Welcome to the History Unplugged Podcast.

The unscripted show that celebrates unsung heroes, Mythbust's historical lies, and rediscoveres

the forgotten stories that changed our world.

I'm your host, Scott Rank.

All of us have dark secrets in our family.

What if you could tell that there was something really dark buried in the past?

Your parents, aunts, and uncles would never talk about, but it was this elephant in the

room whenever you got together.

But what if you found out that your grandparents were involved in the Third Reich?

Not only that, but they were enthusiastic members of the SS.

Well, today I'm talking with author Julie Lindzell, who had exactly that experience.

Julie's a historian of 20th century Europe, and she began to uncover her family's past

when she was looking in the archives.

Her new book is called The Pendulum, a granddaughter's search for her family's forbidden Nazi past.

In this work, she explored her family's grief, confusion, and secrecy concerning the

responsibility of her grandparents for the enslavement, torture, and murder of the local

population and occupied Poland.

Julie went on a six-year journey through Germany, Poland, and then to South America, where

her grandparents later went in the early 1960s, and found family members she didn't even

know about in Paraguay and Brazil.

She encoveres among many other discoveries that her grandfather had been a fanatic member

of the SS since 1934.

...