Cspan jennifer guest, in your book, you wrote, i am the granddaughter of a mass murderer. How hard was that . Guest to find out was very difficult. Now, to live with it is ok because a long time passed and i came to terms with the fact. Today, i think that yes, it is a big responsibility, but its not a burden anymore. Cspan your book, which is called, my grandfather would have shot me, has all of the characters in your life and i want to put on the screen what theres the book on the screen, but i also want to put on the screen the chart that shows your family and have you briefly explain, and well come back and talk about it, there you can see up at the top is your grandfather on the right, amon goeth. Who was he . Guest my grandfather was a war criminal. Hes known to millions of people because he was depicted in the move, schindlers list, but he was not a movie character. I mean, he was a real person and he was put on trial in poland after the war. He was convicted of the murder of thousands of people and he was hanged after the war in 1946, very close to the former concentration camp in plaszow. Cspan let me go back to that chart and show your grandmother, and what was her relationship to amon goeth, Ruth Irene Kalder . Guest my grandmother was a women that met my grandfather while she was working for oscar schindler. They he introduced her to him, and they she was smitten by my grandfather my biological grandfather from very beginning, and they lived together in plaszow and even after the war, and my grandmother still she loved him very much. She took on his name, although they hadnt been married, but they she was more, i would say, like, she was sort of his wife. Cspan you mentioned, plaszow. What is that . Guest plaszow is the concentration camp. Its concentration camp that was run by my grandfather and my grandmother and my grandfather, you know, stayed there for a period of, i think, yes, several years together. Cspan go back to the chart. Right below that is a woman whose name is Monika Hartwig. Who is she . Guest Monika Hartwig is my biological mother. She married and this her married the name that she took on when she was married, but shes also monika she was born as monika goeth, and shes the daughter of ruth irene and amon. Cspan did you know her . Guest yes, shes my biological mother and i she gave me up for adoption, but we were in contact for yes, for were in contact for yes, for the first years of my life. She gave me to an orphanage when i was four weeks old, but we stayed in contact. And only when i was seven years old, we lost contact because i was adopted by a white German Family and thereafter havent seen her for many, many years. But until seven years, we stayed in contact. Cspan have you seen her in the last seven years . Guest yes, i did. So. Cspan where does she live . Guest she lives in germany. Cspan where was she born . Guest she was born in germany. Cspan lets go back to the chart one more time, and off to the side there, and we dont have a name for this, is your biological father and he was nigerian. Guest yes, hes nigerian. Cspan where is he now . Guest hes also living in germany. He was a student when he came to germany and i would talk about it a bit more later on when we talk about the family structure. Actually, 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, but today, hes living in germany. Hes married. Hes married to a german teacher and they have more kids. So i have a bunch of half siblings. Cspan when was the first time you met your biological father . Guest in my 20s. I was never really interested in my father maybe because as a child i grew up with my with the knowledge of who my biological mother and grandmother was, but my father, i only knew his name because the name was on my birth certificate and somehow maybe because i never met him as a child i wasnt ever interested in getting to know him. Only when i was 20 and i started site analyzers. I mean, i suffered depression for a while and i became interested in getting to know more about the paternal side about my whole biological family. Then i was in my mid20s we met each other briefly. Cspan the last thing on the chart is and i know its not the actual name, but your adopted parents, when did they adopt you and how long did you live with them . Guest as i said, i came to orphanage very when i was very small, four weeks old, and i stayed in the orphanage until i was three. It was an orphanage actually for babies. So when i was three, i had to leave the orphanage and one tried to find foster families for the kids in the orphanage. And i was lucky because they had an inferior ph 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, and this was also the moment when cuts with my mother my biological mother were ties with my biological mother got cut. My its a bit complicated, but i want to add it. My parents separated before i was born, and my mother, she married a man who was abusive. So she was in an abusive relationship. And one of the reasons why my adopted parents decided to cut ties was that it was simply not a safe and good environment, the circumstances were really difficult. So they wanted i didnt have a, you know a quiet and healthy childhood and this was the reason why they cut ties. Cspan youre married . When did you get married . Guest its always a bit embarrassing because im so bad with numbers. I think i married 10 years ago, but we are together much longer. Cspan and is. Guest fourteen years, i think. Cspan and hes a german . Guest yes. Cspan where did you meet him . Guest i met him in germany and i met him to my work, was actually my boss. So classical story. We fell in love and today, we have two beautiful children done together. Cspan how old are they . Guest i cant tell you the exact day date the age because i try not to give too much information for just for security reasons, and also, i incognito so when they are older they can decide for themselves whether they want to share their story with the public. But i can tell you that they are in school in germany. They are in the beginning of their high school education. I dont know which grade it is here in the u. S. Yes. Cspan you leave where now . Guest in germany, in hamburg, but im traveling a lot, so i would say i live all over the world. Cspan let me show you some video. I know youve seen this. This is from 2006 and its a documentary done by james moll and is called, behind the scenes of inheritance. Lets watch a little bit of this, well see your mother in here, and well find out how he did this documentary. 