The neo-Nazi who inspired Edward Norton for his role in American

Funny things happen in life everyday lives that are more typical of fiction than reality. This is well known, it’s nothing new, but it’s still surprising when we discover one. Life is a story by Cortázar.

The case in question is that of Frank Meeink, a former neo-Nazi who is infamous because inspired the skinhead character played by Edward Norton in “American X” and for which he almost won the Oscar in 1999.

In the film, the character, named Derek Vinyard, is partially based on Meeink’s real-life path to redemption when began to get rid of his radical views after making friends with black inmates in prison.

Meeink, now 48, became the leader of a violent far-right group in the early 1990s. torture enemies this hindered his attempt to foment a race war.

Radically anti-Semitic and sporting a fiery swastika tattooed on his neck, Meeink lashed out against what he called the “Zionist occupation government.” He believed it and expressed it very violently The Jews were “the root of all evil.”

The discovery that changed everything

But Meeink’s life once again took a surprising turn, and in his particular case not without irony. The fact is that the former neo-Nazi, the profoundly anti-Semitic one, discovered it through the DNA test He has Jewish origins.

And that incredible discovery had a profound impact on his life. So much so that that man decided to embrace that genetic inheritance and He became an Orthodox Jew.

“I found out through a beautiful gift from God that I was Jewish through DNA,” Meeink said, adding It was because of a friend’s comment yours who decided to take a test on 23andMe.

“A friend told me I looked Jewish and that made me doubt it. So I took the genetic test. I just wanted to see if it was trueI wanted to see if it was real,” Meeink said.

As he explained, the test proved it His ancestors are 2.4% Ashkenazi Jewish (This is how the Jews who settled in Central and Eastern Europe were called).

The small proportion belied its importance: His mother’s maternal great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Zellman Rementer, was Jewish, meaning that, according to the tradition of matrilineal descent, He is too.

While not all Jewish scholars would accept this definition, many do, and Meeink He enthusiastically embraced Judaism.

Now the man Pray three times a day wearing the tallit and tefillin of practicing Jews, regularly attends synagogue, attends three Torah study classes a week and keeps kosher law.

A tough childhood and an introduction to Nazism

Meeink’s life was not easy. And it is there, in the first years of his life, that they can be traced the seed of the journey which led him to become a neo-Nazi, then to reject racial ideas and finally to resolutely embrace Judaism.

Meeink grew up in an Irish Catholic enclave in southwest Philadelphia, United States, with his mother and an abusive stepfather. surrounded by black families.

Escaping his fragmented family life in the summer of 1988, when he was just 13, He was received by his neo-Nazi cousin who had a mural of Hitler in his bedroom. And this would become his father figure.

In that moment of abandonment and desperation, Meeink feared drugs, blacks and his cousin’s skinhead gang. “It justified all my fears,” she recalled.

“I held on to the information they were giving me,” he added. ““I wanted to make this movement bigger.”

At 15 he had already joined (and had been “dishonourably” expelled, as if there was any honor in all this rubbish) of the Ku Klux Klan before deciding to form his own group with his cousin, called Strikeforce.

Meeink used the Bible to preach hatred, “just like Hamas does with the Koran” and he started his own TV show on public access cable in Springfield, Illinois, called “The Reich” full of racist “parodies and jokes.”

Redemption was found in prison

Meeink’s group, Strikeforce, was particularly disdainful of another radical group known as Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (Sharp). That rivalry was what finally took him to prison.

It was for kidnapping a member of that group on Christmas Eve 1992. Meeink, who had “Sharp Killer” tattooed on the inside of his lower lip, He also tortured his hostage during captivity.

“We made him stay in the apartment and we tortured him for hours without remorse, without empathy, without anything,” he recalled.

Meeink was 17 at the time and was sentenced to three years for aggravated kidnapping. Inside the prison, the young neo-Nazi soon became part of the “Aryan brothers” group.

However, also unexpectedly He befriended two black inmates nicknamed Jello and G as they played football and cards in the prison yard. It was those friendships that created Meeink slowly let go of hatred and resentment what he felt and distance himself from extremist ideas.

When he finally regained his freedom, he was still he continued to participate in neo-Nazi demonstrations but he was no longer the same. At least where blacks were concerned, Meeink felt no bitterness. However, her anti-Semitism persisted. “I continued to preach against Jews, even though I didn’t feel the same about blacks,” she confessed.

The precious help of a Jewish merchant

Meeink’s first years of life after leaving prison were dark. He was unemployed and was drunk all day. But, when he least expected it – and was looking for it – the help he desperately needed arrived.

He was 19 when Keith Brookstein, a Jewish businessman from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, He offered her a job in his antique shop. It was after a friend of his told him about himself and the need to stay afloat. That would be the beginning of the end.

Meeink couldn’t get over his amazement. “But did you tell him about me, about the swastika?” she asked her friend when he broke the news to her. “To Keith They don’t give a damn what you believe“Just don’t break their furniture,” he replied.

It was a “click” that happened. The next morning, for the first time since I could remember, Meeink did not shave his head. Instead he began with the most basic questions: “’Who are you to judge the world? You’re a bloody criminal, a drunk.’ That was the day I thought, “I’m done.” Are out'”.

Some time after, continued with its denazification and removed the swastika tattoos and other anti-Semitic references he had all over his body, including the word “skinhead” on his knuckles.

Another hard blow to life and faith as salvation

Meeink has become into an activist against neo-Nazism, but it is his conversion to Judaism that he says meant the most. Because, he explained, it was what got him through what he described as the darkest period of his life.

This tragic stage lasted five years, from 2015 to 2019. It began with the death of his son Josh, 19; Some time later followed the loss of his mother Thomasine a fentanyl overdose and finally the breakup of his marriage.

All this caused the man to sink into alcohol and drugs, but he managed to recover thanks to the invaluable help of his patron, a Jew whom he nicknamed his “recovery rabbi”, who it helped him rediscover his faith and sobriety. “There was a lot of work,” she recalled.

“What I liked about Judaism is that it says, ‘Love the Lord your God.’” And you don’t need to impose your God on anyone else. “I want to try to build this relationship with God.”

His fierce activism led him to testify before Congress in 2020 about neo-Nazi attempts to infiltrate the police force.

With the life he led, the man now he hopes to turn his story into a film which would be a sort of sequel to “American

He assures that, in essence, it will have a simple message: “Love is more powerful than hate.”