Hitler Lookalike Spotted Near Nazi Führer’s Birthplace
A demonstrator holds a cardboard cut-out depicting German dictator Adolf Hitler at the ‘Deutsches Eck’ memorial in Koblenz to protest right-wing politicians meeting there on January 21, 2017. Image by Getty Images
Austrian authorities are investigating reports of a man appearing in public in Adolf Hitler’s birthplace as the Nazi dictator’s double, including the distinctive mustache, haircut and clothing.
“I have often seen this gentlemen in Braunau and wonder if this means something,” the Oberoesterreichische Nachrichten paper cited a local resident as saying on his Facebook page alongside a picture of the man it said resembled Hitler.
Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, then part of Austria-Hungary, in 1889.
Prosecutors confirmed the report.
The man, estimated to be 25 to 30 years old, was last seen in a local bookstore browsing through magazines about World War Two, adding he had identified himself in a local bar as “Harald Hitler.
On at least one occasion, he was photographed in front of the house where Hitler was born.
Austria’s parliament voted in December to buy the three-storey house where Hitler was born, which the government has rented since 1972 to control how it is used.
Glorifying Hitler or the Nazis is a crime in Austria, which Nazi Germany annexed in 1938.
—Reuters
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
