Jennifer Teege

Jennifer Teege spent her earliest years in a Catholic orphanage. Teege’s German mother had a brief relationship with Teege’s Nigerian father, but they were no longer together by the time Teege was born. At that time in Germany, it was common for single mothers who had to work to place their children in an orphanage. They still had visitation rights and often the children would spend weekends with their mothers or other family. When she was a toddler, Teege was taken in by a foster family. She still saw her mother and grandmother regularly until she was adopted by her foster family.

Teege’s sense of identity was upended at age 38 when she picked up a random book off of a library shelf. She found she was holding a book about her mother and her mother’s father, the Nazi war criminal Amon Goeth, the concentration camp commandant known to many from the film Schindler’s List. Teege sought out a therapist to help her deal with this new knowledge as well as the abandonment issues stemming from her relationships with her birth mother and grandmother. Also, Teege had lived and studied in Israel for several years in her twenties, and she didn’t know how to tell her Israeli friends that her grandfather had been a mass murderer of Jews.

This book is an odd mix of memoir and biography, with parts written by Teege interspersed with more objective commentary by her co-author, Nikola Sellmair. Teege contextualizes her individual psychological trauma with that of other descendants of Nazi war criminals, descendants of average Germans who sympathized with the Nazi party, and descendants of Holocaust survivors. She also reflects on generational differences between the children and the grandchildren of war criminals and Holocaust survivors. Teege’s personal journey is an example of how one reckons with one’s past and the weight of family secrets in order to contribute to a better future.… (mer)

This memoir is a very important book because Jennifer Teege's story is very unique and has great historical and philosophical consequence. A person of color, she was raised in Germany and adopted at age 7 and sent to school in Israel for years, where she learned Hebrew. At age 38, she learns that her grandfather was a famous Nazi. How history has affected her life, both before she knew the truth and afterward, makes for a fascinating read.
I give the book 4 stars because it didn't have the greatest structure, but it's a book that should affect every reader in profound ways.… (mer)