A challenge to German authorities to prove that Adolf Hitler is not of Jewish origin was published today in leading Austrian newspapers, including Die Reichspost, organ of the Christian Socialist (Government) party, following yesterday’s sensational story in the Oesterreichische Abendblatt, Heimwehr newspaper, that the Nazi chancellor has Semitic blood in his veins. The papers here today pointed out that “in case no contradiction is forthcoming from Germany we will be forced to accept the fact that the world’s greatest racial anti-Semite is himself of Jewish origin in the third generation.”
Austrian political circles fear diplomatic reverberations as a result of the Heimwehr paper’s revelations in both this country and Germany. A protest from Berlin is ostensibly on its way to Vienna, and at the same time the German embassy here is reported to have demanded that the Austrian government take steps to suspend the Oesterreichische Abendblatt’s publication in order to satisfy Germany’s honor for the “insult” to the Reich’s chancellor.
HEIMWEHR FIELD DAY
The Heimwehr press meanwhile has been having a field day in reporting aftermaths of yesterday’s sensation. The Abendblatt reported today that the Nazis in Polna, Czechoslovakia, have made unsuccessful attempts to pilfer the records of the Jewish Community there. This evening the paper promises to publish a further chapter in the revelation of Hitler’s Jewish origin, substantiated by a grocer of the Leopold Stadt, in the Jewish district of Vienna, and who claims he is kinsmen of Herr Adolf in Berlin.
Proof of Hitler’s descent from Jews on his grandmother’s side, together with facsimiles of gravestones of his Jewish ancestors before they were baptized in Vienna was published in yesterday’s Abendblatt. Comparing extracts from birth and death certificates kept by the Jewish Community in Polna with certificates from a lower Austrian parish, the Abendblatt claimed it has sufficient proof that Herr Adolf’s ancestors were Jewish until 1850. After that time the paper asserted, Hitler’s family tree sent out roots in Christian soil.
The argument concerning the veracity of the Abendblatt’s story was raging back and forth in Vienna all day yesterday and today. Dr. Diamant, Austrian Jewish genealogist of high repute, stated that in his opinion the construction of the Abendblatt’s story was not correct. Adolf Hitler, he declared, is not related to the Hitlers of Polna. He said that in Polna there was a family named Huettler which had been converted from Judaism to Christianity, and that there was little proof that the Reich’s chancellor was linked with this family.
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