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40 Fascinating Facts About the Relatives of Nazis After WWII

Khalid Elhassan March 14, 2019 24 min

18. Pasternak’s Frustration With His Countrymen’s Refusal to Address Their Nazi Past

If Pasternak’s uncle Dirck had survived the war, he would probably have denied having participated in war crimes, and those around him would have probably leaned over backward to believe him. As Pasternak discovered during his research, people had no interest in closely examining sensitive questions. Especially questions concerning their own relatives, as Pasternak had experienced with his own grandmother, who paradoxically defended her brother, Dirck, even though he probably would have killed her Jewish husband if given a chance.

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.