BBC: Barbara Cherish tells Fergal Keane about the painful decision to uncover the full truth about her father, a man she had never known, former Auschwitz Commandant Arthur Liebehenschel. Listen to BBC audio >>> | Tuesday, January 12, 2010
BBC: Barbara Cherish is a child of the SS, and the burden lies heavily upon her.
She knew early in her life that her German father, Arthur Liebehenschel, was involved in something terrible, something the family did not discuss.
Only later, as an adult, did she discover he had run part of the Auschwitz concentration camp for five months during World War II.
The knowledge gnawed at her, but it took a life crisis - her divorce and the death of her sister - to spur her to delve into the past and piece together her father's story.
The result is a book in which she struggles to reconcile her love for the father she never knew with the knowledge of his crimes, which saw him sentenced to death in Poland after the war.
"As a child, I was never really allowed to talk about my past with my family. I heard some things as a small child, about the mystery father, about Auschwitz. I never really processed it because I was so young. I knew it was something bad.
"There was a guilt there, I think that we all have. That we carry the guilt, being the…" she hesitates, "the children of the perpetrators".
Born in 1943, she was placed in foster care aged six. Her new family emigrated in 1956 to the US, where she has remained.
Stylishly dressed, Barbara arrives early at a San Diego cafe and apologises in advance, saying that "sometimes I get emotional" while telling her father's story. As predicted, she later becomes tearful. >>> Mario Cacciottolo, BBC News | Monday, November 16, 2010
