Arguably, Ralph Fiennes’ 1994 Academy Award nomination was a statement on the wholesale cruelty that marks warfare. Fiennes played the evil Amon Goeth in “Schindler’s List,” the landmark Steven Spielberg film on the life of German businessman Oskar Schindler, who hires Polish Jews to work in his factories during World War II and thereby saves innocent lives. In a way, Goeth was Schindler’s counterpart – the paramilitary Nazi officer made his reputation by indiscriminately shooting Jewish and black internees at the Krakow-Plaszow concentration camp under his command. Goeth was hanged at age 37 for his part in the maiming, torture and killing of those whose lives he oversaw (his last words were “Heil, Hitler!”). Part of his story will emerge at this year’s San Diego Jewish Book Fair, running from Saturday, Nov. 7, to Monday, Nov. 16. The central figure in its telling is also one of the authors in this year’s installment – and on Nov. 15, she’ll command the audience’s suspension of belief as she relates a discovery of almost Shakespearean proportions. Jennifer Teege, with Nikola Sellmair, is the author of “My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me,” as provocative and sardonic a title as you’ll find. Not only is Teege Goeth’s granddaughter; she discovered the relationship through blind luck, when in 2008 she happened on a library copy of “I Have to Love My Father, Don’t I?,” published six years earlier. The memoir was written by Goeth’s daughter Monika, Teege’s birth mother by a Nigerian man – making Goeth her grandfather by blood. The exhaustive research that followed, Teege told The London Express earlier this year, led to untold depression, then resolution, then action in the form of her book. Now active on the lecture circuit, Teege, 45 and a mother herself, speaks openly about the revelation yet is careful to couch her language as it pertains to others in her writing – “because,” she asserted, “there are some crazy people out there.” The fair, anchored at the San Diego Center for Jewish Culture, 4126 Executive Drive, will feature more than 30 journalists, authors and commentators speaking on memoirs, world events, self-help programs, cooking and family relations. Accordingly, center director Wendy Sabin-Lasker issues a caution: Teege’s story may detail a Holocaust-related event of immense personal pain, but her appearance marks only one side of the movement in Jewish literature. “More and more,” Sabin-Lasker explained, “Jewish writing is following mainstream trends. The Jewish writing of years ago dealt with specifically Jewish culture, Jewish family life, the Holocaust or Jewish politics. Today, Jewish writers write on a broader spectrum. The Holocaust isn’t the single topic anymore.” For example, she added, author Leah Koenig will talk about modern Jewish cooking Sunday, Nov. 8, and her eponymous book includes passages on today’s Israeli chefs enjoying mainstream success amid new wrinkles to preparation. On Saturday, Nov. 14, former Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank will speak on his book “A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage” – “and we’re all aware,” Sabin-Lasker said, of his [place] in the gay and lesbian movement in this country.” “There’s an activism in Jewish writing today,” she added, “and the topics aren’t limited to a cultural place. There’s truly something for everybody this year.” This year’s slate of authors, Sabin-Lasker said, was culled from a group of 220, and the final choices fuel the fair’s status as one of the county’s largest such events. Surely, Teege’s appearance will bolster the festival’s attendance considerably – even as Jewish authorship grows a greater mainstream response, the Holocaust is the 20th century’s gravest calamity, with a lonely little girl from Munich left to her own tenuous devices amid its impact on modern society. “People assume the great shock was finding out who my grandfather was,” she told the Express,
“but the first shock in my life was being abandoned,” first at an orphanage and later with several relatives, with Monika visiting rarely. The childhood pain could only expand at the news of her lineage – and while Fiennes’ portrayal may serve as a reference point, it pales amid an innocent discovery that fueled a ghastly grit of day.
For particulars on the fair, see sdcjc.org/sdjbf/.