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and handed it to me. In the picture was a young man; he was smiling the smile which Irma and Fritz shared with him. His hair was black and he was smooth-shaven, he had a little, triangular chin and a fine, high brow showing beneath his German army cap. The SS runes were clearly visible on the cap and on the old-fashioned , black uniform jacket. I’m no expert on SS insignia, but going by his badges I guessed the man in the picture to be a Sturmbannführer . My natural father, a major in the Waffen-SS. But that couldn’t be right. The face was most definitely that of my father, whom I could not remember, but of whom I had seen pictures. The SS uniform knocked me off balance momentarily. I broke into a sweat. The woman was eyeing me intently, she handed me another picture.
    This one was in colour. It showed the same man. Some years older now. His hair a grizzled salt-and-pepper, but still thick. He had his arm around a rather plump little woman wearing a summer frock in a large floral print. They were standing in front of a yellow-painted house. Vines were visible in the background. A patch of blue sky. An array of brightly-coloured flowers in potsand vases. Leaning against the man was a young woman, she had on a simple yellow dress, the skirt of which had been lifted slightly by the breeze, revealing something of her bare, brown legs. It was a younger version of the woman sitting across from me in this hotel in Bratislava. She had been an exceptionally beautiful young woman. It was a nice summery, idyllic picture. I gave the photo back to her without a word and, just as wordlessly, she handed me yet another.
    This one too was in colour. It was the same man, but on his deathbed this time. His hair was sparse and white, his features very pronounced and the skin so thin that one felt one could see right through it to the bones of the skull underneath. He was dressed in a white shirt. His eyes were closed. His hands folded on the emaciated chest. Death had taken the big, strapping man whom the woman opposite me claimed was father to us both.
    I did not know what to think. Every family has its myths and legends, its secrets and skeletons in the closet and my own had plenty. My family’s history was a tragic one, but it had also been a success story. My parents’ bakery went bust because people began to talk: ‘Seems the baker was on the wrong side during the war. Decent people had better find somewhere else to buy their bread.’ But as a child I was never told exactly what it was he had done. It seemed to have something to do with him having gone to work in Germany. But a hundred thousand others had done the same. It was either that or lose their unemployment benefit. I knew his name was in the Bovrup Files. He had been a member of the DNSAP – the Danish Nazi Party. But so were forty thousand others. And it was not as if it was against the law, although just after the war ended it did mean you were a marked man. As a small boy I had pondered this a lot. I was the baby of the family, a bit of an afterthought, hopelessly spoiled by my mother and step-father and by Irma and Fritz. I was also too young to really understand the marital breakdown which followed in the wake of the social disgrace. I knew that it had been an extremelytraumatic experience for my sister and brother. They did not like my mother’s new husband, but I thought of him as my father and continued to do so right up until his death five years ago. We three children had all done well for ourselves, two of us within the academic world. I was a historian, as was my sister, but she was also a professor of comparative literature, specialising, not surprisingly, in feminist writing. Fritz had originally been a baker, of course, but had gone on to set up his own bread factory, mass-producing all sorts of bread and rolls, which were sold in the supermarkets as home-baked, even though they all came off a conveyer belt. But he had soon discovered that image is