As a historian who studies and writes about Nazi Germany, I have occasionally met the descendants of the criminals who ruled the Third Reich. I’ve always wondered how they can possibly bear the burden of carrying the genes that wrought so much evil. The answer is curious and reminds me of the saying of German philosopher Immanuel Kant that nothing straight will ever be made from the crooked timber of humanity.

The Daily Telegraph carried an interview this week with one such unwitting victim: a 49-year-old psychotherapist named Henrik Lenkeit, who lives in Spain and recently discovered by chance that he is the grandson of one of the most notorious Nazis of them all: SS overlord and Holocaust architect Heinrich Himmler. Lenkeit’s much-loved grandmother was Hedwig Potthast, Himmler’s sec

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