Vienna: The gravestone of Adolf Hitler`s
parents in the Austrian village where he lived as a child has
been removed after it became a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis,
the local pastor said on Friday.
A descendant of Hitler`s father, reportedly an
unidentified elderly woman living in Lower Austria, "has
relinquished her rights and has had it removed," said Kurt
Pittertschatscher, pastor of Leonding near the northern city
of Linz.
"The upkeep of the grave was becoming increasingly
difficult as the years went by, and the grave ... kept being
misused for gatherings of sympathisers," he said.
But the pastor said that the remains of Hitler`s customs
official father Alois, who died in 1903, and his mother Klara,
who passed away four years later, had not been exhumed.
The house where the family lived is still standing.
Hitler was born around 100 kilometres away in 1889 in a
village later annexed to Braunau am Inn but the family moved
nine years later to Leonding, where Alois had bought a house.
The parents` grave had often attracted sympathisers, and
anti-extremist groups had asked for it to be removed. Hitler
himself was only believed to have visited it once or twice
after taking power in 1933, Pittertschatscher said.
Last year, a vase was left bearing the German word
"UnvergeSSlich" -- "unforgettable" -- and the "SS" clearly
highlighted, an apparent reference to the Nazi paramilitary
group, the Kurier newspaper reported.
The Upper Austrian Network Against Fascism pressure group,
which had campaigned for the tombstone to be taken away, said
the removal on Wednesday was a "welcome success."
"The problem was not the grave itself ... but its misuse
as a pilgrimage site for the brown scene," a statement said,
referring to the far-right movement in Germany and Austria.
It is not the first time in recent years that a grave that
has become something of a shrine for the extreme right has
been removed.
Last July the remains of Hitler`s one-time deputy Rudolf
Hess, who parachuted into Britain in 1941 on an apparent
one-man peace mission without the Fuehrer`s approval, were
exhumed in the small town of Wunsiedel in southern Germany.
His remains, removed along with the headstone bearing the
epitaph "Ich hab`s gewagt" ("I dared") which was destroyed,
were placed in a new coffin and burnt immediately, with the
ashes scattered at sea.
PTI
