Uncovering their pasts

[Otto Ernst] Duscheleit helped set Russian villages ablaze during the retreat of German forces, and though he says he did not commit atrocities, he watched as Jews were loaded onto trains for deportation to death camps.

"They were wearing the yellow star," Duscheleit says. "I saw them, but I didn't think about what was happening."

Some 40 years later Duscheleit had a dream in which someone called him an "SS pig," and the former Nazi began to reflect on his past. Overcome by shame, he soon started meeting with students and children of survivors to tell them his story.

There's an interesting report here (click on 'continue without registering') about trying to collect the stories of former Nazi perpetrators and sympathizers.