Headstone Removed From Hitler’s Parents’ Grave
Adolf Hitler’s parents’ headstone was removed from their grave site on Wednesday, according to Walter Brunner, mayor of Leonding village, where the grave is located. The headstone, which bears a faded black and white picture of Alois and Klara Hitler, has been the site of neo-Nazi pilgrimage since Hitler’s death.
Village priest Kurt Pitterschatscher stated that the grave site is now available for a new lease, as Hitler’s parents will be moved to a new spot. This headstone removal and moving of their remains comes at the request of an unnamed relative, who is tired of seeing Nazi flags flying over the site.
Pitterschatscher went on to say that the marker was removed without a ceremony, simply by a stonemason hired by the relative, who removed the black marble marker, topped with a cross.
The relative has only been described as an elderly woman, descendant of Alois Hitler’s first wife, Anna. He explained that she had two reasons for terminating the lease on the grave, first that she was too old to care for it properly, and also because she was tired of it “being used for manifestations of sympathy” for Adolf Hitler.
In Austria, grave sites are leased for ten year periods, and usually the lease is willed to a member of the family. At the end of ten years, they can choose to renew the lease, or terminate it. In this case, the relative terminated the lease.
When asked if he thought people would even be interested in leasing the same spot, a spot that for so long has held the parents of a man who slaughtered 6 million people, Pitterschatscher stated, “I really haven’t thought about it.”
Robert Eiter, who works with the Upper Austrian Network against Racism and Right-Extremism, stated that the latest incident of neo-Nazi’s visiting the grave occurred on November first, when someone left an urn inscribed with “UnvergeSSlich.” The word means “unforgettable,” and capitalization alludes to Hitler’s SS troops.
It is likely that the neo-Nazis come to Adolf Hitler’s parents’ grave, because they cannot go to Hitler’s. Instead of being buried, when his body was found in the 1970s, it was incinerated and flushed through the sewer system of Magdeburg, Germany.
