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Oskar Jakob, 94, is a Jewish Holocaust survivor who once assembled V-1 flying bombs in a subterranean concentration camp, and I’m the granddaughter of the engineer who developed those secret Nazi super weapons. Despite or perhaps because of our respective histories, we’ve worked to become friends. And while I’ve known Oskar for a few years, it’s only recently, as neo-Nazis flew swastika flags in Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio, that I felt the need to use my own ancestry to fight this brand of hate.
The white supremacist demonstrations in Ohio weren’t one-offs. Last fall, another black-clad group, their faces covered, did the same just three miles from Oskar’s St. Louis home. “America for the White Man,” declared the banner they hung from an overpass on Interstate 64. Oskar’s son snapped a picture as he drove by and sent it to me along with three angry-face emojis.
These incidents made me angry too, but also profoundly uncomfortable. What is the proper response when thugs perpetuate the hateful rhetoric of a political party to which your grandfather once belonged? And what could be more uncomfortable than the weight of the history between Oskar and me?
We hoped the depravity behind our families’ refugee journey was history; we fear it is not.
In 1945, after 40 of Oskar Jakob’s family members died at Auschwitz, the SS imprisoned him at the Mittelbau-Dora camp in Nordhausen, Germany. Deep in the tunnels of this former gypsum mine, 14-year-old Oskar was forced to rivet sheet metal used to make Vergeltungswaffe Einz: Vengeance Weapon #1. This was the world’s first cruise missile and my grandfather Robert Lusser headed the Luftwaffe project to create it.
I met Oskar eight decades later when I flew to St. Louis to interview him for a podcast I host about my German history. I’d been wanting to speak with a survivor for years, but it wasn’t easy to connect because each Holocaust group I asked for help declined. Putting a relative of the Nazi engineer who created weapons of mass destruction in touch with a slave laborer who assembled them in conditions so horrific that 20,000 prisoners died was a nonstarter. But finally, I found Oskar, and on a warm spring afternoon, I found myself sitting in his neat dining room, listening to him tell of a night when guards caught a group of prisoners resting.
“They hung 70 people simultaneously, and we were forced to march by the dead bodies and everybody had to punch them with their fist,” he said. I stared out at the bright, Midwestern afternoon, longing to feel the sun on my face.
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“I feel very much like I want to tell you that I’m so sorry,” I said instead, not exactly sure on whose behalf I was apologizing. My own? My family’s? All of humanity?
“I appreciate that,” Oskar said, his face folded neatly, like an old map. “Up ’til today I have never heard from a German that they are sorry for what I went through.”
Technically, I’m not German. My grandfather immigrated to the United States in 1948, recruited to build bombs for America. I had ignored my controversial German legacy for most of my life. After all, no one really wants to ask the question: Was Grandpa an ideological Nazi? Our family lore emphasized the genius engineer theme and disregarded the fact that Robert Lusser joined the Nazi party in 1937 to advance his career.
Commemorations are being held Monday on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp, part of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
A decade later, the Office of Strategic Services, precursor to the CIA, cleared my grandfather of any crimes, in part because it benefited America’s Cold War cause to have him on our weapons team. Investigators categorized him as Mitläufer — a “fellow traveler” — someone who benefited from Hitler’s regime while not actively participating in its atrocities. My grandfather stood silent in the face of evil because that was the beneficial, easier choice.
Just as many Germans ignored the rise of National Socialism in the 1920s and ’30s, too many Americans are ignoring what’s happening here a century later. “Antisemitic incidents in the U.S. rose 140% from 2022 to 2023,” Oren Segal of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism told me. “We documented over 10,000 incidents between the Oct. 7th, 2023, attack on Israel and its anniversary in 2024.”
I feel fortunate to be a voice for the millions of victims who were killed by the Nazi regime. But it is the duty of every one of us to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive.
After wrestling with generational guilt, which feels like a curse handed down through time, and questioning my responsibility as an American personally connected to Nazi history, I made a decision. When swastika flags fly in America and white supremacists shout “Heil Hitler!” and racial slurs, when a presidential surrogate offers a Nazi-style salute and makes common cause with Germany’s neo-Nazi-adjacent political party, the AfD, I will not be a fellow traveler. Or a bystander.
My first social media post using my family history as a cautionary tale was viewed almost 2 million times and drew thousands of comments, some full of hate and ridicule. It makes me anxious to put myself in the public eye, but it’s no underground death camp, without sunlight, escape or hope.
When Oskar and I spoke last May at the Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum in St. Louis, it was standing room only. “Suzanne Rico is a descendant of a Nazi engineer,” said the master of ceremonies. Oskar nodded his white-haired head as 300 people waited to hear what I had to say. I said that history’s most terrifying ghosts are coming back to life.
If you don’t believe me, look closely at photos taken on an Ohio street or a Missouri interstate. Pay attention to the covered faces of cowards trying to intimidate through fear. And then ask yourself: What uncomfortable legacy might we leave our children and grandchildren if we stay silent this time around?
Suzanne Rico is an award-winning television and print journalist. She hosts the podcast “The Man Who Calculated Death.” @suzannerico on all platforms
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Ideas expressed in the piece
- Suzanne Rico confronts her grandfather’s legacy as a Nazi engineer who designed V-1 flying bombs, emphasizing the moral imperative to combat modern neo-Nazi movements through public dialogue rather than silence[3][4][5]. She connects her family’s history to recent white supremacist demonstrations in Ohio and Missouri, arguing that silence in the face of rising antisemitism and extremism risks repeating historical atrocities[3].
- Rico rejects the postwar classification of her grandfather as a Mitläufer (“fellow traveler”), challenging narratives that minimize complicity with Nazi ideology. She highlights how such designations allowed individuals to evade accountability, paralleling modern indifference to hate speech[3][5].
- By publicly sharing her story—including her podcast and a joint appearance with Holocaust survivor Oskar Jakob—Rico advocates for using personal histories to educate others about the dangers of extremism. She stresses that confronting uncomfortable truths is essential to prevent future harm[3][4].
Different views on the topic
- Historical frameworks, such as the Mitläufer categorization, have been used to downplay individual responsibility in systemic atrocities. This legal distinction, created to differentiate passive collaboration from active participation, often shielded professionals like engineers and physicians from postwar repercussions[1][5].
- Some narratives emphasize the pragmatic recruitment of former Nazi scientists by Allied nations during the Cold War, framing their contributions to projects like America’s missile programs as necessary for technological advancement rather than moral failures[1][5].
- Critics of modern comparisons to Nazi-era ideology may argue that contemporary extremism represents isolated incidents rather than a resurgent threat. This perspective often dismisses parallels between historical eugenics programs and current rhetoric about racial hierarchy[1][2].
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