My family and other Nazis
Martin Pollack recounts growing up in a family of committed Nazis in post-war Austria, discovering at age 14 that his biological father was a high-ranking SS officer and Gestapo chief who participated in Holocaust atrocities. He draws parallels between his family's unrepentant Nazi beliefs and contemporary far-right movements across Europe.
Summary
Martin Pollack, born in 1944, describes his experience as the child of an entirely Nazi family in Austria - including his grandparents, mother, stepfather, and biological father Gerhard Bast, who was a Gestapo chief and SS officer. His family maintained their Nazi convictions even after the war, believing Austria should be part of Germany and expressing no remorse for Holocaust crimes. Pollack was sent to boarding school at age 10 and learned about his true parentage at 14, discovering his biological father had been responsible for deportations and mass murders, including signing death sentences for individual Jews like Max Gorcha. His father's career ended when he accidentally shot a beater during a hunting trip and was reassigned to lead a death squad on the Eastern front. Pollack's parents had an affair during the war, and his mother divorced her first husband to marry the Gestapo officer in 1945. His father spent two years as a fugitive after the war before being murdered in 1947 while attempting to flee to Paraguay with forged Red Cross papers. The family's Nazi ideology stemmed from German nationalist sentiment in the former Austro-Hungarian territories, fostered through student fraternities that promoted anti-Semitism and anti-Slavic racism. Pollack ceased contact with his family in the 1960s and has spent years researching his father's crimes, including visits to mass grave sites in Eastern Europe. He argues that individual cases of persecution, not just mass murder statistics, are important to remember, and draws concerning parallels between his family's beliefs and contemporary far-right movements, particularly regarding Putin's Russia and Austria's Freedom Party.
About this episode
My father did terrible things during the second world war, and my other relatives were equally unrepentant. But it wasn’t until I was in my late 50s that I started to confront this dark past. By Martin Pollack. Help support our independent journalism at <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/longreadpod">theguardian.com/longreadpod</a>
Key Insights
- Pollack argues that his entire Austrian family remained unrepentant Nazis after the war, maintaining their beliefs until death and denying or justifying Holocaust crimes including mass murder
- The author discovered at age 14 that his biological father was Gerhard Bast, an SS officer and Gestapo chief responsible for enforcing Nazi laws against Jews and signing individual death sentences
- Pollack contends that his father's Nazi involvement stemmed from German nationalist student fraternities in Graz that promoted toxic masculinity, anti-Semitism, and anti-Slavic racism
- The author documents how his father participated in both bureaucratic persecution, such as the deportation of elderly Jewish weaver Max Gorcha, and later direct mass murder as leader of a death squad
- Pollack argues that post-war Austrian society failed at denazification, allowing former Nazis to reintegrate into professional life while many Austrians preferred to avoid confronting their complicity in Nazi crimes
- The author claims his father was murdered in 1947 while attempting to flee to Paraguay using Red Cross papers, part of an organized effort to help Nazis escape to Latin America
- Pollack draws parallels between his family's victim-perpetrator role reversal and contemporary politics, particularly Putin's justification of Ukraine invasion and European far-right movements
- The author argues that individual cases of Nazi persecution matter as much as mass murder statistics because they restore names and faces to victims whom perpetrators tried to erase from memory forever
Topics
Transcript
This is The Guardian. Welcome to The Guardian Long Read, showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture, politics and new thinking. For the text version of this and all our long reads, go to theguardian.com forward slash long read. My Family and Other Nazis by 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.…
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