Just found out that an ancestor testified in the Salem Witchcraft Trials

[Denninmi]

3. Well, different circumstances, but I understand your feelings.

After my dad died, we were going through some of her old family photos with my grandmother, his mother, who was about 95 at the time.

She pulled out a photo of a group of young men dressed in Nazi garb, prominent swastikas and what I believe were SS or SS-like symbols -- they were her nephews, sons of her two brothers that stayed behind when she emigrated to America in the 1920s. So, they were my dad's first cousins from "the Old Country" - Croatia, and about the same age as he was, although he never knew or met them.

These guys, based on their uniforms, were members of the Croat Iron Guards during WWII, the military branch of the pro-Nazi puppet regime in Yugoslavia, and the Iron Guards were involved in numerous crimes against humanity in the Balkans during the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia. Whether or not they all survived the war, or if they were prosecuted afterwards for their participation I don't know -- my grandmother never went back to Croatia after she emigrated, and her relatives never came here, she just corresponded by letter for many years on an occasional basis. She didn't really know their specific stories. It was probably swept under the rug after WWII anyway, since the Communists that took over under Tito were bitter enemies of the fascists.

Her comment was "my, weren't they handsome in their uniforms." My comment was "OMG!"

Needless to say, that photo is no longer part of any album.