Nadene Goldfoot
"Madeline Albright was born Marie Jana Korbelová in 1937 in the Smíchov district of Prague, Czechoslovakia] She is the daughter of Josef Korbel, a Czech diplomat, and Anna Korbel (née Spieglová). At the time of her birth, Czechoslovakia had been independent for less than 20 years, having gained independence from Austria-Hungary after World War I. Her father was a supporter of the early Czech democrats, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and Edvard Beneš. Marie Jana had a younger sister Katherine and a younger brother John (these versions of their names are Anglicized).
When Marie Jana was born, her father was serving as a press-attaché at the Czechoslovak Embassy in Belgrade. The signing of the Munich Agreement in September 1938, and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia by Adolf Hitler's troops forced the family into exile because of their links with Beneš", according to the press. I'd say that it was because they were Jewish. Benes was president of Czechoslovakia from 1935 to 1938 and again from 1945 to 1948. He also led the Czechoslovak government-in-exile 1939 to 1945, during World War II.
"In 1941, Josef and Anna converted from Judaism to Catholicism. Marie Jana and her siblings were raised in the Roman Catholic faith. In 1997, Albright said her parents never told her or her two siblings about their Jewish ancestry and heritage." Her grandparents had died in the Holocaust. Many people find that hard to believe. No one criticizes Albright and her parents, refugees twice-over (first from Nazism, then from Communism), for how they chose to put their lives back together. But there is lively debate over Albright’s insistence that her Jewish roots are “a major surprise.”
Doubters point, first, to circumstantial evidence. How could someone as intelligent and well-versed in European history as Albright (her Ph.D. work focused on contemporary Central European politics) not have deduced her family’s ancestry from what we know she knew?
I'd think that after all that she could have found out in February 1997, she would react very much, being afraid to admit that she was born Jewish. Here she was, living her conscious life as a Catholic, and just couldn't conceive of anything else. She could not admit it more than she did; that she hadn't known.
"What's interesting is how other people have reacted, say some people in New Mexico, who after taking DNA tests, have found they were related to Jews who had escaped the Spanish Inquisition of 1492. Then in 2001, after watching a program on genealogy, Sanchez sent for a DNA kit that could help track a person’s background through genetic footprinting. He soon got a call from Bennett Greenspan, owner of the Houston-based testing company, FTDNA. “He said, ‘Did you know you were Jewish?’ ” Sanchez, 53, recalled. “He told me I was a Cohanim, a member of the priestly class descended from Aaron, the brother of Moses.” 
For Crypto-Jews of New Mexico, art is a window into secret life
A recent genetic survey in the Journal of Human Genetics revealed new DNA evidence that Spanish Americans of the Southwest likely had Jews in their family trees
With the revelation that Sanchez was almost certainly one of New Mexico’s hidden or crypto-Jews, his family traditions made sense to him." Sanchez had also been raised Catholic, and his family had probably been Catholic since 1493. He did something about it. In his case, he investigated and discovered he was part of a group referred to as Crypto Jews. He investigated his roots. "We always thought there was a Jewish background in our family, but we didn’t know for sure,” he said. “When I found out, it was like coming home for me.
Her ancestry could have gone back as far as the 10th century to Bohemia. Prague was probably the oldest settlement. During the Crusading Period from 1096 onward, they suffered severe persecutions and many were forcibly baptized. By the 13th century, Jews positions had improved, but only for one century. By the 14th under Charles IV, it deteriorated. Decrees were written up against Jews through the 15th and 16th centuries and then Jews were expelled many times, even from Prague.
Many Jews then fled to Czechoslovakia from Eastern Europe at the time of the Chmielnicki pogroms of 1648, but ghetto regulations continued to be enforced and even the number of marriages was restricted by law. Maria Theresa decreed in 1744 a general expulsion of the Jews which was enforced to some extent the next year.
From 1781 to 1919, the history of the Jews merged with that of Austria. After WWI, Jews enjoyed full rights under the Czechoslovak republic which was the 1st country to recognize Jewish nationality. The Jewish community numbered 357,000 in 1935, the time when Nazis were becoming powerful in Germany. It included:
RUTHENIA-part of Hungary--105,000 Jews
SLOVAKIA- 150,000
BOHEMIA, and MORAVIA- 80,000
GERMANY- 40,000 Jewish refugees
Madeline was born in 1937.
After the German occupation in March 1939, the Jews suffered severely: there was large-scale emigration and those remaining behind were systematically annihilated during 1942-1945 in the gas chambers or shot in mass groups. 42,000 remained alive at the end of WWII, and of these, 24,000 emigrated to Israel from 1945 to 1953. It was in 1941 that the family converted to Catholicism. She was 4 years old then.
Jews were prominent in the post-war regime, but the SLANSKY trial of 1952 had an anti-Semitic element and so the number of leading Jews dwindled. The American Joint Distribution Committee was banned in 1950 and the Zionist Organization closed in 1951. By 1953, a Council of Jewish Communities was set up: all communal activities had to conform with the government requirements. A more liberal attitude to Jews was manifested by the Dubcek regime in 1968 but the Russian invasion of that year brought anti-Semitic undertones and many Jews left the country. The Jewish population of Bohemia and Moravia (117,551 according to the 1930 census) was virtually annihilated. Many Jews emigrated after 1939; approximately 78,000 were killed. By 1945, some 14,000 Jews remained alive in the Czech lands.
Living quarters in Theresienstadt
Approximately 144,000 Jews were sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp. Theresienstadt was a hybrid concentration camp and ghetto established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town Terezín, located in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
- Theresienstadt served as a holding pen for Jews in the above-mentioned groups. It was expected that that poor conditions there would hasten the deaths of many deportees, until the SS and police could deport the survivors to killing centers in the East.
The 1989 revolution led to full freedom for the Jewish community. By 1990, the Jewish population of Czechoslovakia was 12,000. Against the wishes of many of its 15 million citizens, Czechoslovakia in January 1993, split into two countries: Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
I just saw Madeline Albright at the funeral of Colin Powell (April 5, 1937-October 18, 2021) on TV's ABC this morning. Her speech was magnificent, especially the ending. https://www.wmtw.com/article/colin-powell-funeral-service/38171982#. His funeral had to be postponed for 2 weeks and 4 days. He died of COVID after complications. He had been fully vaccinated. Our immune system can be compromised.
Update: Madeline's husband, Joseph Albright, attended Williams College. He met Madeleine Jana Korbel when she spent a summer working at the Denver Post. They married in 1959 after Madeleine's graduation from Wellesley College. They had three children: twin girls, Anne and Alice (born 1961), and youngest daughter Katie. The couple divorced in 1982. He remarried.
Resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Korbel father of Madeline; most interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_Albright
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edvard_Bene%C5%A1
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/18/politics/colin-powell-dies/index.html
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/1997/02/did-she-know.html
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-dec-05-na-heritage5-story.html
Book: DNA & Genealogy by Colleen Fitzpatrick & Andrew Yeiser
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sl%C3%A1nsk%C3%BD_trial
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