Voices From The Third Reich & Kirkland, Washington

A few weeks ago I blogged about a book I'd just finished, "Voices From The Third Reich," an oral history from survivors of the Hitler years.

This morning I was reading the Seattle P-I and saw the headline "In Kirkland, Nazi case brings up painful past." The story was yet another voice from the Third Reich.

The man you see in the photo is named Sreten Nesic. He was listening to the radio when he heard that a Bellevue man, Peter Egner, had been identified by the Justice Department as a member of a Nazi killing unit in Yugoslavia, created by the Nazis to arrest and execute Jews, Gypsies and Serbian resistance members.

The Yugoslav Nazi killing unit murdered around 17,000 people. The Nazi from Bellevue is accused of participating in the murder of 11,164. I've no idea how they came up with this precise number.

The man from Kirkland was 1 year old, living with his mom and dad in a village outside Belgrade, when his dad was arrested and taken to a concentration camp. His dad was murdered about a year later. His mother died of pneumonia a short time later, pneumonia contracted from traveling in the bitter cold, repeatedly bringing money to bribe officials to try and get her husband released.

When the money ran out, Nesic's dad was forced to dig his own grave. And then shot and killed. Nesic knows this because a second cousin, who survived the Nazis, was in the concentration camp and helped bury his father.

So, when Nesic heard on the radio that a Nazi member of the Yugoslav Death Unit, that had murdered his dad, was living in the town next to his, well, it brought back all the painful memories. And he got rightfully, righteously mad.

The Bellevue Nazi is now 86. The Nazi was living in an assisted living facility. Nesic is now 67. His dad was 25 when the Nazis arrested him. 26 when the Nazis murdered him.

You can read the entire Seattle P-I article here.