Anna-Suzette Pfeiffer managed to hold back her tears throughout our entire interview, except for one time. When she spoke of how the Nazi regime murdered Germans with disabilities before World War II in Tübingen, southwest Germany, just half an hour away from her hometown.
"The Nazis thought these people did not deserve to live," she said, in tears. "And this happened only half an hour away from my house. The Nazis were so pleased with how smoothly the process went, and how easy it was to kill people, that they decided to replicate the project in extermination camps."
Anna-Suzette, only 19 years old, is shocked by the atrocities her people committed against the Jews. But she is also shocked by the history of her own family: her great grandfathers were senior Nazi officials, two of whom participated in the extermination of Jews. One was an engineer who built the gas chambers and the electric fences around the Auschwitz camps, the other – an SS sniper, who killed Jews and partisans in the Netherlands.
"They were part of this machine, part of this terrible killing," Anna-Suzette said. "These are my people. My nation. And that is what brings me here."