← Back to the front page

40 Fascinating Facts About the Relatives of Nazis After WWII

Khalid Elhassan March 14, 2019 24 min

21. Pasternak’s Research Into Uncle Dirck

Himmler, surrounded by SS officers. Pinterest

Years later, as an adult, Pasternak recalled the suit and decided to do some research into uncle Dirck. Contra what his grandmother had told him, Dirck had been a Danish Navy officer, and after Denmark was conquered by the Germans, he requested and was granted leave by the king to join the SS. Far from a reluctant Nazi, uncle Dirck had received top marks in Nazi ideology from the SS School in Bavaria. He was commissioned as an SS-Hauptsturmführer and sent to the Eastern Front, where he went missing in action in 1943.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.