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My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me

a Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past
Jan 18, 2017VaughanPLDavidB rated this title 2 out of 5 stars
I usually avoid memoirs and autobiographies because I generally find them to be self-serving and self-indulgent (as this one was). Nevertheless, the compelling history helped me to overcome my reservations, and I'm not sorry that I picked it up. I would have preferred that the author had stuck to telling the story of Nazi war criminal Amon Goeth (of Schindler's List infamy), his lover Ruth Irene Kalder, and their daughter and the author's mother, Monika Goeth. However, as this was a memoir, the story was mostly about Jennifer Teege, and as is the case with most memoirists, she is the least interesting character in this tale. What started as a tight narrative about the author's grandparents and mother, turned into an aimless ramble about life with her adoptive family, her travels to Israel including two days in a kibbutz and an affair with an older married man, and an entirely unnecessary thumbnail sketch of the history of that country. After another lengthy detour into life with her husband and children, and an irrelevant tangent about her biological father, the story finally circles back to its point: the author's coming to terms with being the grandchild of a Nazi war criminal responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews. Unfortunately, by the time it got to that point, I was long past caring about her state of mind. P.S. I just finished watching the documentary Inheritance, about Monika Goeth meeting with Helen Jonas, who was enslaved by Amon Goeth to work in his house. The two women confront their respective pasts in his villa next to the Plaszow concentration camp. It was truly moving to watch and only confirms that the important story is not Jennifer Teege's, but her mother's. Monika Goeth wrote a book, "I Have To Love My Father, Don't I?", that inspired this memoir. It's a pity that it is so difficult to find. I would much rather have read that book than this one.