My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me

Guilt cannot be inherited, but feelings of guilt can.

Bruendl, an elderly gentleman with a gray beard and in a black suit, has treated several grandchildren of Nazi criminals in his Munich practice. He says, “Violence and brutalization have a deep impact on the generations that follow. What makes them ill, however, is not the crimes themselves but the silence that surrounds them. There is an unholy conspiracy of silence in perpetrator families, often spanning generations.”

Soon the last witnesses will be gone, and it will be too late for the grandchildren to ask questions.

All I want to do is sleep; often I stay in bed until midday. Everything feels like too much effort: having to get up, to talk. Even brushing my teeth is a struggle.

Ours was a difficult relationship: We met only sporadically, but she is still my mother. The book about Monika Goeth mentions the year 1970, the year of my birth. There is not a word about me; my mother pretends I don’t exist.

Himmler, Goebbels, Goering—I know who they are. But what exactly Amon Goeth had done, I’d had no idea. Slowly I begin to grasp that the Amon Goeth in the film Schindler’s List is not a fictional character, but a person who actually existed in flesh and blood. A man who killed people by the dozens and, what is more, who enjoyed it. My grandfather. I am the granddaughter of a mass murderer.