ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - What happens when you find out your grandfather was a Nazi? And he was not just a soldier but the engineer who created the weapon used for terror bombings.
For Suzanne Rico, it launched a search for the truth about her family origins and a conversation with a Holocaust survivor who now lives in the St. Louis-area.
On Thursday night, a one-of-a-kind discussion is taking place at the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum between Rico and Oskar Jakob, a Holocaust survivor. Rico is the granddaughter of the creator of the V-1 flying bomb, Robert Lusser.
Surviving the Holocaust as a Young Teenager
Oskar Jakob was forced into slave labor and worked on that V-1 Flying Bomb as a 13-year-old while imprisoned in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp.
He told KMOX's Megan Lynch that he frequently remembers the torture he endured as a young teenager, including being separated from his family and never getting a chance to say goodbye to his mother, to lying about his age to survive.
"There's hardly a day goes by that somehow, it doesn't pop back in my mind the horrors I went through," said Jakob. "It seems like one day was a month because it was so torturous, the hard labor, very little food, and many times beatings. Every day was a different torturous day."
Jakob says he still vividly remembers being separated from his mother, two siblings and cousin at the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp.
"It happened so fast that she was rushed away with my brother and sister, and my little cousin whom she had on her arm. I could visualize her right now," said Jakob.
Jakob says the only reason he is still alive to this day is that he lied that he was over 15-years-old, after talking to a Polish prisoner.
"Anybody that was 15-years-old or younger was forced to go with their mom and siblings to the left, where they ended up in the gas chambers," said Jakob. "I asked him about what he thinks about me saying how old I am? He said 'Tell them you are 16-17 years-old.' I was a big boy so I passed for being that lie I was telling them. If if wasn't for that, I wouldn't be here talking to you."
Jakob spent one year surviving through multiple concentration camps, from the infamous Auschwitz, to Mittelbau-Dora and finally at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where he was among those who were rescued and liberated by the British 11th Armoured Division on April 15th, 1945.
Suzanne Rico's quest for answers
Rico's quest to dig up her family past immediately began after her mother's death in 2013, and as part of her mother's dying wish, she left a partially finished memoir and wanted Rico and her sisters' to finish it.
"Growing up, my mom did not talk much about (my grandfather's past), she was a German immigrant and that was very difficult and very typical for that generation to not revisit that time because it was so difficult," said Rico on Total Information A.M. Thursday. "She would say 'your grandfather was a genius' and being a kid I didn't think any more about it."
Rico, who has a background as investigative journalist, decided in 2016 that she was going to get to bottom of her family's history.
"We started looking back into our family's history and we kind of fell off this cliff into this dark story of our grandfather," said Rico. "When I say dark, it was both dark and light. He was an incredible inventor, he was brilliant, and found the answers to make this bomb fly, which was amazing. But the cost was horrific, with 20,000 people dying in Belgium and London from this bomb. This was also another cost I didn't know about, which was the concentration camp and the victims that were forced to produce and create this bomb."
Many parts of her journey to search for more answers regarding her grandfather led her going to Germany for two weeks and even Alabama to learn her grandfather worked with Wolfgang Van Bruen. Eventually, one of the threads she was looking at led her to St. Louis and a chance to meet with Jakob.
"I get goosebumps thinking about it right now because I have tried for several years to connect with a survivor and every time I reached out to a survivor group or museum, they circled the wagons and shut me down," said Rico. "It suddenly dawned on me I should look in my own backyard in the US and I reached to the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and they put me in touch with (a woman) who was really immersed with this community and she put me in touch with Jakob."
Rico and Jakob meeting for the First time
Jakob at first was initially skeptical of meeting with Rico, but Rico says her being open-minded during her talk with Jakob, helped her connect with him.
"When I met with Oskar (Jakob), he's got these kind blue eyes and this beautiful heart and we just sat down and started talking and we connected," said Rico. "I just let the conversation go where it needed to go that we felt completely comfortable with each other."
Rico said during the conversations, she was in tears from listening to Jakob tell her about the horrors he went through.
"The stories go, from 41 people in his extended family being murdered at Auschwitz to him digging up a horse's hoof out of the ground to survive because that's all was what they had to eat in weeks," said Rico. "When you are listening to that, you're not reading it in a book or seeing it in a dramatized movie. You're actually next somebody who that happened to, it changes you somehow."
Rico said that heading into the discussion she felt afraid, but after talking to Jakob, her fears were gone.
"I didn't feel afraid anymore, and I don't think Oskar felt I was somebody to blame," said Rico. "The first time I heard someone identify me as a descendent to a Nazi, I was sick to my stomach. You feel like 'Oh my god, why did I do this?'"
Rico says however she felt like she needed to know for herself about her family's background and history.
"We can't know who we are without knowing where we came from," said Rico. "I felt at some point it was my responsibility to make whatever amends I could. Is it worthwhile I apologized to Oskar Jakob about my family's participation in what he went through? I hope it is, but as far as making peace with it, understanding goes a long way towards that."