Of thousands of people and was hanged in 1946, very close to the concentration camp. Brian let me go back to that chart and show your grandmother. Ruth irene kalder. Jennifer my grandmother was a woman who worked for him. She was smitten by my biological grandfather from the very beginning and they lived together, even after the war. My grandmother, she still loves him very much. She took his name, although they have not been married. She was more, i would say, she was sort of his wife. Host you mentioned plaszow, what is that . Jennifer it is a concentration camp run by my grandfather, and my grandmother and grandfather stayed there for a period of, i think, several years, together. Brian back to the chart, right below that is woman whose name is monika hertwig. Who is she . Jennifer monika is my biological mother. That is the name she took when she was married, but she was born as monika goeth. She is the daughter of them. Brian did you know her . Jennifer yes. She was my biological mother. She gave me up for adoption, but we were in contact for the first years of my life. She gave me to an orphanage when i was four weeks old, but only at seven years old we lost contact because i was adopted by a white german family. Brian have you seen her in the last seven years . Jennifer i did. Brian where does she live . Jennifer in germany. Brian where was she born . Jennifer she was born in germany. Brian lets go back to the chart, off to the side we dont have a name for this. Your biological father. He was nigerian. Jennifer yes. Brian where is he . Jennifer he is also living in germany. He was a student when he came to germany. I will talk about it more later on when we talk about the family structure. My biological parents met in the household of my grandmother. He came as a student to germany and then he went back to nigeria for a while. Today he is living in germany. He is married to a teacher. So they have more kids. I have a bunch of halfsiblings. Brian when was the first time you met your biological father . Jennifer in my mid20s. I was never really interested, maybe because i grew up with the knowledge of who my biological mother and grandmother were. But my father, i only knew his name because it was on my birth certificate. Somehow, maybe because i never met him as a child, i wasnt interested in getting to know him. Only when i was 20yearsold, and i started to analyze it. I suffered depression for a while and i became interested in getting to know more about the paternal side of my biological family. Then, in my mid20s, we met each other briefly. Brian the last name on the chart, and i know it is not the actual name, but it is your adopted parents. When were you adopted and how long did you live with them . Jennifer as i said, i came to the orphanage when i was very small. I stayed in the orphanage until i was threeyearsold. When i was threeyearsold, i had to leave the orphanage. I tried to find foster families for the kids in the orphanage. They were looking for a child, and somehow i came into the family. I stayed there as a foster child for three years, and when i was seven, they adopted me. This was also the moment when i cut with my biological mother, ties with my biological mother were cut. My it is a bit complicated, but my parents separated before i was born, and my mother married a man who was abusive. She was in an abusive relationship. And one of the reasons why my adoptive parents decided to cut ties, is that it was simply not a safe and good environment. The circumstances were really difficult. So they wanted me to have a quiet and healthy childhood. This was the reason why they cut ties. Brian you are married. When did you get married . Jennifer it is always a bit embarrassing because i am always bad with numbers. I think 10 years ago. But we have been together much longer. 14 years, i think. Brian he is german . Jennifer yes. Brian where did you meet him . Jennifer i met him in germany. Through my work. He was my boss. Classical story. We fell in love and today we beautiful children. Brian how old are they . Jennifer i cannot tell you the exact age because i try not to give too much information, for security reasons, and i want them to stay incognito. So when they are older, they can decide for themselves if they want to share their story. I can tell you they are at the beginning of high school. I do not know what grade it is here in the u. S. Brian you live where . Jennifer in germany, in hamburg. But i travel a lot so i would say i live all over the world. Brian let me show you video from 2006, it is a documentary done by james moll, it is called behind the scenes of inheritance. We will find out how he did this documentary. [video clip] in 2003, i was producing a documentary for the schindlers list dvd. A documentary about schindler survivors. And, there was a photograph of amon goeth. We needed the rights to the photograph and they were owned by monika, his daughter. I called her to ask for the rights to use the photograph. We talked for quite a while, and suddenly she said, you know, i am not my father. Immediately i thought, i want to interview this woman. In schindlers list, Ralph Fiennes portrayed amon goeth. There are those scenes where he is standing, overlooking the camp, shooting his rifle at the prisoners of the camp. That is monikas father. When she was 11yearsold, she discovered the truth about who her father was. He was a nazi. He was a concentration camp commandant and he was responsible for the murder of thousands of jews. Brian why did you write a book about this . Jennifer it was a decision i did not make immediately after i found out who my biological grandfather was. It was something i decided over a long period. When i understood more i thought what happened to me was such an extraordinary story that it needed to be shared. This was one of the main reasons i decided to write it down. There was another reason. I came across a quote by batina goering. The grandniece of goering, the commander of the German Air Force during the nazi era. She and her brother decided to sterilize themselves. When i read this, i thought it was so utterly wrong. I was stunned. I thought it was important to set a different and positive example. Because you, yourself, decide who you want to be. You know . It is not something that is connected to genes. So, this is why i wanted to write this book. Brian you published this yourself in 2013, it was named amon. In the United States