The Jews Who Befriended Hitler

25 min readNov 20, 2023

When many people think of Adolf Hitler, they believe many things about him.

Due to the stereotype that has since been attached to his name, if there was something that people would not suspect when the name comes up, it would be the Jews who loved Hitler… and vice versa.

How many Jewish contacts Adolf Hitler had in his lifetime would be impossible to discern with any accurate estimates, but I hope that the materials provided below would at least prove a good start.

EARLY DAYS

Adolf was born in Austria on April 20, 1889, to parents Alois and Klara Hitler.

To say that his life was often an unhappy one would be an understatement, for his father — a physically tempered man — had expected his son to follow his footsteps into the civil service, while his mother tried to encourage her son into the priesthood.

According to Brigitte Hamann’s book Hitler’s Vienna: A Dictator’s Apprenticeship, a young Adolf Hitler did sometimes play a game where he would separate two groups of students based on the size of their noses, with those measuring larger being labelled a ‘Jew’.

Some of the earlier friendships that Hitler supposedly developed during his earliest school days are subject to debate.

Two names in particular — the future philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Stefanie Rabatsch — have both been said to have known Hitler in person, though to what extent is unknown, since Hitler never spoke about either of them, and the only main source we have of Hitler having any romantic interest in Stefanie is from his childhood friend, Augustus Kubizek, who mentioned this in a posthumous memoir about young Adolf.

The name on the top right is Adolf Hitler — the one attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein has never been confirmed, even though it is known they both attended the same school

Stefanie Rabatsch in later years

Doubts have been placed in both relations, especially in the case of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Adolf Hitler, who were only in the school together between the years 1904–1905 before the latter had to drop out of school due to his grades. [1]

Nobody in his early life later spoke of Hitler having spoken to Wittgenstein — though it does not mean it did not happen, even inadvertently.

The evidence behind Rabatsch is a little stronger since we at least have a primary source from Augustus Kubizek, who says that Hitler romanticised about her in private, even though there is no further evidence of this. [2]

Needless to say, the earliest example we have of a young Adolf Hitler undoubtedly showing attachment to a Jew was none other than his childhood physician, Eduard Bloch.

In 1907, Klara Hitler had fallen seriously ill, and needed medical attention.

According to Eduard Bloch’s later paraphrased statements:

“As a youth he was quiet, well mannered and neatly dressed. He waited patiently in the waiting room until it was his turn, then like every 14- or 15-year old boy, bowed as a sign of respect, and always thanked the doctor politely. Like many other youngsters of Linz, he wore short lederhosen and a green woolen hat with a feather. He was tall and pale and looked older than his age. His eyes which he inherited from his mother were large, melancholic and thoughtful. To a very large extent, this boy lived within himself. What dreams he dreamt I do not know.

“While Hitler was not a mother’s boy in the usual sense, I never witnessed a closer attachment. Their love had been mutual. Klara Hitler adored her son. She allowed him his own way whenever possible. For example, she admired his watercolor paintings and drawings and supported his artistic ambitions in opposition to his father at what cost to herself one may guess.

“In his memory, Hitler was the “saddest man I had ever seen” when he was informed about his mother’s imminent death. He remembered Klara Hitler as a very “pious and kind” woman. According to Bloch, after Alos Hitler’s death, the family’s financial resources were scarce. He mentioned that Klara Hitler had lived frugally and had not indulged in even the smallest extravagance.” [3]

During his youth, Adolf also enjoyed the works of Gustav Mahler, and it is widely believed that he even attended one of his concerts in person on May 8, 1906, when he was seventeen years old.

According to Brigitte Hamann, Hitler — unlike many of his contemporaries — was not one to discriminate against fine art based solely on somebody’s heritage.

Several years ago, I donated my purchase, so I no longer have a physical copy on hand, but one of my old-time Quora followers and friends helped me locate a page last year that may be of interest to readers:

Photograph by Quora user Halle Schultz showing Page 166 of Hitler’s Vienna by Brigitte Hamann

When Gustav Mahler decided to flee from his native Austria and beloved Vienna in 1907 in the wake of increasing hostility against Jews, a teenage Hitler — who, as shown in the above image, had defended even historical Jewish artists — was said to have spoken about the misfortunes of the situation, and he may have even written a letter to Mahler in person, in hopes that he would stay around.

