Secrets Revealed: Great Falls Author Recounts Politzer Family History

Updated: Feb. 20, 2024, 9 a.m.: This story was updated with information about the March 12 interview of Linda Ambrus Broenniman in Baltimore.

GREAT FALLS, VA — When Linda Ambrus Broenniman was growing up in Buffalo, New York, she knew very little about her parents' lives before they immigrated to the U.S.

"When I was in my late 20s, I found out that my father was Jewish," the Great Falls resident told Patch in August. "We found that out by accident. We had been raised Catholic."

Broenniman's father denied that he was Jewish and continued to deny it all the way up to is death in 2020, but by then his daughter had already begun to uncover some of the Ambrus family's secret history.

Back in 2006, Broenniman's family received an invitation from the Israeli Consulate, because her mother, Clara (Bayer) Ambrus, was to be recognized as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.

"That's probably Israel's highest recognition for non-Jews, who saved Jews during the Holocaust," Broenniman said. "We didn't really know anything about it. My mother had told me once, when we were on a trip to Budapest, she said, 'I hid a few people.' She was always so humble and so demure about the whole thing, so we had no idea of the extent of what she did."

Broenniman tried to get in touch with some of the people her mother saved, one of whom was her mother's closest friend. She'd saved her family and many others.

In 2011, Clara Ambrus died from burns she received when the family's home in Buffalo was destroyed by fire.

Live Interview:

Linda Broenniman will be interviewed by Mary-Jane Roth, vice president of programs at the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Washington on March 12, at the Jewish Library of Baltimore, second floor of the JCC, 5708 Park Heights Ave. in Baltimore. More information about the event is available online.

"Five years later, when I had decided that it was really time for me to investigate our family history, she happened to be cleaning out one of her closets and found this box," Broenniman said. "She sent it to me and there were lots of files that contained documents, most of it was from the 1930s, but there were photographs from the 1800s."

The majority of documents and letters in the box were in Hungarian, a language Broenniman was fluent in until about the age 0f 3. Fortunately, through a friend of a friend, she found someone could translate the box's contents.

One of the most important documents in the box was a letter written by Broenniman's great-great grandfather, Ignácz Misner, to Governor Miklós Horthy, the regent of Hungary. Misner was asking to be exempted from the Jewish restrictions.

Prior to putting Jewish people into the ghetto during World War II, the Hungarian government forced them to live in what were called "yellow star houses."

"It would be like an apartment building, but all of the apartments were inhabited by family members," Broenniman said. "The entire family had to move out of their house. They had six days to do this and move into a yellow star house, where they got one room, so these conditions were horrible."

A celebrated lawyer and the founder of the Budapest bar, Misner wrote to Horthy asking if his family could remain in their home.

"He actually did get the exemption, but it was too late," Broenniman said. "By the time he got the exemption, the Germans had come in and took over and they were ignoring everything."

Recognizing the importance of the letter and the other documents in the box, Broenniman decided right then that she needed to dig deeper into her family's history and write a book.

With the help of András Gyekiczki, a Hungarian lawyer, sociologist, and family researcher, Broenniman was able to trace her roots back to the 18th century and discovered how her father's ancestors got the family name Politzer.

Among other things, Broenniman learned that her great-great-great-uncle was Adam Politzer, who was considered the father of otology, the branch of medicine that studies and treats afflictions of the ear.

"Both my parents were physicians, and they truly believed — and this is going to sound trite but it was truly how they lived — they truly believed in serving humanity," she said. "My father was an oncologist and he wanted to cure cancer. They really lived there lives as a life of service."

Bethesda Communications Group, which is based in Glen Echo, Maryland, will be releasing "The Politzer Saga" by Linda Ambrus Broenniman on Sept. 12. The book is available for preorder on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Writing the book has been an emotional experience for Broenniman, admitting that she tears up sometimes when she thinks about it.

"When you grow up with secrets, you just don't know," she said. "You always feel like there's something wrong, because it's a secret. Why aren't your parents trying to talk to you about these things? ... In the beginning, you set out to start to write a book. I set out to just find my family."

Through the process of researching and writing the book, Broenniman realized that she needed to understand the zeitgeist of the times through which her parents lived to understand their secrecy.

"I realized I needed to write this down," she said. "I had to record it. I wanted to make sure that these stories didn't disappear again. It was important for me to honor their memory, but it's also been a very rich and rewarding experience. Not only did I find and learn, now I feel connected to this family. I also forgive my father. The secrets are gone. There's no shame."