Nikola Sellmair. (2016). My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past. The Experiment.

Nikola Sellmair. 2016. My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past. The Experiment.

Nikola Sellmair, My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past. The Experiment, 2016.

Nikola Sellmair. My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past. The Experiment, 2016.

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My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me

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A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past

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1. • value: family
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39. • value: high schoolers
40. • value: Lineage
41. • value: woman
42. • value: overcoming
43. • value: Fatherland
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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Sellmair, Nikola
   • name: Nikola Sellmair
2. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Teege, Jennifer
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2016-04-05T00:00:00-04:00

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My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me

fullDescription

Now in paperback: The New York Times bestselling memoir hailed as "unforgettable" (Publishers Weekly) and "a stunning memoir of cultural trauma and personal identity" (Booklist).

At age 38, Jennifer Teege happened to pluck a library book from the shelf—and discovered a horrifying fact: Her grandfather was Amon Goeth, the vicious Nazi commandant depicted in Schindler's List. Reviled as the "butcher of Plaszów," Goeth was executed in 1946. The more Teege learned about him, the more certain she became: If her grandfather had met her—a black woman—he would have killed her.

Teege's discovery sends her into a severe depression—and fills her with questions: Why did her birth mother withhold this chilling secret? How could her grandmother have loved a mass murderer? Can evil be inherited?

Teege's story is cowritten by Nikola Sellmair, who also adds historical context and insight from Teege's family and friends, in an interwoven narrative. Ultimately, Teege's search for the truth leads her, step by step, to the possibility of her own liberation.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: People magazine
   • content: New York Times Bestseller
     2015 INDIEFAB Honorable Mention for Autobiography & Memoir
     
     "Jennifer Teege's new memoir traces the pain of discovering her grandfather was the real-life 'Nazi butcher' from Schindler's List.
2. • premium: False
   • source: Washington Post
   • content: Haunting and unflinching . . . . A memoir, an adoption story and a geopolitical history lesson, all blended seamlessly into an account of Teege's exploration of her roots.
3. • premium: False
   • source: Booklist, starred review
   • content: A stunning memoir of cultural trauma and personal identity.
4. • premium: False
   • source: Publishers Weekly
   • content: Unforgettable. . . . Teege's quest to discover her personal history is empowering.
5. • premium: False
   • source: Library Journal, starred review
   • content: An important addition to narratives written by descendants of war criminals. A gripping read, highly recommended for anyone interested in history, memoirs, and biography.
6. • premium: False
   • source: John Mutter, Shelf Awareness
   • content: [An] amazing story of horror and reconciliation and love.
7. • premium: False
   • source: Michael Rothberg, Public Books
   • content: [Jennifer Teege's] memoir has much to teach us about the ordinary, intimate conditions in which political violence—and the reckoning that follows—take place.
8. • premium: False
   • source: Association of Jewish Libraries
   • content: The high quality of the writing helps to convey this incredible but amazingly true story.
9. • premium: False
   • source: Gerhard L. Weinberg, History Book Club
   • content: This book is not for the faint of heart, but it is fascinating and fair. There are no easy answers to the issues raised in this book, but they exist for both groups of descendants. Readers will be challenged to think about a major event in world history from a perspective that is rare but surely significant.
10. • premium: False
    • source: The Independent (UK)
    • content: A powerful account of Teege's struggle for resolution and redemption, the book [is] itself a therapeutic working-through of her history, as well as a meditation on family.
11. • premium: False
    • source: Seattle Times
    • content: Courageous. . . . the memoir invites rereading to fully absorb Teege's painful search for answers, for a sense of identity and belonging and for inner peace. Readers won't help but feel for her. Teege discovers, however, that history's shattering truths have the potential to make us more whole.
12. • premium: False
    • source: Seattle Weekly
    • content: [Teege's] message is an important one—that we have the power to decide who we are.
13. • premium: False
    • source: The Jewish Book Council
    • content: In honest, direct, and absorbing prose, Teege and coauthor Nikola Sellmair confront highly personal repercussions of the Holocaust. . . . The book's real triumph is in its nuanced, universally appealing portrait of an individual searching for her place in the world. Just as Teege's chance encounter with a library book led her to question the fundamental assumptions of her life, so too the reader. . . will be forced to reconsider the wide-ranging impact of past injustices on present-day relationships.
14. • premium: False
    • source: In These Times
    • content: A discomfiting but clear-eyed journey of self-discovery and identity reconciliation that first-time author Teege relates with admirable straightforwardness and equanimity.
15. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      March 30, 2015
      In this unforgettable memoir, Teege, writing with journalist Sellmair, discovers secrets about her family during WWII. Teege, a part-Nigerian German working in the advertising industry, shakes up her quiet married life after discovering a book, Matthias Kessler’s I Have to Love My Father, that inspires her to unravel her convoluted family history. She’s horrified to learn that her biological mother’s father was infamous SS leader Amon Goeth. As depicted in Schindler’s List, Goeth liquidated the Krakow ghetto in Poland, ran the Plaszow death camp, and was captured by Americans and hanged in 1946. Teege’s travels in Poland, Germany, and the Middle East further expose her family’s troubled legacy. Her biological mother, Monika, became pregnant with Teege after an affair with a Nigerian student, and placed the baby for adoption; Monika’s unapologetic mother, Ruth, makes excuses for Goeth, who was her lover. Teege’s quest to discover her personal history is empowering.

16. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      Starred review from March 15, 2015
      In a public library one day, Teege, a German Nigerian woman, ran across a book that shook her to the very core and changed her life forever. The book was an account by a woman traumatized by the fact that her father was Amon Goeth, the Nazi commandant known as the Butcher of Plaszow. Scanning the book's photos, Teege slowly and with horrified reluctance recognized that the author was her mother, a woman she hadn't seen since childhood, when she was first placed in an orphanage and later adopted. Her grandmother, of whom she had fond memories, was the mistress of the Nazi mass murderer of Jews portrayed in Schindler's List. In the following months, Teege battled depression as she traced her family history, reconnected with her emotionally distant mother, and traveled to Poland to visit death camps. Hardest of all was gathering the courage to reconnect with Israeli friends she feared would now reject her, despite their long history. Suffering the twin traumas of being given up for adoption and discovering a monstrous heritage, Teege was in cultural and emotional turmoil until she made peace with her past. Interspersed with Teege's first-person recollections of personal trauma are journalist Sellmair's accounts of Goeth's history and the broader social trauma of the Holocaust. A stunning memoir of cultural damage and personal identity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

17. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      Starred review from May 15, 2015
      

      What if you pulled a book with an intriguing title off the shelf in your local library and discovered that your grandfather was Amon Goethe, the Nazi commandant made infamous in Steven Spielberg's movie Schindler's List? When the author does, she questions everything about herself, her biological and adoptive families, and all of her other relationships. After she starts to get over her initial shock and depression, Teege, a German Nigerian woman whose mother, Goethe's daughter, put her up for adoption, begins a harrowing journey of self-discovery. She shares her nightmares, heartbreaks, and triumphs throughout an emotional quest. Award-winning journalist Sellmair's parallel narrative provides historical background on Nazi concentration camps and the Holocaust in addition to biographical information gained through interviews with Teege's friends and family. Includes 19 black-and-white photographs and a section for further resources. VERDICT Originally published in German as Amon: mein Grossvater hatte mich erschossen, Teege's account is an important addition to narratives written by descendants of war criminals. A gripping read, highly recommended for anyone interested in history, memoirs, and biography. [See Prepub "Midwinter Galley Preview," 1/12/15.]--Venessa Hughes, Buffalo, NY

      Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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Now in paperback: The New York Times bestselling memoir hailed as "unforgettable" (Publishers Weekly) and "a stunning memoir of cultural trauma and personal identity" (Booklist).

At age 38, Jennifer Teege happened to pluck a library book from the shelf—and discovered a horrifying fact: Her grandfather was Amon Goeth, the vicious Nazi commandant depicted in Schindler's List. Reviled as the "butcher of Plaszów," Goeth was executed in 1946. The more Teege learned about him, the more certain she became: If her grandfather had met her—a black woman—he would have killed her.

Teege's discovery sends her into a severe depression—and fills her with questions: Why did her birth mother withhold this chilling secret? How could her grandmother have loved a mass murderer? Can evil be inherited?

Teege's story is cowritten by Nikola Sellmair, who also adds historical context and insight...

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A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past

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