If Hitler did in fact send the letter, there is no evidence of Mahler ever responding to it before he immigrated to New York City, where he died four years later on May 18, 1911, at the age of fifty.

According to the same page listed above, Hitler also met an unknown number of Jews at the homeless hostel he stayed at, and formed friendships with some of them — most notably Josef Neumann and Seigfried Loffner, both of whom Hitler trusted more to secure his personal finances than another non-Jewish friend by the name of Rheinhold Hanisch, who was known to have lengthy discussions regarding the Jews of Austria with a young Adolf.

Nonetheless, Hanisch and Hitler went their separate ways after the former allegedly sold some of the latter’s paintings without telling him, and then kept all the profits for himself.

A 1910 portrait of Rheinhold Hanisch painted and signed by Adolf Hitler

During his days in Vienna, he also became a business partner of Jakob Altenberg, himself a Jew by birth, with Hitler doing the paintwork, and Altenberg marketing on his behalf — much as Hitler had done during his days with Hanisch.

For the longest time, the pair were unsuccessful, until one day, Hitler had a breakthrough when a thirty-three-year-old Viennessee shopowner by the name of Samuel Morgenstern agreed to financially advocate on Adolf’s behalf, and help him sell his first paintings.

The relationship with Samuel, and his wife, Emma Morgenstern, would prove a success.

Adolf Hitler would end up visiting them twice per week for evening meals, and for many years afterwards, he would speak about how they had personally done so much to help him when he was at the lowest point in his life.

In all likelihood, there was probably not a Jew in the world whom Hitler would end up cherishing more than Samuel Morgenstern, with the possible exception of his childhood physician, Eduard Bloch.

Emma and Samuel Morgenstern in 1938

According to Brigitte Hamann:

“The Viennese eyewitnesses remembered unanimously that Hitler’s dealings with Jews had been quite natural. For example, Jakob Wasserberg from Galicia, who ran a small brandy store at 20 Webgasse, close to Stumpergasse, related that the young man had frequently had breakfast with him: “Mr. Wasserberg, a tea and a Laberl.” (A Laberl is a cookie.)” (Hitler’s Vienna: A Dictator’s Apprenticeship — Page 348 and 349) [4]

During his days when he was an art student in Vienna, he formed a relationship with Emma Lowenstamm — herself Jewish — with one drawing of hers, dating to 1909, gaining particular attraction in recent years after some observers commentated that a twenty-year-old Adolf Hitler (seated left) was shown playing against none other than a younger Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (a.k.a. Lenin).

Drawing by former teacher Emma Lowenstamm showing a twenty-year-old Adolf Hitler playing against who some believe to have been Lenin during his years in exile. [5]

Emma Lowenstamm — Hitler’s former art teacher

Even though it may never be known with certainty whether the two future dictators ever met in person — let alone, played an entire game of chess — it would not be as outlandish as some may believe at first sight.

After all, even Stalin — whose eerily similar life experiences largely matched those of his future nemesis — lived in the same Viennese neighbourhod as Hitler in 1913, and it is quite possible that the two casually walked by each other on the sidewalk at some point without realising their future crossroads.

Map showing the residences of notable Viennese residents, including Hitler and Stalin between 1913–1914

In 1913, Adolf Hitler left Vienna as an inhabitant for the last time, and subsequently moved to Munich.

Even though the majority of historians who have studied this period of Hitler’s life believe it was at this point he became his political self, I myself believe that it was not during this period, but at a much later point in time.

With just a year before the outbreak of the First World War, Hitler’s time in Munich was to be short-lived, but it was perhaps at this point — more than his days in Vienna, when he was seen as unsuspecting Adolf — that really made him who he later became.

Hitler spotted in a crowd in a re-colourised panoramic photograph on the day Germany declare war (1914)

WAR YEARS

In August 1914, Hitler was among the many millions of young Germans who found themselves training for war.

