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

Author:Jennifer Teege & Nikola Sellmair [Teege, Jennifer & Sellmair, Nikola]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography, History, World, Jewish, Holocaust
ISBN: 1473616220
Amazon: B00NVVU9DI
Publisher: The Experiment
Published: 2015-04-06T23:00:00+00:00

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The children of Salberg House usually left by the time they were three or four years old. By then, they were supposed to have been reunited with their natural families or placed in foster care. If they hadn’t been, a different children’s home would be found for them.

On the weekends, prospective parents would often come to Salberg House to choose a child to potentially foster or adopt. Cute little babies were the easiest to place. Jennifer was over three years old, and her skin was dark. “Back then, it was more difficult for black children. We wouldn’t even have considered placing them somewhere in the country; it wouldn’t have been fair to them,” a former staff member recalls.

The first family Jennifer was introduced to already had a little girl and were considering a foster child of the same age. But when they saw Jennifer towering inches over the other three-year-olds, they decided against her: Jennifer was too tall for them.

At about the same time, a professional couple from Waltrudering, near Munich, applied to foster a child: Inge and Gerhard Sieber. Inge is from Vienna and has a PhD in education; Gerhard, an economist, is from Bochum. They had had two sons in quick succession who were now three and four years old. They had been difficult births; both boys were born early.

Since they had always wanted three children, Gerhard Sieber suggested to his wife that they take in a foster child. This was nothing out of the ordinary for him; his sisters and his mother, who eventually became Oma Bochum to Jennifer, had given many foster children a temporary home. Gerhard Sieber considered helping children in need a lovely family tradition.

Inge Sieber speaks with a trace of a Viennese accent as she recalls her feelings at the time: “I was less sure than my husband. I was afraid that we might find ourselves with an emotionally damaged child and that I might not be able to cope.”

In 1973, despite her concerns and with her two young sons in tow, Inge Sieber went to her local fostering authority and applied to foster a child. At the time, adoption was not on the table; all they wanted was to help a child for as long as it took. Inge Sieber explains: “To our minds, adoption was something for people who couldn’t have children themselves. We already had two sons and didn’t want to deprive a childless couple of the opportunity to adopt a child of their own.

“At the appointment, my two little boys were being so wild that I was convinced the agency would never allow us to foster a child. I was sure they were thinking, ‘This mother can’t even control her own children.’”

Yet the agency considered the Siebers suitable. A social worker visited the family in their home, and Inge Sieber had to undergo a health check. In those days, it was predominantly the future mothers who were checked, as it was assumed that the child would only be cared for by the woman.

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