About Rolf Steiner
Rolf Steiner (born 3 January 1933) is a German retired mercenary. He began his military career as a French Foreign Legion paratrooper and saw combat in Vietnam, Egypt, and Algeria. Steiner rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel commanding the 4th Commando Brigade in the Biafran Army during the Nigerian Civil War, and later fought with the Anyanya rebels in southern Sudan. == Early life == Rolf Steiner is the son of a Protestant father and Catholic mother. As a youth in Nazi Germany, Steiner was, according to his 1976 memoirs, a member of the Nazi Deutsches Jungvolk (German Young Folk), and he looked forward to joining the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth). However, the Second World War ended before he could join the Hitler Youth. Steiner later claimed to have fought as a Jungvolk volunteer in the Volkssturm militia in the final days of the Second World War, but no evidence exists to support this claim outside of his own memoirs. A 1968 article in Time stated: "In the final days of World War II, he fought as a Hitler Youth in Germany’s last-ditch defense against the advancing U.S. Army." In a 2013 interview, Steiner called his memoirs a "fable". He stated that his father who had served in the Luftwaffe committed suicide in 1937 after failing a "racial hygiene test" as it was discovered that one of his ancestors was a Jewish woman who converted to Lutheranism in the 18th century to marry a Gentile. Steiner also stated that his mother abandoned him in 1944 when he was 11, leaving him to be brought up at a nunnery in Lower Bavaria.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.