Tuwim’s syllogism was as faulty as it was powerful. He did not call on all decent people to call themselves Jews—he was calling on all Jews by blood to become Jews by national faith (and by open declaration) because of the blood of Jews (Jewish blood) that the Nazis were spilling. Ilya Ehrenburg was— uncharacteristically—more straightforward. One month after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, he said: I grew up in a Russian city. My native language is Russian. I am a Russian writer. Now, like all Russians, I am defending my homeland. But the Nazis have reminded me of something else: my mother’s name was Hannah. I am a Jew. I say this with pride. Hitler hates us more than anyone else. And that does us credit. 113 Jewishness, like Russianness (only more so, because of its Mercurian past) was ultimately about parents and their children. In Grossman’s Life and Fate , the protagonist’s mother writes to her son from the ghetto, shortly before her death: I never used to feel Jewish: all my friends growing up were Russian; my favorite poets were Pushkin and Nekrasov; and the play that reduced me to tears, together with the whole audience—a congress of Russian village doctors—was Stanislavsky’s production of Uncle Vanya . And, Vitia dear, when I was fourteen and our family decided to emigrate to South America, I told my father: “I’ll never leave Russia—I’d rather drown myself.” And so I didn’t go. But now, during these terrible days, my heart is filled with a maternal tenderness toward the Jewish people. I never knew this love before. It reminds me of my love for you, my dearest son. 114 Her son, Viktor Pavlovich (in fact, “Pinkhusovich,” but his mother had Russified his patronymic) Shtrum becomes Jewish because of his love for his mother—because of what the Nazis are doing to her. Never, before the war, had Viktor thought about the fact that he was a Jew, or that his mother was a Jew. Never had his mother spoken to him about it —either during his childhood or during his years as a student. Never while he was at Moscow University had one student, professor, or seminar leader ever mentioned it.