2003 i was producing a documentary for the schindlers list dvd, a documentary about schindler survivors, and there was a photograph of amon goeth, who was the commander of plaszow. We needed the rights to the photograph and they were owned by monika, his daughter. So i simply called her to ask for the rights to use the photograph in the documentary. We talked for quite a while and suddenly in the middle of the conversation she said, you know, im not my father. So immediately, i thought i want to interview this woman. In schindlers list, ray fiennes portrayed amon goeth and there are those scenes where hes standing on the balcony of the villa overlooking the camp and hes holding his rifle and hes shooting at the prisoners of the camp. Thats monikas father and when she was 11 years old, 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. Cspan why did you want to write a book about this . Guest it was a decision that i did not make immediately after i found out who my biological grandfather was. It was something that i decided over a long period when i when i myself understood more, i thought that what happened to me is such an extraordinary story and its a story that one needs to share. And this was one of the main reasons why i decided to write it down and to share it with the public, but there was another reason. The reason was that i came across a quote by batina gury ph and batina gury ph is the grandniece of gury was the chief commander of the air force the German Air Force during the nazi era, and she and her brother both decided to and when i read this, i was stunned because i thought this was so utterly wrong. So i thought its important to set a different and to set a positive example because you yourself decide who you want to be, you know . Its not something that is connected to genes. So this was one of the major reasons why i decided to write the book. Cspan you published your this book first overseas in 2013. It was named, amon, or amon and now, the book in the United States is, my grandfather would have shot me. Why did they change the name . Guest the title was, amon, but the subtitle was always, my grandfather would have shot me. I think this was one of the reasons that its for the u. S. Market they decided to do it because the name, amon is not so known. I myself preferred amon because, first of all, its more literal name like more, like, literature, and the book is nonfiction book, but for me, it is a yes, its a book like more in the belletristic field. But the reason why i or we decided in germany to publish was, amon, the name is so striking because in our family, names play a very, very important role. And when you notice, the name of my mother is monika and the nickname of my grandfather, my biological grandfather, was monique ph and there are some other aspects. For example, the name is a jewish name. Also, the name of my grandmother is a biblical name, and theres another point because my i have a halfsister and she gave the name, amon not only the name, amon, also jewish name, but a combination of two names to her son. So it shows that the Family History is transmitted into the next generation, into the fourth generation. All these reasons were for the sole striking that i thought amon is the right title, but when you want to sell a book, you know, you also have to look at the market and for me, its important to spread so if this message is spread with this title, im fine with it. And the title is also interesting because the new title, my grandfather would have shot me because it makes when you look at me, you see the color of my skin. Im black. So you first think the title is because im i look so differently, but what is more important is the inside. Will see that my character is very different, and this is also why i think the new title is a good decision. Cspan another thing you tell us about yourself in the book is that youre 6 feet tall. Guest yes, and i have a high heels. Cspan and you have high heels on. What impact is that high in your life that youre, you know you stick out in a crowd . Guest i always sticked out, you know . When i when i grew up, i grew up in a in a neighborhood in germany where i was the only black child. So for me being someone who is not average is so normal. When i walk around in the street, i dont notice anymore that people look at me. Its funny because my husband, hes also very tall, but only when im in the surrounding for example, in asia where people are very small and it goes with its really intense that people look at us. I notice it, but normally no, i just, you know im so used to it. Cspan go back to your grandfather, amon goeth. If we were to follow him or and he died at age 37 if we were to follow him around and watch the awful things that he did, what would we see . Guest i dont understand. Cspan i say if we were to follow him around when he was alive and he was the head of this concentration camp, what and he was did so many bad things, what would we see that he did . Shooting people, the dogs and all that . Guest yes, you would see a tremendously cruel person, a person who yes, who was i mean, he was capable of he had dogs. He had two dogs. He called them, ralph and rolph and he trained them to tear a human apart. I think this sums it up really good. He was a person who had there was a pleasure that he felt when he when he when he when he killed people, and this is, yes, something that when youre normal if you dont have this aspect in your personality, it is very, very difficult to grasp. And i remember in the very beginning when i found out when i discovered who my biological grandfather was, this aspect of his personality, the cruelty was one of the, you know, facts. This was most difficult for me to somehow come to terms with it because its something that is so far from what you can imagine how people can be. Now, maybe you know when we have the political situation of today and i