Mexico’s first female and first Jewish president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said her mother was born in Mexico. Geneological documents show she was born in Bulgaria and survived the Holocaust. Illustration by Odeya Rosenband. Photos by Luis Antonio Rojas/Bloomberg via Getty Images and the Jewish Documentation and Research Center of Mexico.By Andrew SilversteinJune 14, 2024Leer in Español.Claudia Sheinbaum, who last week was elected Mexico’s first female president, does not speak often about her Jewish identity or family history. The story she has told is that her grandparents escaped their native Bulgaria in 1940 and that her mother, Annie Pardo Cemo, was born the next year in Mexico City.“My maternal grandparents came to Mexico fleeing Nazi persecution,” Sheinbaum wrote in a letter to the Mexican newspaper La Jornada in 2009, when she was a politically active climate scientist. “They were saved by a miracle.”Now, a Forward investigation reviewing birth, wedding, immigration and transportatio...
