VIENNA - The tombstone marking the grave of Adolf Hitler's parents, a place of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis, has been removed from an upper Austrian village cemetery at the request of a descendant, and the grave is now available to receive new remains, officials said Friday.
Walter Brunner, mayor of Leonding village, said the stone with the faded black-and-white portrait photos of Alois and Klara Hitler was taken down Wednesday. Village priest Kurt Pitterschatscher said the rented grave was ready for a new lease.
Asked whether he would have trouble persuading people to let their loved ones share a grave with the parents of a man whose name is a universal epitome of evil, Pitterschatscher said, "I really haven't thought about it."
Pitterschatscher said the black marble marker was removed without ceremony by a stonemason hired by the relative, described as an elderly female descendant of Alois Hitler's first wife, Anna. What's left at the site is a white gravel square and a tree.
People are also reading…
He said he did not know the woman personally and did not identify her by name but cited her request for termination of the grave lease as saying she was too old to care for it and tired of it "being used for manifestations of sympathy" for Hitler.
Hitler's roots are in Braunau, near Leonding, which is commonly identified as his hometown after the village that he was born in was incorporated into Braunau in 1938. But he and his family moved to Leonding in 1898 when he was 9 and lived there until age 15.
Anti-extremist groups say neo-Nazis, sometimes coming in groups, placed flowers and Nazi symbols on the grave.
