Designer Genes: My Scottish Clan

In 1938, on Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, my grandfather, just 19 years old, was severely beaten by the Nazi's. He ended up in the hospital, but he was one of the lucky one's because on that night as many as 30,000 Jews, his parents, grandfather and sister among them, were sent to concentration camps. My grandfather and seven of his brothers and sisters were able to obtain tickets to England and left shortly after Kristallnacht. They were lucky to get out and lucky to be alive.

Like many other refugees, my grandfather, his brothers and one of his sisters, joined the British Army where he became an interpreter and interrogator. The British government, or whoever was in charge of these things, feared that if the Nazi's were ever able to capture army records, they would be able to see that refugees were fighting for England and so they changed all Jewish sounding names in to Anglo-Saxon names. My grandfather, Leo Buchbinder, became Leo Buchanan. While others reverted back to their given names after the war, my grandfather kept the name Buchanan, mostly because he thought it would be more trouble than it was worth to change it back by that point.

In 1947 when my grandfather came to New York and married my grandmother she became a Buchanan too. So my German-Jewish refugee grandparents with their thick(ish) German accents were Ruth and Leo Buchanan. My mother and aunt, until they were married, were Evelyn and Judy Buchanan.

If you don't know, the surname Buchanan is one of the oldest and most well known in Scotland. The Buchanan's even have their own plaid! So that became a running joke in our family, the idea of us having Scottish heritage. When my parents travelled to Scotland on their honeymoon my mother even brought back a Buchanan plaid kilt and both me and my brother came home from the hospital in Buchanan plaid blankets!

Hmmm maybe that's where my affinity for Scottish men comes from...

Picture 1 is of my grandfather and one of his brothers in the Army.
Picture 2 is an article from a newspaper in the UK about my grandfather and his siblings, though they incorrectly called him Leon instead of Leo.
Picture 3 was taken when my grandfather was stationed in Scotland.

Picture 4: My grandfather and his brother in uniform
Picture 5: My grandfather's enlistment papers
Picture 6: Army rations book

Picture 7: Indentification papers
Picture 8: Official name change documents
Picture 9: Instructions for interrogators on what questions to ask German soldiers