Last year it came to light that my maternal grandfather was an SS guard at Auschwitz for three years. My aunt told me things she remembers and stories he told her. I have seen the personal benefits to knowing the truth. I'm now wondering if I should make any other disclosure, to a historian or some organisation.
He grew up in Lithuania and took his family to Germany when he joined the SS. At the end of the war they forged documents to say they were recent refugees from Lithuania. After living in a Red Cross camp for displaced people the family came to Australia. The name he used as an SS guard was never connected to the name he used for the rest of his life. He died in the mid 1960s.
I'm aware that I feel compelled to be truthful after so many decades of family secrets and that I may be taking it too far thinking it might be significant to anyone else.
it could be of use for historians if you have his diary or some personal belongings from that period that could be used as primary sources and give us some insight on his life and work there. otherwise you shouldn't feel bad for something terrible he probably witnessed or did there, you are not responsible for that!
If you do decide to go though with it, you might want to consider informing the Australian, German and maybe the Lithuanian government. If your grandfather got in through forged documents, it’s not much of an assumption that other SS soldiers got through via similar means, and that they might be interested in such information for tracking down surviving SS members.
In addition to what the other poster mentioned, if you can find any personal effects of his (pictures, journals, gear, etc), you could look into donating them to a historical society or museum. If that's backed up with information like what town he was from, when he joined, which unit he joined, where else he might've served, etc. is primary source material. Any and all evidence of what transpired is evidence to prove and solidify what happened with the Holocaust and the contribution occupied nations played during the war.
There is absolutely historical benefits, many of which have been mentioned above. Knowing about the guards, who they were, matching them to survivor’s testimony about specific guards is really important. It helps us understand how the camp worked and how normal people functioned as guards for mass murder. It’s really important for us Holocaust historians to know who was there so we can match up people to documents and survivor testimony. On a more personal note, I think it could bring you a lot of healing. Most children and grandchildren of Nazis feel intense guilt, and understandably so. It doesn’t matter that one knows intellectually that they are not responsible, they still feel guilt, especially if the person went unpunished. Being open about it will help historians, there’s a possibility it may help survivors, giving some closure to what happened to the people who were responsible. It may help too to become involved in survivor outreach, or to work to prevent antisemitism or other forms of political violence today. Some organizations to contact would be the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem, and the museum at Auschwitz.