You could also say that I was a mamzer by the circumstances of my birth. As part of the research for this book, in 2016 I engaged a lawyer in Warsaw who was able to obtain the release from the state archives of my original Polish birth record information, which had previously been unavailable to me. There were a few surprises. 

The record shows that I was born with the name Chaim Moses Engelbach on January 8, 1931. The date confirmed something I already suspected—that I am actually one year older than the age on my official American papers. Somewhere along the way in our postwar journey, my father fibbed about my age, probably to qualify me for some benefit as a child.