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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Deborah Cole in Berlin

Nazi database takes Germans on personal journey into their families’ dark pasts

Nazi party members marching with swastika flags at Nuremberg Rally in Germany
A 1930s Nazi rally in Nuremberg, Germany Photograph: Shutterstock

Olaf Köndgen is 64 years old, a German citizen and a senior European human rights expert who has lived and worked in France for several years. Last month, Köndgen learned that he is also the son of a Nazi.

Despite a strong interest in history and its lessons, Köndgen is typical of many 21st-century Germans in having had only the roughest outlines of his own family’s complicity with Hitler’s regime.

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