it is named my grandfather would have shot me. Why did you change the name . Jennifer the title was amon, but the subtitle was always my grandfather would have shot me. I think for the u. S. Market, the name amon is not so well known. I preferred amon, because it is more like literature. And the book is a nonfiction book, but for me it is more like the reason why i decided in germany to publish it under amon, is because the name as so striking. Because, in our family, name is play a very important role. When you notice that the name of my mother is monika, and the nickname of my biological grandfather was monique. There are some other aspects. For example, the name is a jewish name. Also the name of my grandmother. A biblical name. And, there is another point because i have a halfsister. And she gave the name amon, also a jewish name, but the combination of two jewish names. It shows that the Family History is transmitted into the next generation. All of these reasons is so striking, that i thought amon is the right title. When you want to sell a book, you have to look at the market. For me it is important to spread the message. If the message is spread with this title, i am fine with it. The title is also interesting because the new title, my grandfather would have shot me because, when you look at me, you see the color of my skin. I am black. And the first thing, the title, i you think it is because i look so differently. But more importantly it is inside. You see that my character is very different. This is why the new title is a good decision. Brian another thing that you tell us is that you are six feet tall. Jennifer and i have high heels. [laughter] brian how does that impact you, when you stick out in a crowd . Jennifer i always stick out. I grew up in a neighborhood in germany where i was the only black child. For me, being someone not average is so normal. When i walk in the street, i dont notice people looking at me. It is funny because my husband is also very tall, but only when i am surrounded, for example, in asia, where the people are very small, it is very intense that people look at us. Normally, now, im so used to it. Brian going back to your grandfather, amon goeth. He died at age 37. If we were to follow him around, and watch the awful things that he did, what would we see . Ms. Teege i dont know i dont understand. Brian i said, if we were to follow him around when he was alive, as the head of this concentration camp and he did so many bad things, what would we see that he did . Shooting people and dogs and all that. Jennifer we would see a tremendously cruel person. A person who was, yes i mean, he was capable he had two dogs, he called them ralph and rolph. He trained them to tear people apart. I think this sums it up very good. There was a pleasure that he felt when he killed people. This is something, when you are normal, if you dont have this aspect in your personality, it is very difficult to grasp. I remember in the very beginning, when i discovered to who my biological grandfather was, this aspect of his personality, but cruelty, was one of the fact theres that was most difficult for me to come to terms with. Because it is something that is so far from what you can imagine how people can be. Now, maybe when we have the political situation of today and thinking about isis, people who slaughter other people, it somehow gets normal. But this is not normal. This is something that you cant you cant treat people like this. It is something personal within yourself that should be humanity, it is an aspect. That when you look at the nazi era and my grandfather got lost. Brian when he was hanged after the war in 1946, who hanged him . Jennifer he was hanged by the polish government. He was extradited to poland by with the commandant of auschwitz. It was an interesting detail, what i read, when they arrived in poland, they wanted to stone him. You would imagine they would want to stone rudolf hess, because he was more known, but because of his cruelty, the way that he, himself, killed people. The masses wanted to stone him. Brian let me show some video. Because in the end, when he was hanged, it was strange to see. And here is the end of your grandfather, when he was put to death. [video clip] [no audio] brian we are not going to show the last part where he was actually hanged. Im sure you have seen that before. What was your reaction . Jennifer i saw the execution hours after i discovered the biography of my mother in the library, so i was already in shock. And when i saw the execution for the first time, i did not expect that it would not work out. I remember sitting in front of the tv. I did not know whether to cry or laugh, not whether to cry because i was sad, but this was something that was not real. Interestingly, i read that today i dont know, maybe it is something that was just invented. But historians tried to figure out whether this was really my grandfather. Some say that it was ludwig fischer, maybe it is the hair that is not right, but i always thought it was my biological grandfather. Someone asked me if i thought he deserved to be hanged, it is a difficult question. He did so much evil that he needed a punishment. I am against the Death Penalty. I am a person who believes that the Death Penalty is something that you have to be very careful, because if you make a mistake, you cannot change it. I think my grandfather deserved the highest punishment that you can get, yes. Brian how many people died in the concentration camp around where plaszow, poland is . Jennifer i dont know. Brian in your book you talk about auschwitz, one Million People . Jennifer thousands. If you look at the trial of my grandfather, he was put on trial for thousands of jews. He was also involved in the eviction of the ghetto in krakow. I dont go how to sum it up. The number is not relevant because it is too many. It is thousands. But, i cannot give you an exact number. I do not know. Brian what did you discover about why they hated jews so much . Jennifer you mean the nazis . Brian yes. What was the reason . Jennifer it is a difficult question. I think, when you look at the nazi era, it was there was an interesting experiment here done after the war. They wanted to find out why people treat other people the way they treated them in the nazi era. I think it was not only the jews i think there were others who were killed. People who did not somehow have the the ideology, the nazi