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40 Fascinating Facts About the Relatives of Nazis After WWII

Khalid Elhassan March 14, 2019 24 min

14. Luck Spared Derek Niemann’s Grandfather From Accountability

After the war, Karl Niemann was arrested and charged with crimes against humanity, but he caught a lucky break when the evidence against him was misplaced. In a bureaucratic screwup, the incriminating evidence was sent to the Nuremberg Tribunal to use against a bigger criminal fish, Niemann’s boss, who was convicted and executed. However, the evidence was not returned from the Nuremberg Tribunal to the investigators looking into Karl Niemann’s actions, and he was eventually freed for lack of evidence.

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.