BJE Speaker Series: Katherine Fennelly – Family Declassified: Uncovering My Grandfather’s Journey from Spy to Children’s Book Author

In Fam­i­ly Declas­si­fied social sci­en­tist Kather­ine Fen­nel­ly delves into the ratio­nale and con­se­quences of fam­i­ly secrets by study­ing her grand­fa­ther, Fran­cis Kalnay, a Jew­ish Hun­gar­i­an immi­grant who over­came a child­hood marked by tragedy and rose to become the head of an elite espi­onage unit for the Allied Forces dur­ing World War II. In 1954 Fran­cis aban­doned his fam­i­ly and fled to Mex­i­co for two decades where he rein­vent­ed him­self as a children’s book author, an archi­tect, and a gour­mand.

It took sev­er­al years of exam­i­na­tion of declas­si­fied gov­ern­ment records, per­son­al inter­views, and genealog­i­cal search­es to piece togeth­er the life of a man who kept secrets about his Jew­ish iden­ti­ty, the nature of his work as a spy, and the mur­der of his sis­ter by Hun­gar­i­an Nazis. The result is a man­u­script that exam­ines the nature of fam­i­ly myths and presents the grip­ping sto­ry of a man whose life was shaped by some of the most extra­or­di­nary events of the 20th century.