21. Pasternak’s Research Into Uncle Dirck
Years later, as an adult, Pasternak recalled the suit and decided to do some research into uncle Dirck. Contra what his grandmother had told him, Dirck had been a Danish Navy officer, and after Denmark was conquered by the Germans, he requested and was granted leave by the king to join the SS. Far from a reluctant Nazi, uncle Dirck had received top marks in Nazi ideology from the SS School in Bavaria. He was commissioned as an SS-Hauptsturmführer and sent to the Eastern Front, where he went missing in action in 1943.