Within months, he would witness his first actions during the First Battle of Ypres, where he would be credited for saving one of his officers in No Man’s Land, and be rewarded for this deed by being promoted to corporal, and also receiving an Iron Cross Second Class at the same time as Hugo Gutmann — one of Hitler’s commanding officers.

Aside from his Jewish comrades, two of Hitler’s commanding officers — aside from Hugo Gutmann — included Ernst-Moritz Hess, who both had Jewish backgrounds of their own.

Gutmann in particular would later say that during all his days serving on the front line, he had never heard Hitler making any anti-Semitic statements, and most certainly nothing that would have given him cause for alarm.

Hugo Gutmann — one of Adolf Hitler’s commanding officers

Ernst Moritz-Hess — a second commanding officer of Adolf Hitler

During the later stages of the war, Hitler was wounded and was, therefore, absent from the front line on November 11, 1918, when the armistice on the Western Front formally came into effect.

The ‘Stab in the Back’ legacy was born — one that had some truth to it in the form of Soviet-backed coups being orchestrated in Central Europe during the months immediately preceding — and it was likely what followed that would have the single largest impact on Hitler’s mindset regarding his stance with the European Jews.

In Germany proper alone, two far-left revolutions took place immediately before and following the armistice — the Bavarian People’s Republic under the leadership of Kurt Eisner, and the Bavarian Soviet Republic under that of Ernst Toller.

Both of them had Jewish backgrounds, and both possessed a large number of senior party officials who shared the same background, as did the revolutionary government of Hungarian communist leader Bela Kun — also a Jew — with some two-thirds of its senior members having Jewish backgrounds.

With the harsh economic blockade imposed by the Entente in the wake of losing the First World War, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands — as well as the persecution of Volga Germans and other Germanic groups in Eastern Europe by the Soviet Government, and even Lenin’s attempt to take advantage of the revolutions in Central Europe by attempting to invade them directly through a failed invasion of Poland — not only did any sympathies that many in Germany and Hungary once had towards communism diminish, so too did the connection between Judaism and Bolshevism get its intertwined reputation in later Nazi ideology.

Adolf Hitler in 1925

On March 31, 1920, thirty-year-old Hitler moved into a ninety-square foot Munich apartment at Thierschstrasse 41, which was purchased in 1921 and operated by a new landlord by the name of Hugo Erlanger — a Jewish landlord who would meet his tenant quite a few times in the nine years he resided at his place.

The apartment building at Thierschstrasse 41 pictured in 2011 — Hitler resided on the first floor

In 1934 — a year after Hitler became Chancellor — a supporter of the newly elected Fuhrer, Heinz A. Heinz, who had heard of Erlanger’s connections interviewed the former landlord, who said:

“Since I’m a Jew, I concerned myself as little as possible with the activities of my lodger.

“I must admit that I found Hitler quite sympathetic. I often encountered him on the stairway and at the door — he was usually scribbling something in a notebook — and we normally exchanged pleasantries. He never gave me the feeling that he views me differently than other people.” [6]

Hugo Erlanger’s identification card pictured May 9, 1939

According to the same source written above, it is said that in 1922, Hitler may have had a “pleasant” conversation with another Jewish writer by the name of Lion Feuchtwanger, who — unlike most of those named on this list — was to later become a political opponent.

In 1929, Adolf Hitler moved out of his small rental and moved to Prinzregentenplatz 16, which was coincidentally located right across the street from none other than Lion Feuchtwanger himself, who had by this time grown disillusioned by this Austrian-born character in the wake of the Beer Hall Putsch — which took place a year after the two had allegedly first met — the publication of Mein Kampf, as well as his other political speeches that had since given him a different impression of this once unknown figure.

Feuchtwanger would give birth to a son named Edgar in 1924, who is alive to this day at the age of ninety-nine.

As a five-year-old, Edgar lived right across the street from Hitler’s newest Munich apartment — where the future Chancellor resided with his distant cousin, Geli Raubal — and in a later 2018 recounting of his experiences, he would discuss seeing Hitler walking about in his apartment at night from across the street, and even one incident when Hitler uneventfully walked by him and his mother on the way to his vehicle.

