With his “Autobiography of a Recovered Neo-Nazi”, Frank Meeink inspired Edward Norton in the 1998 film “American History X” but today, thanks to a DNA test, the former white supremacist has discovered his Jewish origins and converted and now eats only kosher, observes Shabbat, and studies Torah three times a week.
“Thanks to a beautiful gift from God, I discovered that I was Jewish through DNA,” he said explained Frank Meeink in an interview with New York Post. A friend once told him that he “looked Jewish,” so the man decided to undergo a genetic test through the 23AndMe platform, which revealed that – through his mother's maternal great-grandmother – he was 2.4% Jewish Ashkenazi. An origin (and a faith) that he immediately embraced.
A big change for someone who in the early 1990s led a violent far-right group, fomented racially motivated attacks, sported a swastika tattoo on his neck and promoted anti-Semitism by accusing Jews of being “the root of all evil.” .
He even spent three years in prison for kidnapping and torturing an anti-fascist activist in 1992, when he was just 17 years old. After his detention, however, he renounced racism, having made friends with several prisoners of other ethnic groups, and began to give conferences on how to overcome prejudice. In 2020 he even testified before the United States Congress about neo-Nazi attempts to infiltrate the police.
His transformation, as told by himself to New York Post, required a long and painful interior journey. Having run away from home at the age of just 13 due to his violent parents, Frank Meeink found refuge in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) with a neo-Nazi cousin.
So he first joined the Ku Klux Klan and then founded his own skinhead group, also appearing on a local television channel where he promoted hatred against African Americans, Jews, the Antifa movement and the “Zionist occupation government” of Israel.
During his years in prison he was forced to battle drug addiction, a problem he has lived with all his life. So, after the failure of his marriage and the death of his mother and daughter, he decided to try rehabilitation. There Frank Meeink met a man, a Jew, with whom he says he has spoken every morning since then.
“In rehab they talk about finding God again,” Frank Meeink recalled to al New York Post. “And that's when I thought, 'Now I'm going to actually check it out.'” This was how he discovered his origins and became an observant Jew.
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