My father, the Nazi

My father did terrible things during the second world war, and my other relatives were equally unrepentant. It wasn't until my late 50s that I started to confront this dark past.

- Martin Pollack

MY FAMILY WERE ALL NAZIS. My grandfather and grandmother. My mother and my father. My stepfather, my uncle - literally all of them were hardcore Nazis during the second world war. And after? Not a single one changed their convictions or voiced any regrets for the Nazi crimes. On the contrary, they denied or justified them, including the Holocaust and mass murder committed with their knowledge and, worst of all, sometimes their active participation. We were not exceptional - in Austria and Germany, there were many families like ours.

The official postwar version of events stated that Austria had been the first victim of Hitler's expansionist politics. The four victorious allies - Britain, France, the US and the Soviet Union - specifically approved this interpretation, which, some believe, got Austria and Austrians off the hook for their complicity in Nazi atrocities. But not all Austrians accepted this version.

Large parts of Austrian society still felt strong ties to national socialism, an aggressive Greater German ideology that rejected the notion of Austria as a separate country with its own history and mentality, and cultivated a deeply rooted antisemitism and anti-Slavic sentiment. My family, like many others, held on to their belief in Hitler and the Third Reich until they died. "We are not Austrians but Germans," was the oft-repeated credo fed to me as a child. "And we will for ever be proud of it." and a half by train west of Vienna. I rushed to see her one last time. She had been the best grandmother imaginable - she loved and pampered me without limits. But she was also a stubborn, tough woman. And a Nazi to her very core. I came too late. My uncle greeted me at the door with the words: "She died like a German woman." I realised then that the family hadn't changed one iota. Nor would they.

It's not easy to explain my family's strong affiliation to nazism.