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My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past
My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past Author:Jennifer Teege, Nikola Sellmair An international bestseller?the extraordinary memoir of a German-Nigerian woman who learns that her grandfather was the brutal Nazi commandant depicted in Schindler?s List?I have entered a chamber of horrors. . . . Slowly I begin to grasp that the Amon Goeth in the film Schindler?s List is not a fictional character, but a person who actually exi... more »sted in flesh and blood. A man who killed people by the dozens and, what is more, who enjoyed it. My grandfather. I am the granddaughter of a mass murderer.?
When Jennifer Teege happened to pluck a library book off its shelf, she couldn?t have known that her life, from that moment, would be irrevocably altered. What would you do if you suddenly discovered that your grandfather was responsible for thousands of brutal murders? This is the reality Teege?who was raised by nuns and then a foster family?faced when she learned that her biological grandfather was the real-life villain immortalized in Schindler?s List: Amon Goeth, the vicious Nazi commandant of Plaszów concentration camp. The more Teege read about Goeth, the more certain she became: If her grandfather had met her?a black woman?he would have shot her.
Teege?s discovery sends her, at age 38, into the severest depression of her life?and on a quest to fully understand her family?s haunted history. Her research takes her to Krakow, where her grandfather ?cleared? the Jewish ghetto in 1943; to nearby Plaszów, the concentration camp he oversaw; and even back to Israel, where she herself attended college and learned fluent Hebrew. Teege struggles to reconnect with her estranged mother Monika, and to accept that her grandmother Ruth Irene?a beloved figure from her earliest memories?once lived in luxury at Plaszów, side by side with Amon Goeth.
Teege?s story is cowritten by award-winning journalist Nikola Sellmair, who also provides fascinating additional context (in part drawn from original interviews with Teege?s family and friends) in a second, interwoven narrative. Ultimately, Teege?s resolute search for the truth of her family?s history leads her, step by step, to the possibility of her own liberation.« less