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malaise

(269,026 posts)
Sat Feb 21, 2015, 06:29 AM Feb 2015

When a black German woman discovered her grandfather was the Nazi villain of 'Schindler's List'

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-features/1.640997
<snip>
In the mid-1990s, near the end of the period during which she lived in Israel, Jennifer Teege watched Steven Spielberg’s film “Schindler’s List.” She hadn’t seen the film in a movie theater, and watched it in her rented room in Tel Aviv when it was broadcast on television.

“It was a moving experience for me, but I didn’t learn much about the Holocaust from it,” she tells me by phone from her home in Hamburg, mostly in English with a sprinkling of Hebrew. “I’d learned and read a great deal about the Holocaust before that. At the time I thought the film was important mainly because it heightened international awareness of the Holocaust, but I didn’t think I had a personal connection to it.”

Indeed, it was not until years later that Teege, a German-born black woman who was given up for adoption as a child, discovered that one of the central characters in the film, Amon Goeth, was her grandfather. Many viewers recall the figure of Goeth, the brutal commander of the Plaszow concentration camp in Poland – played in the film by Ralph Fiennes – from the scenes in which he shoots Jewish inmates from the porch of his home. But Teege, who had not been in touch with either her biological mother or biological grandmother for years, had no idea about the identity of her grandfather.

The discovery came like a bolt from the blue in the summer of 2008, when she was 38 years old, as she relates in the memoir “Amon,” which was published in German in 2013 (co-authored with the German journalist Nikola Sellmair), and is due out in English this April under the title “My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi Past.”
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Damn! Damn! Damn!! My life has been so lovely
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When a black German woman discovered her grandfather was the Nazi villain of 'Schindler's List' (Original Post) malaise Feb 2015 OP
Wow. That's an intense story. mucifer Feb 2015 #1
Intense is the word malaise Feb 2015 #7
Inheritance JustAnotherGen Feb 2015 #2
Thanks for this malaise Feb 2015 #8
There is no reason she should feel bad. AngryAmish Feb 2015 #3
A lot of people are descendents of LuvNewcastle Feb 2015 #4
Yeah, but the mind games in this particular case mucifer Feb 2015 #6
_Harper's Magazine_ once ran a statistic on its "Numbers" page tblue37 Feb 2015 #10
there are films on netflix about the relatives of nazis and the leadership. fascinating roguevalley Feb 2015 #11
Most Amazing Story! Thanks Malaise for finding and sharing it! kydo Feb 2015 #5
wow d_r Feb 2015 #9
I've read the book Mira Feb 2015 #12

mucifer

(23,548 posts)
1. Wow. That's an intense story.
Sat Feb 21, 2015, 07:59 AM
Feb 2015

Interesting that she hooked up with someone who was Jewish and ended living for years in Israel BEFORE she knew about her grandfather.

LuvNewcastle

(16,846 posts)
4. A lot of people are descendents of
Sat Feb 21, 2015, 08:42 AM
Feb 2015

Genghis Khan. We all have horrible people in our family trees. It can be interesting to research your family's past, but don't take it too seriously. What your ancestors did doesn't affect your choices unless you let it.

mucifer

(23,548 posts)
6. Yeah, but the mind games in this particular case
Sat Feb 21, 2015, 10:10 AM
Feb 2015

Teege loved her grandmother who treated her well. Yet her grandmother also loved and got lots of money and status from her psychopathic grandfather. I think that would be hard to deal with emotionally.

tblue37

(65,393 posts)
10. _Harper's Magazine_ once ran a statistic on its "Numbers" page
Sat Feb 21, 2015, 12:33 PM
Feb 2015

that said the chance that a man alive at that time anywhere in the world (about 20 years ago) was a direct descendant of Ghengis Khan was 1 in 200! Obviously the chance is even greater in some parts of the weorld, but when it was all averaged out, then *any* man, anywhere, of any race had a 1 in 200 chance of being Ghengis Khan's direct descendent.

Temujin spread his seed far and wide.

roguevalley

(40,656 posts)
11. there are films on netflix about the relatives of nazis and the leadership. fascinating
Sat Feb 21, 2015, 12:49 PM
Feb 2015

stuff, the guilt many of them carry. hitler's nephew and his family live in America under an assumed name. I believe they live in Colorado though it can't be confirmed. Most of hitler's family chose not to have kids because of a fear it would replicate a monster later on. Very sad.

kydo

(2,679 posts)
5. Most Amazing Story! Thanks Malaise for finding and sharing it!
Sat Feb 21, 2015, 08:44 AM
Feb 2015

Jennifer Teege, sounds like one fabulously amazing person.

Mira

(22,380 posts)
12. I've read the book
Sat Feb 21, 2015, 12:52 PM
Feb 2015

It tears out your heart. My mother read it and called me crying. Then she put the book in the mail to me.

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