Free My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past by Jennifer Teege, Nikola Sellmair Page A

motherly, calming. She was always impeccably dressed and enjoyed wearing silk dresses and fur-trimmed coats. As a child, I often stayed with her; I preferred Vienna to Bochum—the city was more exciting. Oma Vienna would sometimes behave like a small child herself: Once we played a trick on Opa and pretended that we had all run away, Oma and the children. Opa played along, pretending to be really worried.
    Only Christmastime was odd with Oma Vienna. We would all sing carols under the tree, but she wouldn’t join in for fear of striking the wrong notes.
    We often went on vacation with our grandparents from Vienna, too: skiing in the winter, hiking in the Austrian Alps, or camping by the sea in Italy in the summer. Opa sometimes told us wartime stories about his time with Rommel in Africa. Oma never talked to us about the war. In 1945, she had fled the area that is now the Czech Republic for Vienna. The journey was a terrible experience for her, but she would never discuss it.
    And then there is my fourth grandmother, in Nigeria—my other biological grandmother besides Irene. I don’t know much about her. I met my father once, when I was 28. He told me that, when my mother wanted to give me away to the orphanage, he had suggested that I might as well live with his mother in Nigeria. He would have preferred that to the orphanage, but my mother didn’t like the idea. I guess she wasn’t ready then to give me up entirely. While I was at the orphanage, my mother could still visit me, and she would still have had the option to take me back.
    I imagine my African grandmother as a tall, proud woman, a strict matriarch. I find it remarkable that she would have been prepared to take me in. For that I am very grateful to her, and I sometimes wonder, what if . . . ?
    I have never compared my grandmothers to each other, during my childhood or later. They were far too dissimilar for that. I had separate relationships with each of them, and each was important in her own way.
    Nonetheless, Irene occupied a special place in my heart. She was one of the first people I was attached to as a child.
    When I was seven and my adoption became official, my adoptive parents broke off all contact with my mother; they thought that it would be best for me. With that, my grandmother also disappeared from my life. She left behind a gap, I missed her.
    I was 13 when last I heard about her: My adoptive parents told me that my grandmother had died. They had seen the obituary notice in the newspaper. It didn’t mention that she had killed herself.
    I didn’t ask any questions. My biological family was not a subject we talked about in my new family. There was a deep and stony silence—a tacit agreement between my adoptive parents and me not to mention my mother or grandmother. Not that my adoptive parents could have told me much about them anyway; they didn’t know anything.
    I remember feeling sad when I heard about my grandmother’s death. I had always hoped to see her again one day, but now she was gone for good.
    Before I came across the book in the library, all I had were my memories: My grandmother enjoyed my company. With my mother I often felt that I wasn’t welcome—my mother would pull me along by the arm when she was impatient, but Irene never did.
    I remember only one exchange with my grandmother that confused me: For some reason I was feeling sad, but she was very unsympathetic and told me not to cry. I didn’t understand what my grandmother had against tears.
    She was not your classic grandmother; I wasn’t even allowed to call her Oma , just Irene. Maybe she didn’t want to be considered old. It’s been said that she paid a lot of attention to her looks—her appearance was very important to her. Even my mother called her only by her first name; that’s what it says in the book.
    I remember her apartment in Schwind Strasse, in Schwabing. We would usually sit in her open-plan kitchen with the American radio station AFN turned on. I