Alanis Morissette opens up about Holocaust survivor grandparents

The singer did not find out about her Jewish roots or that her grandparents were Holocaust survivors until she was 28.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Seven-time Grammy winner and 90s rock sensation Alanis Morissette opened up about her holocaust survivor grandparents and secrets about Jewish roots that had been kept from her until adulthood.

The Canadian singer was featured on PBS “Finding Your Roots” hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and described learning she was Jewish at the age of 28, although her grandparents didn’t talk about their roots.

I think there was a terror that is in their bones and they were being protective of us and just not wanting antisemitism,” Morissette said.

She continued, “So they were doing it to protect us, sort of keeping us in the dark around it.”

Morissette described her grandparents’ ordeal during the Holocaust as “unfathomable” as her grandfather Imre Feuerstein made a desperate search to locate his brothers who, as was discovered later after consulting the archives at Yad Vashem, perished in Soviet Labor Camps.

After surviving the Holocaust, Imre Feurstein narrowly escaped being killed by Soviet troops during the 1956 Hungarian uprising.

Morissette explained, “They came off the train and someone had whispered to disembark from the other side, so they did. When they looked back, they saw everyone being executed.”

When Morissette’s mother was just 6, her parents intended to emigrate from Hungary to Australia, but Imre Feuerstein went out for a cigarette and missed the boat so the family headed for Canada instead.

When Imre Feurstein and his wife Nadinia Anna Lauscher/Gulyas, also a Holocaust survivor settled in America, they didn’t talk about the past.

What little Alanis Morissette found out was gleaned from her mother, Georgia Mary Ann Feuerstein.

“I’m appalled just thinking about it, and after hearing stories from my mother, it’s just inconceivable to me,” the singer said.

Not long after Alanis was born, her grandfather and his mother-in-law were killed in a car crash, and she recalls how her mother refused to talk about it and was determined to move on.

“She focused on raising her children and going back to work, never speaking about it again,” Morissette said.

“My grandmother was more open with me about it, mostly because I wouldn’t let it go.”