The Trump empire has tried its best to keep this a secret. They have a closet full of secrets. This is just one of many that they’d prefer to forget.
My father was friends with Fred Trump back in the 1960’s. For the sake of my own family I prefer to keep our name out of this terrible story. My late grandfather was a Nazi and a member of the SS in WWII. I’m not proud of this. Who would be? But one must understand that being an upstanding German citizen back in the 1930’s the pressure was on to join the party. If you didn’t you would suffer. My father told us stories of how at first his family was slow to join into the burgeoning Nazi party and they did suffer because of it. His father lost his job and the family began to go hungry. Eventually my grandfather conformed mostly for the good of his family. My father joined the Hitler youth. I myself prefer not to judge. I was not there. Neither were you. Who knows what we would have done if we were in their shoes?
My great grandfather was friends with Donald’s grandfather as well. Only for a short period of time around the 1870’s. They were kids growing up in a small German town called Kallstadt. Apparently they were neighbours. That’s about all the information I have other than they probably attended the same school for a few years but were in different grades. This information was passed down to me for a reason. My great grandpa liked their family. Not just his friend Frederick but the whole Trumpf family and made it a point later in his life to emulate the way they brought up their family.
Obviously this resonated with my own father. He raised us in a typical, strict German upbringing. There were no grey areas. Just black and white. I grew to respect my father but I did resent him as well. I think the many beatings had something to do with it.
There are a lot of blanks in our family history which I prefer to ignore here. My father moved to the States with his uncle (Stanley) after the war and they settled in Ridgewood, New York. My grandfather died during the war but his brother Stanley managed to survive along with his nephew, my dad, who was under 20 years old at the time. Stanley passed himself off as religious Jew, can you believe it? When my dad told me the story I thought it was pure genius. He grew a long grey beard, ear locks and wore a big hat that covered most of his face. He spoke in a rough German accent (which he assumed would sound Yiddish to some ignorant immigration officer) and pretended not to speak a word of English. The ruse worked. He didn’t last long but he did manage to smuggle in plenty of jewels. Jewels that he stole from any Jew that he met during the war. My father thus inherited a small fortune from his uncle.
My dad managed to hide amongst the many German immigrants as the town grew into modern day Queens. He needed to convert the illegal jewels into cash. There were quite a few former Nazis living in Queens at the time. They soon connected with one another. Through one of his Nazi friends he managed to connect to Fred Trump (Donald’s father). This happened at one of many underground Nazi party meetings. Even I attended a few of these clandestine meetings in the 1970’s. Besides reliving the good old days of the German war machine, they also were focused on making money any way they could. While the hippy movement was combatting the war in Vietnam, in cellars in Queens, my dad and Donald’s dad were upset that Hitler didn’t finish the job and were quite vocal and upset by it.
Apparently there were other connections to the Trump family in the States. My uncle was infatuated with the KKK as were many other Nazi party members. They shared similar values. Before my uncle passed away he managed to attend a few secret KKK meetings. Truth was they were looking for members and somehow knew that former Nazis made reliable members. At his second meeting he ran into Fred Trump although he called himself Christopher at the time. I believe he tried to talk to ‘Christopher’ about a possible connection to older family in Germany but nothing got resolved. My uncle, like my father and grandfather remembered the story of the great Trumpf family from a century earlier, fondly I might add. Fred was really getting into the KKK and liked everything about it. Especially the cone head costumes.
After my dad died, I got married to a wonderful American woman. We have 2 lovely children and I have tried my best to forget the past. In fact we no longer even live in the US. We prefer a warmer climate. But as you can see, although much of the details are lost, I do remember enough. Maybe too much.
I wish that my father’s ancestry had nothing to do with the Nazis but they did. Likewise I’m sure that Donald wishes the same about his father’s ancestry. But the truth eventually comes out and it’s near impossible to stop it, despite the money that we (Donald and me) both have.
I understand that as a president, certain facts are detrimental to an election. But now that the election is over, I don’t see the harm in telling the truth.
As St. John said: ‘The truth shall set you free!’.
Mark Millman
November 2016
