Identity Disorder, Part II: May One Hide His Jewishness to Save His Life?

Adapted from the writings of Dayan Yitzhak Grossman

December 18, 2025

Our article of two weeks ago discussed two Holocaust-era teshuvos by R’ Efraim Oshry on whether Jews could save themselves from the Germans via certificates of conversion to Christianity or other documents that identified them as non-Jews. He takes it for granted that representing oneself as a non-Jew via such documents is tantamount to explicitly professing to be an idolater, which is prohibited. But in another teshuvah discussing a similar case, Rav Oshry is more lenient. He relates:

In the Kovno ghetto there were among the incarcerated some German Jews who had been exiled there by the villainous government, may its name be blotted out.

Among those Jews was one with a very foreign name that was impossible to recognize as Jewish. This name was written on his passport, which he had obtained in Germany before the outbreak of war.

When the severity of the subjugation intensified…that man decided to flee the ghetto with the hope of hiding among non-Jews, because neither his name nor his appearance betrayed his Jewishness. But for this purpose he needed to alter his passport and add the letters “R.C.” to indicate that the holder of the passport is of the Roman Catholic faith…

And I was asked then if he acted correctly, since by adding those two letters he will appear to be conceding to idolatry, whether there is a prohibition in this or not.[1]

Rav Oshry’s analysis here is longer than that of his other teshuvos on this general topic—about fifteen pages—and he concludes that adding R.C. to a passport is permitted, on two grounds.

…Based upon everything we have established, it appears correct to rule on our question that it is certainly permitted for this Jew to enter those two letters in his passport to save his life from the annihilation that was anticipated then for the Jews, in the times of shmad and killing that the accursed Germans said they would do to the Jews.

First, in order to save himself from mortal danger it is permitted for him to deceive the non-Jews so they do not recognize him as a Jew. And it is not at all similar to that which the Rambam wrote in Sefer Hamitzvos (that we should give ourselves over to death rather than deceive a non-Jew to think that we have denied Hashem, even though in our hearts we believe in Him).[2] For the Rambam is talking about where they know him and know he is a Jew, but in order to be saved he wishes to say that he is an idolater, that he repudiates the religion of his fathers—the Rambam holds that is prohibited. But where the non-Jews do not know him and do not know he is a Jew, it is permitted for him to deceive them using all stratagems and means, even with a declaration that he has always been like one of them, as I wrote earlier.

Additionally, the Rama concludes that he is permitted to say something with dual meanings in order to be saved, and we explained earlier that these two letters also have dual meanings (“Roman Catholic” or “Rak hishamer lecha…”[3]), and it therefore appears to me to be permitted. May Hashem save us from errors, and may we know no more trouble and sorrow.[4]

In support of his rather creative suggestion that the dispensation for ambiguous language includes language that has one meaning to non-Jews in their tongue and a different meaning to Jews in theirs, Rav Oshry cites the following fascinating anecdote recorded by R’ Avraham Chaim Schorr in his Toras Chaim:

I have heard about a certain great man, among the early ones, that they asked him at the time of the decree whether he was Jewish, and he answered them “כן יודע” (Yes, a Jew). They thought he was answering in German that he was not a Jew (“kein Jude”), and he was saved.[5]

Rav Oshry also addresses the R.C. question in another brief teshuvah. There, too, he invokes the Toras Chaim’s anecdote as a precedent for leniency, though he suggests yet another alternate meaning of R.C.: קיין רוימער (not Roman).[6]

It is unclear, however, why Rav Oshry’s first basis for leniency here—that to save a life one may even explicitly and unambiguously deny being Jewish—would not serve as a basis for leniency in his other cases, which we discussed in the earlier article regarding non-Jewish documents. (Rav Oshry also does not mention this point in his other teshuvah on writing R.C. in a passport.)

With respect to the Toras Chaim’s anecdote, R’ Menashe Klein relates that he personally did the same thing during a selection in Buchenwald:

I remember when I was in the concentration camp in Buchenwald, during a Selektion a week before liberation, they came to me and asked if I was a Jew, because I had hidden among the sick and the dead. I recalled then the words of the Chavos Yair, who wrote that if they ask him if he is a Jew, he can say “כן יודע” which in their language connotes that he is not a Jew and in lashon kodesh connotes “kein,” i.e., that he is indeed a Jew. I, too, said something with dual meanings, and Hashem came to my aid and I was saved with His help.[7]

R’ Efraim Kachalon considers another case involving a denial of Jewishness during the Holocaust:

I was asked…regarding a Holocaust survivor…who experienced the terrible war, and on one of the occasions that the Nazis, yimach shmam vezichram, performed a Selektion, they announced: “All the Jews should cross to one side and the non-Jews to the other side.” He went and mixed with the non-Jews on the other side and was thus saved. Now his conscience is weighing on him that perhaps he violated the din cited in the Shulchan Aruch that it is forbidden to say “I am an idolater” even to save a life…[8]

Following a lengthy analysis of the topic, citing most of the sources mentioned in these articles, he concludes:

That Jew…did not violate any prohibition and need not do teshuvah. And one who says that he did a mitzvah is not wrong, because he saved himself from descending to the pit…[9]

One additional argument for leniency in our original case of Elisabeth Lederer as well as some of the other cases we have discussed is that while it is prohibited to profess to be an idolater, it does not necessarily follow that it is prohibited to profess to be a non-Jew, because not all non-Jews are idolaters. The Germans murdered Jews and spared non-Jews, regardless of their religious beliefs, so claiming to be a non-Jew rather than a Jew would not have entailed a rejection of Jewish belief or an acceptance of idolatrous belief.[10] (This would apply to cases involving representations of lineage or nationality but would obviously be inapplicable to certificates of conversion and writing R.C. in passports.)

[1]Shu”t Mima’amakim cheilek 5 siman 3 p. 36.

[2]Sefer Hamitzvos, asei 9.

[3]Dvarim 4:9.

[4]Shu”t Mima’amakim ibid. at the end of the teshuvah, pp. 49-50.

[5]Toras Chaim (Rav Schorr) Avodah Zarah 17b end of s.v. Al kein nir’ah lefareish.

[6]Divrei Efraim, Kuntres Meieimek Habacha, she’eilah 4.

[7]Shu”t Mishneh Halachos cheilek 9 end of siman 170 s.v. Vedachirna.

[8]R’ Efraim Kachalon, Hastaras HaYahadus Be’eis Hashoah Hanora’ah, Yarchon Haotzar, gilyon 43 (Av 5780) anaf 8 p. 128.

[9]Rav Kachalon ibid. p. 139.

[10]Chashukei Chemed Avodah Zarah 19a p. 161 makes a similar point and reports that it is also found in a work titled “Zikaron Basefer,” but I do not know the work and have been unable to track down the citation. See Chashukei Chemed ibid. pp. 161-62 for further related discussion.