My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past (20 page)

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Jennifer Teege’s brother, Matthias, notices that his sister is a very tense and anxious kind of mother to her sons: “She is very protective of her children, maybe too protective.”

Matthias believes that Jennifer demands too much of herself: “In Israel, she strove to be the perfect student. Now she aims to be the perfect mother.” Jennifer’s perception of the model mother is a mother who is there for her children 24/7, he explains. “She tries to offer them the kind of childhood she never had. She tries to be the mother she would have liked to have.”

After her marriage to Goetz and the birth of her sons, Jennifer Teege’s depression gave way to a more bearable sadness. Her life seemed secure—until the day, at age 38, she found the book about her mother.

Suddenly, Anat and Noa stopped hearing from their friend. Anat says: “We would normally be in regular contact, but then it just ended abruptly. For months, we didn’t hear a word from Jennifer. Noa and I were really worried; we kept sending her emails: ‘What’s up with you? Please write to us!’”

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AFTER I FOUND THE BOOK
about my mother, I couldn’t bring myself to write to Noa and Anat. I needed time to recover from the shock.

When I was ready to turn to my friends in Israel, I realized how hard it was. It felt as if I had led some kind of double life all these years. As if I had been lying to my friends and all the people around me.

Even though the family secret was not my fault, I had a guilty conscience. I was particularly scared of telling Noa; I didn’t know how she would cope. Some things affected her deeply.

Had Noa lost any relatives during the Holocaust? We had discussed the subject during my studies in Israel. I knew that none of her close family members had been murdered, but I knew nothing of her more distant relations. Had anyone been killed at Płaszów? If she had mentioned it at the time, I might not have taken note.

I would have felt more comfortable telling my story to Anat; she is not unsettled so easily. But I needed to talk to Noa first.

And so I didn’t confide in either of my friends, and I only answered their emails sporadically. We didn’t see each other for nearly three years.

Every year at Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, Noa sent me photos of her family. Sometimes she would write to me on the occasion of other Jewish festivals, too, or for family events. I usually replied with just a few short sentences.

Finally, Noa announced that she was coming to the next Berlinale, Berlin’s annual international film festival. Noa had
become
a screenwriter in Israel. Every time she came to the Berlinale, we would try to meet up; our reunions there had become a little ritual. I hadn’t been in touch for a long time—if I didn’t go to Berlin now, she would think that I was deliberately trying to avoid her.

But on the other hand, I couldn’t go to the festival and talk with Noa about trivial matters. I couldn’t and wouldn’t lie to her if she asked what was up with me. We had known each other for too long for that.

The Berlinale was going to show a film for which Noa had written the screenplay; it was about an autistic boy. My old roommate Tzahi played one of the main characters.

I knew how long Noa had been working on this screenplay—for years. She was always talking about it. Now, she had invited me to Berlin; she wanted me to sit next to her when it was shown at the cinema. It would be her big moment—one I wanted to share with her, not destroy with my story.

I had once made the mistake of telling a good friend my family’s story at a birthday party. My friend had become so upset that she couldn’t enjoy the rest of the party.

I wrote a long email to Noa’s husband Yoel and explained the difficult situation I found myself in: There was something on my mind that I needed to discuss with Noa, but I didn’t want to tell her at the film festival. I wrote down the whole story and asked him to share it with Noa. I also asked him how many relatives he and Noa had lost in the Holocaust, and if anyone they knew had died in Płaszów.

Yoel wrote back: “We have all lost someone. The Holocaust is in our DNA, it is why we are here. But how is that your fault? The Berlin film festival is a great moment for Noa, but you won’t spoil it for her. She is longing to see you again, she’s missing you. I am sure that she will listen to your story and help you however she can. You don’t need to spare her. You need us to support and look after you now, not the other way round. Noa will always be your friend, in good times and bad.”

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Yoel and Noa are sitting in their apartment in the center of Tel Aviv as they tell their family stories.

Noa’s father’s family was living in the US when Hitler came to power; they were safe.

Noa’s mother’s family was from Poland and Russia. Her maternal grandmother was living in Stolin, Belarus, when the war broke out. She was deported to Siberia under Stalin. Her parents, her four siblings, and their children stayed behind and were killed by Germans in a massacre, along with hundreds of other Jews.

Relatives of Noa’s maternal grandfather were killed in the ghetto of Pinsk in what was then Poland. His brother died in the Majdanek concentration camp, near Lublin.

Noa’s husband, Yoel, also lost relatives in Poland. He recalls how in the seventies, when they were still children, he and his friends were surprised to learn that a neighbor owned a Volkswagen Beetle. This neighbor had been imprisoned in a concentration camp—and now he was driving a German car!

That was a long time ago, Yoel says. He laughs and points to his stove: Siemens!

In Yoel’s hometown, there were couples who adopted children because they could not have children themselves: They had become infertile due to the abuse and medical experiments they had suffered in concentration camps. They were severely traumatized people, living in constant fear that their adoptive children would one day disappear or be taken away from them.

Yoel very carefully told his wife what he had learned from Jennifer’s email. Noa says that she was shocked: “I had never been so intimate with a close relative of a Nazi criminal.” Noa had other German friends, too, and wondered what crimes their grandfathers might have committed during the war.

