Hitler’s Child, the Tale of Hitler’s Love for the Little Girl with Jewish Roots
Hitler and Bernile, as she was known, also share the same birth date, April 20. She was so adored by the Nazi leader that his personal photographer frequently clicked pictures of the two them holding hands.
Dictator Adolf Hitler also had a heart, full of emotion and love, as new findings reveal his love for the little girl, who was Adolf Hitler’s favorite. In spite of knowing about her Jewish roots, he loved her as his own child, she called him Uncle Hitler and she was known as the Fuhrer’s child.
Hitler and Bernile, as she was known, also share the same birth date, April 20. She was so adored by the Nazi leader that his personal photographer frequently clicked pictures of the two them holding hands, exchanging kisses or just smiling at each other. Hitler even refused to cut off relations with her, after he was told that the little girl had a Jewish grandmother.
Recently Alexander Historical Auctions in Maryland sold one of those photographs for $11,520. Photographer Heinrich Hoffmann clicked the 11.75 x 9.5 size, black and white photo. The photo shows a smiling Hitler embracing the young blond girl named Rosa Bernile Nienau, who was about 6-year-old then in 1933. The photo was clicked at Hitler’s mountainside retreat, the Berghof, in the Bavarian region of Germany.
Hitler himself has inscribed the photograph with dark blue ink. “The dear and (considerate?) Rosa Nienau Adolf Hitler Munich, the 16th June 1933”, he wrote the inscription in German, referring to the location where he actually signed the photograph.
Andreas Kornfeld, the Vice President of Sales at Alexander Historical Auctions says, the backstory of the photographs has stunned him, when he first learned about it. “It is probably one of the most unique items I’ve seen in my time with the auction house. Being German, I’d never heard the story, and I’ve seen the picture many times, but it would never have occurred to me the story behind the picture, which is mind blowing”, Kornfeld said.
According to the information provided by the auction house, Bernile and her widowed mother traveled to Hitler’s retreat from their Munich home in the spring of 1933. They were there to celebrate Hitler’s birthday and Bernile, as she was also known was somehow chosen to personally meet him, maybe because of their identical birthdays. She and “Uncle Hitler” bonded even afterwards, meeting several times and writing each other letters, up until 1938.
On its website, the auction house wrote, “Research shows that even early on, Hitler became aware of the girl's Jewish heritage of having a Jewish grandmother, but chose to ignore it, either for personal or propaganda reasons”. In Nazi Germany, being a quarter Jewish means Rosa was considered Jewish according to the law, highlighted by the auction house.
On 5th October 1943, Bernile died of polio at the age of 17 years in a Munich hospital and this has bought to an end to the beautiful relationship Hitler and this child had. Also by then Adolf Hitler was actively involved in Jewish genocide, as millions of Jews had been perished in the Holocaust by then.