Edgar Feuchtwanger being interviewed in regards to his personal relations with Adolf Hitler

If a younger Hitler had once shrugged off the document of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion it is far more likely than not that his mind was changed in the aftermath of the rise of the Soviet Union, its deadly consequences, as well as the revolutions in Central Europe that quickly followed.

Nonetheless, even as Fuhrer, he would always deny that he was a true anti-Semite, and he would say as such to the scientist Max Planck on May 16, 1933 — just four months into his Chancellorship — when the latter came to visit him in regards to the treatment of Jewish professionals, including some of his colleagues, to which the former would say:

“I have nothing against the Jews. But the Jews are all Communists, and these are my enemies. My life is against them.”

[7]

Were these statements an accurate depiction of his true beliefs?

This answer would soon be realised in the years immediately to come:

Adolf Hitler walking with his column during the Beer Hall Putsch commemoration of November 9, 1934

THE PEACE YEARS

On January 30, 1933, Hitler was elected into office.

Contrary to his later party guidelines — and also at the strong protest of some of his colleagues — Hitler himself was regarded as a ‘moderate’ on racial policies, and therefore, did not turn away some of the old party members, such as Emil Maurice, who was not regarded as Jewish by Orthodox standards, but would have been so under Nuremberg law, due to having a Jewish father.

As far as he was concerned, Maurice — who had been a devoted Nazi since 1919 — had proven himself to be a loyalist member of the Nazi Party, regardless of his Jewish roots, and he would always remember the experiences they had in Landsberg Prison after they, as well as other party members, were imprisoned for their roles in the Beer Hall Putsch.

Adolf Hitler, Emil Maurice, Hermann Kriebel, Rudolf Hess, and Friedrich Weber celebrating Oktoberfest at Landsberg Prison in 1924

As Hitler’s former chauffeur and bodyguard, Maurice had close connections not only to his employer, but to fellow tenant Geli Raubal, and the two were said to have fallen in love.

Ever protective of her, Hitler forbade that the relationship go any further by removing Maurice from his old position, which some say not only drove Geli into suicide but her demise was later said to have been blamed on Maurice by an enraged Hitler.

However, it appears that the two men later reconciled, and in 1933 Maurice was overseeing senior positions within the party that were said to have brought great distress to other party officials — most notably Heinrich Himmler.

Politics aside, it is also worth noting that even after the day he became Chancellor, the newly appointed Fuhrer was not above befriending “non-Aryans”, despite foreclosing the property of Hugo Erlanger, his former landlord, after he defaulted — despite being sympathetic enough to give him an extension to pay off his debts — after it was decided by party officials to remove any past affiliations that the new German leader may have had with the Jews.

On April 20, 1933, a woman by the name of Karoline Nienau, with the accompaniment of her mother, pushed her six-year-old child through a crowd of people at Obersalzberg — a Jewish girl by the name of Rosa Bernile Nienau — and brought her before Hitler himself.

Because Bernile happened to have the same birthday as the Chancellor, he immediately agreed to bring her and her mother up to his nearby Berghof for tea and dessert, where he ended up celebrating much of his forty-fourth birthday with his new guest.

Adolf Hitler and Rosa Bernile Nienau celebrating their birthdays at the Berghof on April 20, 1933

Hitler playing around with Bernile

Adolf Hitler and Bernile Nienau walking about together

Adolf Hitler and Bernile Nienau conversing

Adolf Hitler and Bernile Nienau standing together in a field of Edelweiss flowers — Hitler’s favourites

Adolf Hitler hugging Rosa Bernile Nienau before her departure on April 20, 1933

Even after it was soon discovered that Bernile had been a Jew, it appears that Hitler was not dissuaded, and on June 16, 1933 — by which time he had found out about her background — he sent her a copy of one of their images together with a short complimentary message to her, which Bernile reportedly responded by drawing some Edelweiss flowers, which were said to be Hitler’s favourites.

A copy of the June 16, 1933 photograph that Hitler later sent to “considerate” Bernile

Employees who were stationed at the Berghof — most notably, Martin Bormann — detested the fact that Hitler was willing to continue the relationship with Bernile even after her Jewish heritage was known.

