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40 Fascinating Facts About the Relatives of Nazis After WWII

Khalid Elhassan March 14, 2019 24 min

16. Derek Niemann’s Shocking Discovery

Derek Niemann, a British author who writes gentle books about nature, received a shock when he discovered a family secret during a trip to Germany. While visiting Berlin with his wife, he decided to look up the house where his German-born father had grown up during WWII. When he Googled the address, he came across a page with information such as “SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Niemann… crimes against humanity… use of slave labour“. As he told a BBC interviewer: “I can remember falling back in my chair, going next door, and saying to [my wife] – I’ve just found my 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.