Discoveries as reflection of the past takes shocking form in idea of family

MY GRANDFATHER WOULD HAVE SHOT ME: A BLACK WOMAN DISCOVERS HER FAMILY’S NAZI PAST Jennifer Teege, Nikola Sellmair, Carolin Sommer Hodder & Stoughton

AT THE age of 38, mixed-race German-born Jennifer Teege’s world collapsed around her when she stumbled on the information her biological grandfather (Teege grew up in an orphanage, was fostered when she was three, and officially adopted by her new family three years later) was the sadistic Nazi commandant Amon Goeth – made infamous by Ralph Fiennes’ depiction of him in Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List.

Written in collaboration with the journalist Nikola Sellmair, My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi Past is a powerful account of Teege’s struggle for resolution and redemption, the book in itself a therapeutic workingthrough of her history, as well as a meditation on family – “Is it something we inherit, or something we build?” she asks – and intergenerational guilt.

The content is shared between the two contributors; Teege’s highly emotive recollections and musings cleverly offset against the more detached journalist tone of Sellmair’s material.

“Family secrets are corrosive,” Teege concludes. First floored by the truth, the knowledge eventually “released” her. Paul Glaser, the Dutch author of Dancing With The Enemy: My Family’s Holocaust Secret (Oneworld) would surely agree with the former comment, but whether the latter, I’m not so sure. Like Teege, he was forced to rethink his identity when as an adult, he uncovered his Jewish heritage, a complete surprise given that he was raised a Catholic and his parents never hinted at the family’s past.

Seventy-two percent of the Jewish population of the Netherlands perished during World War II. It is an astonish- ingly high figure; in Germany itself, for example, 24 percent died. One of the few to survive was the author’s aunt, Rosie Glaser, a free-spirited dance teacher who outlived betrayals by both her husband and lover, not to mention the medical experiments and gas chambers of Auschwitz.

Rosie’s story, told by her nephew, using the wealth of photographs, diary entries and correspondence Rosie kept, supplemented by information from official documents and historical accounts, is an aston- ishing testament to a woman who adamantly refused to give up despite her circumstances, but this isn’t a straightforward celebration of resilience.

There are complex footnotes to her tale that contradict official accounts of “heroic resistance and solidarity”, instead exposing her country’s disregard for its Jewish citizens and its post-war anti-Semitism; the unearthing of which leaves Glaser dwelling in a hinterland of old hurts and betrayals, amid a family torn apart by the tragedies it suffered.

Similar preoccupations with secrets and family ties can be found in Tim Clare’s debut novel The Honours (Canongate), though the ending is a very different beast. Set in Norfolk in 1935, 13-year-old Delphine Venner has gone to live at Alderberen Hall with her mother and father as part of the elite society there – a rather uninspiring cast of Cluedo-like stock characters. “War is coming,” we are warned, but when it arrives, it is not the conflict we are primed to expect. – The Independent