just was just thinking about isis people, you know, who slaughter other people, then it somehow gets normal, but this is not normal, you know . This is something that you cant you cant treat people like this. Its something and i think within a person or within yourself, that should be theres a humanity, you know . This is an aspect and that when we look at the nazi era and my grandfather, just got lost. Cspan when he was hanged after the war in 1946, who hanged him . Guest he was put on trial actually by the polish government. He was not at the nuremberg trial. He was extradited to poland. He was extradited together with the commandant of auschwitz with hess. Theres an interesting detail what i read when they arrived in poland and they wanted to stone amon goeth, you would imagine that they want to stone hess because hess was the one whos more known. Cspan rudolf hess . Guest rudolf hess, yes, but probably because of the cruelty, the way he really shoot them himself people he himself killed people and that the mass wanted to stone him. Cspan let me show some video because in the end when he was hanged, it was one of the Stranger Things to see. Its on video and here was the end of your grandfather when he was when he was put to death. Were not going to show the last part when he was actually hanged. Youve i assume youve seen that before . What was your reaction to that when you saw it . Guest i saw the execution just hours after i discovered the biography about 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 because this is something that is so serial. And i remember myself sitting in front of the tv and though i was i didnt know whether to cry or to laugh, not to cry because of i was sad, but this is something that was yes, it was just not real. Interestingly, i read that today i dont know, maybe this is just something that is invented, but historians, they try to figure out whether this was really my grandfather and some say it was someone else. It was, i think, his name is ludwig fisher. Ludwig fisher. I did some research. I dont know. Maybe its just a theory that its not right. I always when i watched it i thought it was my grandfather my biological grandfather. Well, someone asked me what i think or what i think that he deserved to be hanged, its a very difficult question. I think he did so much evil so he needed a punishment. Im against the Death Penalty. Im a person who truly believes that the Death Penalty is something that you have to be very careful because if you make a mistake, you cant change it. I think my grandfather deserved the highest punishment that you can get, yes. Cspan how many people died in the concentration camp around where plaszow and poland is . Guest i dont know. Cspan how did you but in your book you talk about auschwitz and that whole area that there were a Million People . Guest thousands, but also if you look at the trial of my grandfather, he was put on trial for thousands of jews, but he also was, for example, involved in the eviction of the ghetto in krakow. So i dont know how you can sum it up. And i also, you know, think the number is not relevant because its too many anyhow. Its thousands, but i dont i cant give you an exact number. I dont know. Cspan what did you discover about why they all hated jews so much . Guest you mean the nazis . Cspan what was the reason . Guest well, thats a very, very difficult question. I think it was something when you look at the nazi era, there was a very interesting experiment that was done actually here in the United States after the war. The milgram experiment and there and tried to find out why people, yes, treat other people the way they treated it in the nazi era. And i think it was not only the jews. I mean, there were also people who were killed, people who did not somehow had the ideology the nazi ideology. It was also the gypsies, for example, but especially the jews. I think the system because the system said so, people followed the authority and there are a lot of people who did not reflect. They were just following the authority. And, for example, if you look at my grandmother, my grandmother must have been an anti semite. I mean, she lived in plaszow. She lived with my grandmother. She supported the system. But after the war, i told you my parents met in the household of my grandmother and my mother my grandmother somehow mother my grandmother somehow adopted a different point of view. So it is so weird. I cant give you an answer why this happened. Cspan james moll who did the documentary, inheritance, and i know you watched that some years ago, here is another and it was run here on pbs and part of it was also run on the bbc, but here is your mother talking about her father, which is your grandfather. I asked my grandmother, grandmother, do i have a father, too . And she said, but monika, every child has a father. And i asked my mother and said, wheres my father . And she said, like millions of men, he died for his country and hes dead and shut down. I believed her. I didnt know why i shouldnt believe her. For me, he was everything. He was a great man. He was a soldier and everybody told me if my father had been alive, he was such a nice man and he would do everything for me. Cspan whats your mom like . Guest my mom is a difficult person. I mean, shes very typical for the Second Generation. My mother was always haunted by the past and i think because it was her father, it was very, very difficult for her to separate. And when she looked at her appearance, the photos that weve seen now, they show her she looks a bit happier than the other pictures in the way i somehow perceive her, but she has you see on like, its she go and rocks a bit like this. Like, the weight is on her shoulder and she cant somehow leave the past behind. I think because its the father and the identification with the parents for everyone if you look at psychology is so strong. She could never somehow find her own life. She is haunted by the past until today. Second generation. Theres another famous example. Its nicholas frank. I dont know whether you heard about him. Hes the son of hans frank who was the deputy of hitler in occupied poland, and he has a photo of his father. He was also hanged with the brok