Jennifer Teege, 49, is a mixed-race German writer whose maternal grandfather was Amon Göth, an infamous Nazi concentration camp commander portrayed in the 1993 film Schindler’s List. When she discovered that fact about a decade ago, it left her emotionally traumatized. In 2015, Teege wrote The New York Times best-seller My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi Past. Parenthetically, Teege studied Hebrew for five years in Israel.
Quote: “I sometimes also notice silence in German families -– that the grandparents don’t talk. But the difference is that it’s because of guilt and maybe, hopefully, shame. It’s because they don’t want to talk about it. The grandchildren are often afraid to ask, even though it’s widely spoken of in public. In private, it’s still something else. It’s very difficult to talk about and ask these painful questions, especially, for example, if you have to ask your grandfather whether he killed someone. This is something that many people try to avoid, especially when they’re young. So they are silent.”
Sources: Wikipedia, The Canadian Jewish News
Learn more about Jennifer Teege on Wikipedia. >>
Read an interview with Jennifer Teege from The Canadian Jewish News. >>
Watch “My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me,” a talk Teege gave in Israel in 2016. >>
Photo: The Canadian Jewish News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIcb_Uh3ciY 29:58
To learn about these and many more AmazingJews, watch a compilation put together by JewOfTheWeek.net in 2015 and posted on YouTube.