'Per the Fuhrer's wishes'
Photo: AP
How Hitler protected Jewish commanding officer
Letter reveals that Hitler personally intervened to protect Ernst Hess, his Jewish commander from WWI
At the beginning of WWII Adolph Hitler
personally intervened to save the life of Ernst Hess, his Jewish commander from WWI, a letter found by a Germany's Jewish Voice reporter Susanne Mauss in Hess' file in the Gestapo archives revealed.
In the letter dated August 27, 1941, Heinrich Himmler, one of the architects of the Final Solution, instructed the secret police to grant Hess "the relief and the protection as per the Fuhrer's wishes," Britain's Daily Telegraph reported on Thursday.
Ernst Hess
Even though Hess had been christened a protestant, he had a Jewish mother and under Nazi race laws that made him a Jew. The Telegraph stated that before the letter Hess, a decorated war hero, had even been beaten up by a Nazi gang in 1936 and forced to flee to Italy for a number of years.
Hess's ties to Hitler were replicated in continuing good relations with other comrades-in-arms. Fritz Wiedemann, a former member of his unit, served as Hitler's personal adjutant from 1934 to 1939.
Through Wiedemann it appears Hess managed to get Hitler to allow him to transfer his pension to Italy and free himself from a Nazi law that forced Jews to carry the name Israel.
Yet the Hess family's connections to Hitler were not enough. Berta, his sister was deported and died in Auschwitz. Hess's mother, Elizabeth was also deported but survived. Hess himself married a protestant German and it was most likely why he survived.
Speaking to the Jewish Voice Hess's daughter Ursula, now 86, said her father had few memories of Hitler other than that he had no friends in the regiment.
