The Russian foreign minister’s suggestion that Adolf Hitler had Jewish blood is just the latest version of a conspiracy theory exploiting a gap in the dictator’s genealogy.
Source: AFP
Sergei Lavrov’s comments over the weekend, which sparked a diplomatic spat with Israel, revive rumors about the identity of Hitler’s paternal grandfather.
Hitler’s father, Alois, was an illegitimate son whose father was unknown, Austrian historian Roman Sandgruber told AFP.
Sandgruber, who last year published the first biography of Alois Hitler, explained that the rumors began to circulate in the 1920s, when Adolf Hitler began his rise to power.
The theory was pushed by his political rivals when the Nazi leader took control of Germany in 1933.
After World War II, the memoirs of Nazi war criminal Hans Frank, who ruled occupied Poland during the war, revived the versions.
In his memoirs, published after his 1946 execution for war crimes, Frank said he secretly researched Hitler’s ancestry at the request of the Nazi leader himself, who said he was being blackmailed by a nephew.
Frank claims to have discovered that, at the time, Hitler’s grandmother, Maria Anna Schicklgruber, was working as a cook for a Jewish family with the surname Frankenberger, in the Austrian city of Graz.
His employer paid him support for his son Alois until he reached the age of 14, according to Frank, who clarified that, according to Hitler, his grandmother and her future husband let the Jew think he was the father of the child to get him out. money.
But historians remain skeptical.
There is no solid evidence to support Frank’s version, according to Sandgruber. One problem is that at the time, Jews had no right to live in Graz, he added.
So who was Hitler’s grandfather?
“This is an unanswered question,” historian Ofer Aderet wrote in the Israeli daily Haaretz.
He pointed out that some cited the version of Hitler’s Jewish origin to justify his defeat in the war, others say that the shame of that past led him to persecute the Jews.
“The bottom line is that there is no historical proof of any of this,” according to Aderet.
Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid on Monday condemned Lavrov’s remarks, calling them “inexcusable and outrageous.”
Israel summoned the Russian ambassador to explain what Lavrov said.