At least seventeen letters would be written by Bernile to Hitler — quite possibly with her mother’s assistance — who began seeing the Fuhrer as more of a family member, as opposed to a boogeyman.

On September 27, 1936 — nearly three-and-a-half years after first meeting Hitler — she wrote to her Uncle Bruckner from Munich, where she had been spending time with the Fuhrer himself:

“Dear Uncle Brückner! Today I have a lot to tell you. During the holidays we were on the Obersalzberg and I was twice allowed to dear Uncle Hitler! Unfortunately, you have never been up. […] I am already working on the Christmas work. […] Uncle Hitler I knit some socks again because I asked him if they fit him last year. He said yes! This year I can knit with finer wool, mum only helps me with the heel. They are going to be very warm, and where he always travels so much, his feet will not feel cold. […] Mummy also sends you greetings and many greetings and kisses from your Bernile!” [8]

Rosa Bernile Nienau and Adolf Hitler during a subsequent visit to the Berghof

The fact that Hitler had no objections to being in her presence, even after the Nuremberg laws came into effect in 1934, may be best explained by the fact that Bernile was a child, and therefore, wold have been seen as apolitical in the Chancellor’s eyes.

This once again goes back to his remark to Max Planck less than a month after meeting Bernile, where he said his dislike for Jews was not a racial, but a political matter.

According to Raul Hilberg — a later historian on Holocaust studies — his family’s property was being seized by German officials in March 1938, and his father had remained incarcerated until it was discovered that he had served the German Army during the First World War.

When this was revealed, their property was faithfully restored, and they were left alone for the time being, since one of the most effective ways of disproving communist affiliations in the eyes of the Nazi Government — both in the First, and later, the Second World War — was to serve in the military.

On August 21, 1935, Hitler sent an angry letter to Himmler, after it was discovered that the latter had tried to remove Emil Maurice from the party on the grounds of having Jewish blood connections.

The Chancellor would not allow this to happen, and so in response, he not only had Maurice and his brothers “Aryanised”, he also permitted them to retain senior positions in the SS.

Emil Maurice in his SS outfit wearing a Blood Order medal

In 1935, Hugo Gutmann — Hitler’s former Jewish commanding officer during the First World War, and also the one who helped Hitler achieve his Iron Cross Second Class — was removed from the military payroll, but according to the German historian Warner Maser, he nonetheless continued to receive a pension due to Hitler’s personal intervention, which also made it possible for him to immigrate out of Europe on financially stable terms, where he would spend the rest of his life residing in California. [9]

Meanwhile, his second commanding officer — Ernst Moritz Hess, by then a court judge — was ordered to be protected by Heinrich Himmler, due to his positive relations with Hitler during the First World War. [10]

Ernst Moritz Hess — upper-left — is shown with his unit, with Hitler seated to the far-right

With the Berlin Olympics in 1936 fast approaching, Hitler had sought out the best athletes to represent his new country, and it appears that he himself — in contrast to some other officials — did not care how “Aryan” these athletes were.

Helena Mayer was a gold medalist in fencing at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics who was residing in the United States as an exchange student when the Nuremberg Laws came into effect, which stripped her of her citizenship, and also resulted in her family — most of whom were still residing in Germany — imprisoned.

Despite her Jewish status, German officials — quite possibly at Hitler’s suggestion — awkwardly persuaded her to return and represent their country, which she reluctantly did, and helped Nazi Germany a silver medal in fencing.

Helena Mayer — far-right — giving the Nazi salute at the Berlin Olympics in 1936

Less than two years after the Olympics, the Anschluss of March 1938, which brought all of Austria into Germany’s fold, took place, and thousands of Jews had their properties forfeited.

Nonetheless, Hitler remembered his family doctor, Eduard Bloch, and declared him a “Noble Jew”, who was to be given protection and not be harmed in any way — even going so far as to later allow Bloch to immigrate with all his finances.

Meanwhile, Hitler’s relationship with Bernile continued as usual until sometime around the time of the Anschluss, when she suddenly stopped visiting him at the Berghof.