ideology, it was also the gypsies. But especially the jews. I think the system is set so people follow the authority. There are a lot of people who did not reflect. They were just following the authority. For example, if you look at my grandmother, my grandmother must have been an antisemite. She lived with my grandfather and supported the system. After the war, i told you my parents met in the household of my grandmother. My grandmother somehow adopted a different point of view. So it is so weird. I cannot give you an answer why this happened. Brian james moll who did the documentary inheritance. I know that you watched that. It was run on pbs, and the bbc. Here is your mother talking about her father, which is your grandfather. [video clip] i asked my grandmother, grandmother, do i have a father, too . She said, monika, every child has a father. I asked, where is my father . She said, like millions of men he died for his country. He is dead. Shot down. I believed her. I didnt know why i shouldnt believe her. For me, he was everything. He was a great man, a soldier. Everybody told me, if my father had been alive, he was such a nice man and would do everything for me. Brian what is your mom like . Jennifer my mom is a difficult person. She is very typical for the secondgeneration. My mother was always haunted by the past, and i think because it was her father it was very difficult for her to separate. If you look at her appearance, the photos that we see now, she looks a bit happier than the other pictures, in the way that i somehow perceive her. But she has been you see, she walks a bit like the weight is on her shoulders. She cannot somehow leave the past behind. I think because it is the father, and the identification with parents for everyone, looking at psychology, is so strong that she could never somehow find her own life. She is haunted by the past until today. This is typical for the second generation. There is another famous example, nicolas frank, the son of hans frank, the deputy of hitler. In occupied poland. He has a photo of his father, who was hanged, with a broken neck in his wallet. He looks at it, he says, every day. So they go on and they cannot leave the past behind. They live with it. They feel guilty very often. Yes, this is something i think is a problem for the second generation. I also think it is a bit of a problem for my mother. Brian there are a lot of examples of what you talk about here. There are examples on video of kathrine himmler, she was Heinrich Himmlers great niece. Lets watch the video of what she has to say about the relationship. [video clip] [speaking foreign language] brian have you run into the same thing where people dont like the name goeth, they just want it to go away . Jennifer not for me. I did not have a relationship with that name, it was just a random name. When i found out who my mother was, this was the first time i understood this was the name connected to amon goeth of the nazi party. When i watch the video, i notice something. Katrin himmler is married to a jewish guy today. Those are the sentiments of perpetrators who knew from the very beginning about their family past. For me it is very different. I found out by coincidence. I had a life before and a strong identity before. So i never only identified myself by being goeth, the granddaughter of amon goeth. I identify myself by being the name jennifer. I was always identified as jennifer. It was far easier for me in the long run to find my own identity. For all these people that grow up with other difficult heritage, it was almost impossible to leave the past behind. If i decide to leave it behind, it does not mean that i forget. You know . But, i want to set a different example, insofar, that if you look back, it doesnt help anyone. The last word of my book is hope. Because i think that you have to look forward. In my personal example, i have two children. I never had a real mother myself, so when i was so depressed, i could not be a good mother to them. This is one of the reasons i decided, no, i have to go in a different direction. And what i did was, i traveled to krakow. In krakow, the former concentration camp does not exist anymore. What you have today is only a statue or memorial where you can go. And when i understood that i have to leave the past behind, but i dont want to forget. I felt it would be a good thing to lay flowers. To have a symbolic exit somehow. To somehow go on with my life, but not to forget. To honor the victims but to go on and live in the future, to try to see what we can do. To somehow turn it around. You know, to make something positive out of it. Brian you tell us in the book you were born in 1975. If i do the math right, you are 45yearsold. Jennifer yes. Brian when did you find out that amon goeth was your grandfather . Jennifer i was 38yearsold. Brian how did it happen . Jennifer on a sunny day in august. Brian what city . Jennifer hamburg. Still my hometown. It was a regular and ordinary day. I did not suspect anything. In the morning i got up, my kids were much younger. I drove them to preschool. I was in the library, it is a huge library with thousands of books. I was there for maybe half an hour, i was in the psychology department. That is interesting, because it was not the history department. I saw a small book with a red cover that grabbed my attention. I could just read the spine, and there was the title i have to love my father, dont i . The name of the author was a journalist. I looked at the cover quickly, and there was a small photograph of a woman, a portrait, and there was the subtitle and it said the life story of monika goeth, daughter of the commander of the krakowplaszow concentration camp, amon goeth, of schindlers list. I started to read it slowly, but faster and faster. The book contained text but also photographs and there was one that reminded me of my mother. A woman with dark hair, and another picture, this was the picture of a woman in a flower dress. And, i had one single picture of my grandmother, for all these years that i kept. The woman in the photo had the exact same dress. Under the photo was a caption that said ruth irene so i continued to skim the book and in the end there was biographical details. The name of the woman, the birthdate and where she was born. At this moment i understood that it was not a regular book in my hands. Brian lets go back to the chart we have of how everyone is connected. The picture to the