Why had she never asked? “At first I didn’t dare ask about their grandparents. And later the subject was so far removed. If you are friends with someone, you don’t discuss whether their grandparents may have killed or informed on your grandparents. It’s particularly striking in Jenny’s case: Her and Amon Goeth—I just can’t wrap my head around it!”

Noa is convinced: “It was fate that I met Jenny as a young woman. It would have been impossible to strike up a friendship if we had known that her grandfather was a concentration camp commandant. How could she have come up to me, with such a rucksack full of guilt? How could I have met her without any bias?”

It would have been so complicated, she adds—a tense, “reaching hands across the graves” sort of friendship.

Today, Noa explains, she can deal with Jennifer’s story. She has known Jennifer for twenty years and sees her only as a friend, not as the granddaughter of a Nazi: “I told her, forget Amon Goeth. You are Jenny! Please, come!”

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I AM BACK IN ISRAEL NOW,
at Noa’s. She has moved; I had to hunt for her new apartment. After we embrace and Noa shows me around, we sit in the sun on her patio, talking and watching the goings-on in the street below. It is like always, only better, since now there is nothing between us.

A few weeks ago I was sitting next to Noa in the dark, watching clips of her film at the Berlin film festival. It was just as I had hoped—sharing that significant moment in her life.

Now, in Tel Aviv, Noa’s film is showing at the Dizengoff Center downtown. That evening, we go to see the full-length movie. It is called
Mabul (The Flood)
. We see Tzahi on screen, playing the father. I like the story; it’s about a family with an autistic son. It shows how important it is to stick together and not give up, even in trying times.

After the movie, Noa and I go to a café. We talk about all the things we have done and been through together. We are closer than ever. There is nothing left to hide; everything feels good and right.

After a quick visit to Jerusalem, I travel to Eilat. To Anat. I had asked Noa to tell her everything.

Jennifer Teege and her friend Noa in a café in Tel Aviv

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Anat cried when she heard Jennifer’s story.

This scene from
Schindler’s List
instantly came to her mind: a man on his balcony, shooting people as a pastime. Jennifer’s grandfather.

Anat switched the film off at the balcony scene. She couldn’t bear it.

When Anat shows old, faded family photographs, she often explains, “he was shot,” or “she was gassed.”

Anat’s mother’s family was originally from Poland. Anat’s great-grandparents and an uncle were probably killed in Sobibor—a death camp in the then-district of Lublin where Amon Goeth was posted temporarily before he came to Krakow.

Anat’s father was a German Jew from Hanover; he escaped to Israel in 1935. His relatives who stayed behind in Germany were all killed.

After the war, Anat’s father returned to Germany only once. When he came back to Israel, he told his children, “They are still the same, they haven’t changed.”

Anat’s father hated the Germans, and he hated God for allowing it all to happen. Anat grew up with a bitter, old man for a father. But shortly before his death, he would suddenly only watch German TV and only listen to German radio stations.

Jennifer and Anat are sitting side by side on the porch of Anat’s house in Kibbutz Eilot. Anat has made fresh mint tea and put dates on the table. She is barefoot, as are most people here; her blonde, shoulder-length hair is disheveled, and she is wearing a baggy T-shirt.

Children are running across the well-tended lawns. Nowadays, young families choose to live on a kibbutz because they want their children to grow up in a safe environment, close to nature and alongside other children of the same age. The communal nurseries are still here, but the children live at home with their parents. Anat says that she would not have joined Alon on the kibbutz if their children would have had to grow up in a children’s house, as her husband did.

Today, Kibbutz Eilot is evocative of a modern townhouse complex anywhere: Children are laughing and cats are meowing; everyone knows everyone. But it has retained its strong communal spirit: There are no hedges or fences between the individual homes, and everyone pays their income into the communal pot. At the end of the day, there’s not much left for the individual.

Jennifer Teege took the desert road to come here, past Bedouin settlements and signs warning of camels in the road. The longer she drove through the Negev desert, the more relaxed she seemed to become.

It has been a long journey to get to this point. She has put Krakow behind her, and a small village in Bavaria.

Jennifer and Anat are holding hands; Jennifer is stroking Anat’s hand. Anat has put on Jennifer’s enormous sunglasses—a fashionable model that doesn’t seem quite right for her. “I’ll be the talk of the kibbutz in these,” Anat says and laughs.

Anat’s elder son, Kai, is seventeen now—nearly the same age Anat and Jennifer were when they first met. For the last two years, Kai’s history lessons have been mainly about the Holocaust. Anat says that her son is now filled with rage against the Germans.

Soon, Kai will go on a school trip to visit various concentration camps in Poland—standard practice for Israeli teenagers. Anat would like Jennifer to go with them, would like a German with her particular history to be with Kai’s class when they visit Płaszów.

Jennifer Teege with her friend Anat and Anat’s second son, Stav, in Kibbutz Eilot in 2011

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I HAVE TO THINK ABOUT WHETHER
I want to accompany Kai and his classmates on their trip. I’d like to look forward now, not back.

We walk through the kibbutz. Anat shows me the new guesthouses. The next time I come, I want to bring my husband and my sons. I’ve always wanted to visit Israel as a family—but not until my children are old enough to understand this complicated country.