Months after her last visit, Hitler began complaining to his photographer, Heinrich Hoffman, who then informed the Fuhrer that his assistant, Martin Bormann, had personally told Bernile and her mother that they would no longer be welcome to visit ‘Uncle Hitler’.

Hoffman said that Hitler became enraged once he found out what had happened, and said:

“There are people who have a true talent for spoiling my every joy.” [11]

Despite Hitler’s objections, it appears that he did not go beyond emotional grief, since there is no evidence of the Fuhrer ever meeting or even contacting Bernile ever again.

Adolf Hitler posing with Rosa Bernile Nienau around 1938 during one of their last meetings

Later that same year, Kristallnacht — ‘Night of Broenn Glass’ — took place on November 9–10, 1938, resulting in at least 91 deaths and the arrests of thousands of others, including former landlord Hugo Erlanger, were sent to the Dachau concentration camp.

On August 10, 1939 — three weeks before the Axis-Soviet invasion of Poland — former shopowner and patron Samuel Morgenstern sent a formal letter to Hitler in person in hopes that he would save him from persecution much as he had already done for others in his life:

His Excellency the Reich Chancellor and the Fuhrer of the German Reich Adolf Hitler in Berchtesgaden:

Vienna, 10 August 1939

Excellency!

I humbly ask your indulgence for daring to write to you, Mr. Reich Chancellor, and submitting a request.

For thirty-five years, I had my own business as a glazier and frame manufacturer in Vienna, at 9 Liechtensteinerstrasse, and in the years before the war Mr. Chancellor was frequently in my store and had the opportunity to judge me to be a correct and honest man.

I have no police record and for eight years served as a non-commissioned officer in the Austrian army and was on the Romanian front, plus my industrial association twice gave me a diploma for running an exemplary company.

On November 10 my store was closed in the course of legal measures and my commercial license was revoked at the same time which made me totally indigent since to this day I have not received from the Department of Property the slightest compensation for my store which was worth Reichsmark 7,000 and was Aryanized on 24 November 1938.

I am sixty-four, my wife is sixty years old, we have for many months depended on welfare and intend to emigrate and to look for work abroad.

It is my most humble request to Your Excellency to please direct the Department of Property to give me in return for handing over to the State my un-mortgaged estate in the XXIst District which according to an official estimate is valued at Reichsmark 4,000, a small compensation in the form of foreign currency so I have the necessary disembarkation money and my wife and I can live modestly until we have found work.

Please have my application checked and please approve it.

Faithfully yours,

Samuel Morgenstern Glazier

Vienna, 9.4 Liechtensteinerstrasse

How his former customer would respond was now left to fate.

With the war years now looming around the corner, it was at this time, more than any other, that many of Hitler’s former Jewish associates would find out the hard way whether or not they would see through the end.

Adolf Hilter overseeing a column of German troops during the invasion of Western Poland in 1939

THE WAR YEARS

With the war now raging throughout continental Europe, Hitler had little time for personal connections and had instead begun spending most of his waking hours reading, studying, and writing alone.

As the war progressed, even Jews who had once had limited protections — either through association with Hitler himself, or another representable party member — had these rights slowly forfeited.

For Samuel Morgenstern and his wife, no response had come from Hitler, and as a result, the pair were deported along with the rest of the occupied Jewish population to Poland, where they were interned in the Lodz Ghetto, where Samuel would die of “wasting” in August 1943.

Why it is that Hitler had not intervened is not known for certain, though Brigitte Hamann believed that the letter that Morgenstern had written for the Fuhrer never reached his desk, because it had been filtered out by other Nazi officials — some of whom were far less inclined to give individual preference. [12]

