Green politician Jürgen Trittin sees parallels between the Russian actions in Ukraine and the atrocities committed by the SS and the Wehrmacht after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. One is currently experiencing the return of the imperial war of conquest to Europe, said Trittin in the supplement “Christ

Something is returning after 80 years, “between two countries of all things that have become victims of my father’s generation,” said the foreign policy spokesman for the Greens in the Bundestag. In the interview, Trittin also spoke about his father, who was an SS Obersturmfuhrer in Russia during World War II. Later, however, he distanced himself from his Nazi past.

“Of course that’s a big deal for me today,” said the Green politician. His father Klaus Trittin remained in Soviet captivity until the early 1950s. “My father was not just a prisoner of war, but a convicted criminal because he was a member of the SS,” said Jürgen Trittin. He later spoke to the son about his actions, including how he killed people. “He told us that unbelievable crimes were happening there.”

But he also knew from his mother that his father had acted as a witness against other perpetrators, Trittin said. “My father stood by his criminal past.” After the war, he father never said a bad word about the Soviet Union. He also spoke Russian.

His father told him that such crimes should never be repeated. He took the children to Bergen-Belsen, “where 45,000 Soviet prisoners of war literally died,” Trittin continued. “It has driven me politically throughout my life,” he emphasized.