In the autobiographical work, La Promesse de l'aube, Romain Gary tells us … about the factors that have determined his personal position and his humanitarian philosophy. First of all, this book is a moving tribute to his Jewish mother, a Russian woman, eccentric and mad in the eyes of her new French compatriots, who molds her son in her fashion and prepares him for an extraordinary career.

And he has … fulfilled the promise tacitly made to that mother to accomplish everything she expected from him in the sphere of heroism and self-realization. Rarely has filial piety expressed itself with greater affection, sensitivity, insight, gratitude. (p. 279)

There is no reference to the father where "Tartar and Jewish ancestors" are mentioned without indicating whether they are on the father's or the mother's side. But without having known his father and without having felt his direct influence, Romain Gary feels that he has toward him an incalculable spiritual debt, an atavistic consanguinity, accentuated by the tragedy of six million of his fellow Jews….

Thus, it is through the heritage of his parents that Gary recognizes himself always and instantly in all those who suffer, man or even beast….

These atavistic or conscious influences have favored in Romain Gary the decision to struggle against backward forces, or even against the limitations that nature herself seems to impose on man, on what is known as the human condition. (p. 280)

Here is a writer eminently successful in every aspect of his career, and whose services to his adopted country have been generously recognized and rewarded, but, who, at the pinnacle of fame, makes a proud confession of Jewish faith. Not a dogmatic confession, but in the form of a moving homage to the deepest roots of his person and his thinking. When a French education, that is to say humanistic, has been grafted on traditions going back to the dawn of civilization, we have a modern knight wielding a sword and a pen, hungry for justice, for liberty, for love, "these roots of heaven so deeply sunk in his breast." Is there a better illustration of the stimulating influence of the Jewish element on French literature? (pp. 282-83)