By 1941, Ernst Moritz Hess had been deprived of protection and was thus later sent to a labour camp, though because officials still remembered his better days with Hitler, they spared him from the worst conditions, which saved his life — by contrast, his sister Berta is said to have died under unknown circumstances at Auschwitz after being imprisoned since 1942 at Theresienstadt concentration camp, while his mother Elisabeth had to flee into neutral Switzerland.
Emma Lowenstamm — Hitler’s former art teacher — would die in a ghetto in Prague on January 9, 1941, at the age of sixty-one.
Jakob Altenberg — Hitler’s former business partner — was also arrested and imprisoned, but was later released, both for having a non-Jewish wife, and because of his past association, which allowed him to reside as a free man in Vienna until his passing in 1944.
Rosa Bernile Nienau — who had never heard from Hitler again after Bormann forbade contact in 1938 — would die from polio on October 5, 1943, at the age of seventeen, and be subsequently buried at a cemetery in Munich.
Emma Morgenstern would also die in the war — either at the Lodz Ghetto where her husband had perished, or possibly at Auschwitz itself sometime in late 1944.

Even with the deaths of many of his old Jewish friends and associates, Hitler continued to keep Emil Maurice around as one of his closest friends, while also extending that privilege to the likes of Luftwaffe generals Erhard Milch — a paternal Jew — and Helmuth Wilberg — a maternal Jew — because of their recommendations by Hermann Goring, who was just as prone to Hitler in treating some Jews on an individual basis.

Erhard Milch

Helmuth Wilberg

Unlike Wilberg — who would die in an aviation crash on November 20, 1941 — Erhard Milch would serve throughout the war, and even be later convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg.

Hitler’s personal dietician was a woman by the name of Helene von Exner, who had been born on April 16, 1917, and who frequently travelled with the Fuhrer by train.

In 1944, after she fell in love with SS adjutant Friedrich Darges over the advancements of Martin Bormann, the latter was said to have revealed to Hitler that her maternal great-grandmother and grandmother had been Jews before their families converted, making them non-Aryan under German law.

Once this revelation came to Hitler’s attention, he was said to have amicably placed her on leave in February 1944, before firing her in May of that year — he nonetheless ordered that she be paid her salary for another six months while Exner searched for a new replacement, which she did when she located Constance Manziarly.

Despite entrusting Martin Bormann with having Exner and her family Aryanized as a reward for her services, Bormann — possibly angry at being reproached, and also because of his much more rigid views on German “pureness” — was said to have kept delaying the process until a secretary by the name of Traudl Junge reported this to Hitler, who was said to have blasted Bormann for insubordination before Exner’s elevated status was finally completed in March 1945.

CONCLUSION

It is without doubt that in his lifetime, Hitler had met many more Jews with whom we now know nothing about.

Even Exner kept a low profile after the war — only making regular contact with former friends such as Traudl Junge, and historian Brigitte Hamann in 1995 during the latter’s making of the 2002 book Winifred Wagner: Or Hitler’s Bayreuth.

The fates of Sigfried Loffner and Josef Neumann — the two men from the hostel Hitler had befriended over Rheinhold Hanisch — are not publicly known at this time.

Eduard Bloch would die on June 1, 1945 — just a month after his infamous patient’s demise — possibly from illnesses resulting from the aftermath news of the hostilities that had taken place in his absence.
Hugo Erlanger — the former Munich landlord — would survive the war, and in 1949, his old apartment building was returned to his possession, which he kept until his passing sometime in 1964 at the age of 84 or 85.
The Olympian Helene Mayer would also outlive the war, and die in Heidelberg, West Germany on October 10, 1953.
Erhard Milch lived in Dusseldorf, Germany until his death on January 25, 1972 after being released from prison in 1954.
Emil Maurice had begun a watch shop, before his passing in Munich on September 6, 1972, after being released from prison in 1951.
Hugo Gutmann — one of Hitler’s former commanding officers — would live out his days in San Diego, California until his death on June 22, 1962.
Ernst Moritz Hess — the second commanding officer, and also possibly the last Jew to have had any significant relations with Hitler (after Helene von Exner) — remained in Germany after the war, and died on September 14, 1983, at the age of 93.

Regardless of the opinions one may have had of the Hitler from history, the Hitler of flesh and blood has proven a far more multi-dimensional character than most people are willing to give credit.

With all that said, I think it is safe to say that Hitler had great admiration for many of the Jews he did meet, and this list would no doubt have been greatly extended if, in a hypothetical timeline, he had encounters with those who never met him.