Hitler's right hand: Heinrich Himmler, 1940
Photo: Reuters
Himmler relative marries Israeli
Catharine Himmler, second niece of Hitler's right hand S.S. commander Heinrich Himmler, is married to an Israeli; she is terrified of the day she will have to explain to her son that one side of the family attempted to murder the other side
Catharine Himmler's six year-old son is a brilliant and curious child, but she is afraid of that day that he will begin to ask about his family tree. "I'm petrified when I think of the moment in which I will have to tell him that one half of the family tried to murder the other half," said Himmler, a political scientist whose grandfather was the brother of S.S. commander Heinrich Himmler.
Catharine married an Israeli, the son of Holocaust survivors who survived the Warsaw Ghetto, which was burned to the ground by soldiers acting under the command of her uncle.
Soon there will be no one left to tell her son (from memory) about the horrors of the 20th century which are an inseparable part of his heritage. Himmer has attempted to write a book which will offer details about her extended family, and especially concentrate on what the Nazi party's number 2.
The book, "The Himmler Brothers," which was published in Germany last week, portrays Heinrich Himmler as a 'family man' loved and esteemed by his relatives, who were certainly aware of some of his crimes. The book gives details about the missing link between Heinrich Himmler the lover, hypochondriac, and chicken farmer, and the monster attempted to perpetrate the "final solution."
The first generation of the Nazi's children, who grew up in the fifties, were bullied and made fun of by their peers at school, as the Germans had learned to hate the Nazis, says Catharine. But she was forced to come to grips with her past when she fell in love with an Israeli. "It was as if we were meant to meet," she told the London Times.
