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24
May 18 • 2017
jn
share some of her feelings and expe-
riences at Jewish Family Service’s
Annual Event at 7 p.m. Tuesday,
June 6, at Congregation Shaarey
Zedek in Southfield.
In reading her mother’s book,
Teege learned her maternal grand-
mother, Ruth Irene Kalder, with
whom she’d had a loving relation-
ship before she was adopted, was
Goeth’s longtime mistress. They
were introduced by Oskar Schindler,
the industrialist who saved hun-
dreds of Jews by giving them work in
his factories.
Before she was adopted, Teege
enjoyed a warm relationship with
Ruth Irene, who adopted Goeth’s
last name after his death and never
acknowledged his responsibility for
the mass murders at Plaszow.
Reading about Ruth Irene, Teege
said she asked herself whether she
would have been able to love such a
man the way her grandmother did.
Ruth Irene did not have a close
relationship with her daughter,
Monika, Jennifer’s mother. Ruth
Irene died in 1983, long before Teege
found the book.
As an adult, Teege had a few meet-
ings with Monika, but the relation-
ship was strained and they haven’t
met for many years. Teege also had
several cordial meetings with her
birth father, a Nigerian man who
lives in Germany.
At first, Teege hid her secret from
her parents, brother and closest
friends, two of whom are Israeli.
After learning about her grandfa-
ther, she broke off contact with her
Israeli friends for more than two
years.
“I didn’t know exactly what my
friends’ stories were,” she said.
“Where were their relatives born?
When were they killed and how did
they die? Was there a connection to
Poland, to Plaszow?”
When she finally told them, they
cried with her.
SHARING HER STORY
It was another quirk of fate that
Teege has close ties with Israel,
where she spent five years learning
Hebrew and then earning her under-
graduate degree in Middle Eastern
and African studies at Tel Aviv
University.
After high school, Teege studied
art in Paris and became friendly
with an Israeli woman, Noa Berman-
Herzberg, now a screenwriter.
Several years later, she went to
Israel for vacation, overslept and
missed her plane back to Germany.
She ended up staying. Noa and her
roommate, Anat Ben Moshe, now a
nurse, became her closest friends.
Teege has also shared her history
with her sons, now teenagers, so
they wouldn’t have to experience the
shock of discovery as she did.
“Victims’ and perpetrators’ fami-
lies are both bound by silence, by
the desire to forget,” Teege said. “In
Germany, the Holocaust is taught
in detail at school but seldom dis-
cussed within the family. Many
people of my generation are afraid
to ask exactly what their own grand-
parents did during the war.”
Teege took a Schindler’s List tour
of Krakow and privately visited the
villa where Amon Goth and Ruth
Irene Kalder had lived, as a way of
paying respect to Goeth’s victims.
She said she wanted “to show that I
will never forget them.”
Three years later, she returned
to Krakow with her Israeli friend
Anat, Anat’s son and his Israeli high-
school class. She told the class what
it was like to be the granddaughter
of a Nazi commandant. The stu-
dents were spellbound — and also
concerned about Teege’s emotional
well-being. Together, they laid flow-
ers at the memorial for the victims
and sang Hatikvah.
Teege now spends much of her
time traveling to speaking engage-
ments. She says many of her listen-
ers can relate to her themes of iden-
tity, history and family secrets.
“Today, I am occupied with the
concept of responsibility,” she said.
“Everyone bears a responsibility to
add value to their surroundings. I
carry responsibility not only as a
German woman or as Amon Goeth’s
granddaughter, but simply as a per-
son. People see that you can over-
come obstacles, that you can come
out on the other side.”
She adds it’s important to share
her story because of something
she read years ago about Bettina
Goering, another descendant of a
Nazi perpetrator. Goering and her
brother had themselves sterilized so
as not to produce any more people
like their grandfather.
“I think that sends the wrong mes-
sage,” Teege said. “There is no Nazi
gene. We can decide for ourselves
who and what we want to be.” •
Jennifer Teege will speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday,
June 6, at Congregation Shaarey Zedek in
Southfield. $18 ($5 for students). Purchase tick-
ets at jfsannualevent.org or at the door.