Jenifer Teege is a woman
with two lives. In her first life, she describes herself as a mother and a
teacher. Teege was raised by some nuns because her mother left her when she was
four weeks old. Teege’s father was from Nigeria. Therefore, Teege has been the
only black child in her neighborhood in Munich.
In
her second life, Teege, 38 years old, discovered that her grandfather was
called Amon Goeth, a Nazi commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp in
Poland. She found this dark part of her life when she was in Hamburg and went
to the central library to look up some psychological research. In the library,
Teege picked up a book called “I have to love my father, don’t I?”. While she
was glancing over the book, she found out that her biological mother was the
author. Teege said that her mother used to visit her or picked her up to go to
see her grandmother. At one point, she didn’t see her mother, Monica Goeth, until
she was 21.
Besides Teege’s childhood depression, she had
to struggle with being the granddaughter of a murderer, Amon Goeth. In
addition, Teege declared that when she looked in the mirror, she saw some
resemblance to her grandfather such as her chin and the same lines between her
nose and mouth. Since Teege has discovered this dark family information, she
had wanted to know all about her family history. Therefore, she wrote a book
called “My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers her Family’s
Nazi Past”. Teege has given a speech at Emory University in Atlanta about her book which is about
discovering her identity and accepting her background. Today,Teege does not
have a good relationship with her mother who remarried and changed her last name to Monica Hertzwing. Through these experiences of
discovering her dark secret, Teege has been motivated to know about her father’s
family history.
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