When Jennifer Teege, a German-Nigerian woman, happened to pluck a library book from the shelf, she had no idea that her life would be irrevocably altered. Recognizing photos of her mother and grandmother in the book, she discovers a horrifying fact: Her grandfather was Amon Goeth, the vicious Nazi commandant chillingly depicted by Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List—a man known and reviled the world over.
Although raised in an orphanage and eventually adopted, Teege had some contact with her biological mother and grandmother as a child. Yet neither revealed that Teege's grandfather was the Nazi "butcher of Plaszów," executed for crimes against humanity in 1946. The more Teege reads about Amon Goeth, the more certain she becomes: If her grandfather had met her—a black woman—he would have killed her.
Teege's discovery sends her, at age 38, into a severe depression—and on a quest to unearth and fully comprehend her family's haunted history. Her research takes her to Krakow—to the sites of the Jewish ghetto her grandfather "cleared" in 1943 and the Plaszów concentration camp he then commanded—and back to Israel, where she herself once attended college, learned fluent Hebrew, and formed lasting friendships. Teege struggles to reconnect with her estranged mother Monika, and to accept that her beloved grandmother once lived in luxury as Amon Goeth's mistress at Plaszów.
Teege's story is cowritten by award-winning journalist Nikola Sellmair, who also contributes a second, interwoven narrative that draws on original interviews with Teege's family and friends and adds historical context. Ultimately, Teege's resolute search for the truth leads her, step by step, to the possibility of her own liberation.
229 pages (April 2015)
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Title Read-alikes: Stalin's Daughter by Rosemary Sullivan; The Perfect Nazi by Martin Davidson; The Other Madisons by Bettye Kearse; On Hitler's Mountain by Irmgard A. Hunt; A Guest at the Shooter's Banquet by Rita Gabis; Castro's Daughter by Alina Fernandez Revuelta; Inge's War by Svenja O'Donnell; The Choice by Edith Eva Eger; Belonging by Nora Krug; The Takeaway Men by Meryl Ain; When a Toy Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew by Hedrika de Vries; History of a Disappearance by Filip Springer; and Irena's Children by Tilar J. Mazzeo.
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