. Hawes “peeks through a doorway at a body laid out on a gold bedspread, mudstained boots sticking out from under a ten-thousand-dollar mink coat and the body’s mouth wide open, sound pouring out of it, and Nica tiptoeing over, finger to her lips as if I’m about to wake a three-week-old baby from its afternoon nap. ‘Shhh. Thelonious is asleep’.”
One notable incident among many: in Delaware in 1958, she and Monk were caught by the police with a small quantity of his marijuana. She took the rap and spent a night or two in jail. She saved Monk’s head, possibly literally. It’s not surprising that the saxophonist Sonny Rollins called her “a heroic woman.”
The year 1958 was also significant in Hawes’ life, for he became the target of a federal undercover operation in LA. Caught with drugs, he was offered this: if he squealed on his drug supplier, he would go free. Hawes refused. Hence, on his 30th birthday, he was sentenced to ten years in prison. An emerging career was cut short; and it was the start of a decade to be wasted. Then in early 1961, watching the prison TV, Hawes heard John F. Kennedy deliver his inaugural speech. Hawes was impressed by the new president’s words. He writes: “I thought. That’s the right cat; looks like he got some soul and might listen.” And so Hawes spent the next few years putting together the documentation requesting a presidential pardon. It was not an easy task. The prison staff were not accommodating. But he persisted, and so, the document was sent off to the White House. I like Hawes’ comment about the very end of his appeal: “To round it off I added some heavy legal sh-t in Latin I’d dug up in the library.”
In August 1963, Hawes was informed that the appeal was granted. (In fact, it was the next-to-last clemency granted by Kennedy; in November he was assassinated.) It cut Hawes’ prison term almost in half. Thus after 4½ years wasted, he was able to re-launch his musical career. He continued to record and travel, but never kicked the heroin habit. In 1977 he died of a brain haemorrhage. At age 48, he left a legacy of so many wonderful jazz albums, including the 14 that I own.
For Nica, her problem was finding a place to live. As noted, she was kicked out of her suite when Bird died. So, she moved to Hotel Bolivar, across Central Park – only to be eventually let go too, due to drugs and noise. Next was the Algonquin in midtown. Shortly thereafter, she was asked to leave that too. In the end, she purchased a house on a cliff over the Hudson River in New Jersey, from which she had a spectacular view of the NYC skyline, and an easy drive to the city through the Lincoln Tunnel. Jazz musicians called it her Mad Pad.
By the 1970s, when Monk dropped out of the jazz scene, he moved in with her. Eventually, he also stopped talking; remaining sequestered in his room, where he died in 1982.
Eventually the heavy dosage of Chivas Regal caught up with Nica. She died of heart failure in 1988 at age 74.
There are numerous songs by jazz musicians in tribute to her; the two most famous are: “Pannonica” by Monk and “Nica’s Dream” by Horace Silver. As well, several nightclubs around the world are named: Pannonica.