When Hitler Was A Common Last Name In Jewish Brooklyn
“Herr Adolf Hitler of Germany would be covered with confusion if he dared to enter the strictly kosher home of Mrs. Rose Hitler, pretty young Jewish housewife, who lives at 233 E. 92nd Street, in the heart of Brooklyn’s Brownsville.”
That is the start of an improbable article from June 1933, entitled “Kiss the Mezuzah — and meet the Brownsville Hitlers.”
It is a snapshot of a time when Hitler was a recognizable, if increasingly ironic, Jewish surname in New York City. According to Rose Hitler, more than 30 families across the city bore the last name of the man who became the chancellor of Germany that year and one of history’s worst monsters.
The article was accurate about the increasing discomfort of New Yorkers named Hitler or Hittler. Living in what was a very Jewish neighborhood at the time, Frank and Rose’s kids began having trouble at school.
Friends of four-year-old Rita called her a Nazi.
“My father-in-law, may he rest in peace, used to say when he was living that he never heard of a Hitler who wasn’t Jewish,” she said. “Take my brother-in-law, Louis Hitler, who lives on Pulaski Street. Take all the other Hitlers in New York.”
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