Book
Review: My Grandfather Would Have
Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi Past by Jennifer Teege
One day
Jennifer Teege picked up a book in a library in Hamburg Germany. The title was I Have to Love My Father
Don’t It? written by Monika Goeth.
This was her mother’s name! Looking inside the book she found pictures
of her Grandmother Ruth Irene Kalder Goeth and of her Grandfather, the master
of the Plaszow Concentration Camp…Amon Goeth!
This event in a library was the beginning of the author’s research of
her family’s Nazi past. The author
relates her horror which propels her into depression. Slowly and inexorably she
pulls together all the loose tendrils of her existence; her mother’s abandonment as a child, finding
her Nigerian father, gradually reconciling the loving grandmother who cared for
her with the woman besotted with love for a man who shot Jewish people for
sport in the concentration camp near the grounds of their home. Jennifer Teege’s journey takes her to the
sites of the Plaszow and Auschwitz concentration camps, to her friends in Tele
vi and other parts of the Middle East who had family members impacted and finally to the families of survivors of the
Holocaust.
This was a
difficult read but so worth the effort.
It brings a personal resonance to the horrors of a time past and helps
the reader to understand that the effects of that time live on generations
after the events. One weeps with and
cheers Jennifer Teege’s courage, humility and willingness to open wounds to
build understanding of a time we must never revisit.
Review by
Karen
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