29 September 2006
The Republican senator George Allen from the US state of Virgina, widely considered as being close to the Christian right and as a contender for the presidency in 2008, is at the center of a controversy over his family’s previously undisclosed Jewish heritage and the way he has handled questions about it. As he debated his Democratic opponent, James Webb, on Monday, Allen was asked by television reporter Peggy Fox if his grandfather was Jewish. Allen lashed out, saying that not only was the question "not relevant," but also complaining that Fox was "making aspersions about people because of their religious beliefs." Allen's campaign manager said the senator believed Fox's question was hostile because it followed another one about whether Allen had learned the word "macaca" from his mother. The word, which Allen used last month to describe a Webb volunteer, is a French slur for a dark-skinned person.
After reports of Allen's Jewish roots surfaced in a Jewish newspaper "Forward" in August, his mother finally explained to him the family's history. Henrietta Allen grew up in the Jewish community of Tunisia which was persecuted by the Nazis during the German occupation of that North African country during World War II. When she emigrated to the United States after the war she found it necessary to hide her Jewishness from her future-in-laws, lest they object to the marriage. She and her husband later decided not to tell their children of her Jewish background because, "What they put my father through, I always was fearful. I did not want my children to have to go through that fear all the time."
On Tuesday, in a statement released by his campaign, Allen said he was proud to have discovered recently that his grandfather Felix Lumbroso, who battled the Nazis as a Resistance fighter in North Africa, was part of a well-known Jewish family. "I was raised as a Christian, and my mother was raised as a Christian," said Allen, 54. "And I embrace and take great pride in every aspect of my diverse heritage, including my Lumbroso family line's Jewish heritage, which I learned about from a recent ... article and (which) my mother confirmed." He continued: "Some may find it odd that I have not probed deeply into the details of my family history, but it's a fact. We in the Allen household were simply taught that what matters is a person's character, integrity, effort and performance – not race, gender, ethnicity or religion. And so whenever we would ask my mother through the years about our family background on her side, the answer always was, 'Who cares about that?' "