Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

British Couple Who Named Son After Hitler Were Members Of A Terrorist Group

(JTA) — A neo-Nazi couple in Britain who named their baby after Hitler were found guilty of being members of a banned terrorist group.

Adam Thomas, 22, and Claudia Patatas, 38, were convicted on Monday in Birmingham Crown Court in Britain’s West Midlands region for being members of the extreme right-wing organization, National Action. The group was banned in 2016.

The couple had given their baby son the middle name Adolf out of “admiration for the Nazi leader,” Thomas told the jury during the seven-week trial.

Photographs taken by police from their home showed Thomas, who had worked as a security guard, carefully holding his newborn baby while wearing the hood and white robes associated with the Ku Klux Klan.

Thomas also was convicted of having a terrorist manual, titled the “Anarchist’s Cookbook,” which contained instructions on making actual working bombs.

During the trial Thomas admitted to being a racist, but said it is “something I want to put behind me,” the Guardian reported. He said that his parents were “common racists” and that his participation in chat groups where he had made anti-Semitic and racist remarks to other alleged National Action members “was entertaining to me at the time. It was funny at the time.”

Six other West Midlands residents also have been found guilty of being members of the banned extremist group in recent days. The National Action cell displayed hatred of Jews and Muslims in their encrypted online chats, according to The Guardian.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.