Review: My Grandfather would have shot me

Title: My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me : A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past

Author: Jennifer Teege with Nikola Sellmair

Date completed: 25 April 2016

Being interested in both adoption and family history, I was intrigued when I heard about Jennifer Teege's book. Not knowing until you are almost 40 who your grandfather was and unexpectedly stumbling across the dark family secret in a library book to boot.

The book primarily focused on Jennifer's "coming to grips" with the horror of finding out her grandfather was the infamous Amon Göth (portrayed by Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List). A man who killed people for sport and went to his grave hailing Hitler.

The book attempted to weave history lessons, tours of the sites of her grandfather's crimes, confronting her biological mother, telling her Israeli friends, and personal thoughts/feelings/experiences. The transitions did not feel all that smooth to me. It was very obvious when each of the authors were writing and sometimes it'd bounce back and forth between paragraphs. Part of that may be attributed to the narrator who read the co-author's work with a more confident voice and Jennifer's portion with more hesitance.

Although the delivery left something to be desired, I did find it very interesting and worth the time to explore a side of the holocaust not contemplated as much in textbooks. Stories of victims and their descendants abound, but how did the children of Nazi's cope? How does a violent family past shape one's life? How does a country recover when so many have skeletons in the closet?