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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhen 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 Spielbergs film Schindlers List. She hadnt 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 didnt 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. Id 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 didnt 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 Familys Nazi Past.
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Damn! Damn! Damn!! My life has been so lovely
mucifer
(23,548 posts)Interesting that she hooked up with someone who was Jewish and ended living for years in Israel BEFORE she knew about her grandfather.
malaise
(269,026 posts)Made me give thanks for my life
JustAnotherGen
(31,828 posts)A very good companion piece:
http://www.pbs.org/pov/inheritance/interview.php
malaise
(269,026 posts)AngryAmish
(25,704 posts)She did nothing.
LuvNewcastle
(16,846 posts)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)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)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)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)Jennifer Teege, sounds like one fabulously amazing person.
That is really amazing
Mira
(22,380 posts)It tears out your heart. My mother read it and called me crying. Then she put the book in the mail to me.