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40 Fascinating Facts About the Relatives of Nazis After WWII

Khalid Elhassan March 14, 2019 24 min

20. Troubling Questions About Uncle Dirk

Danish Jews being spirited to safety in Sweden. ABC News

In 1943 Denmark’s German occupiers set out to round up the country’s Jews, but the Danes, in an act of widespread civil disobedience, managed to spirit most of Denmark’s Jews to safety in Sweden. Pasternak was left to wonder: if his uncle Dirck had been alive and in Denmark back then, would he have arrested and turned in the Danish author’s father? While on the Eastern Front, had uncle Dirck participated in murdering the family of Pasternak’s grandfather?

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.