Pat Buchanan, Hitler, a Bodyguard and a Jewish Wife
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Dan Friedman September 4, 2009
The day after Pat Buchanan wrote, ignoring inconveniences like historical fact and political precedent, that Hitler probably didn’t want to fight Europe and that World War II was probably Winston Churchill’s fault, comes the revelation that Hitler’s bodyguard was married to a Jewish woman.
Steve Rosenberg, writing from Germany for the BBC, talked to Brigitta Jacob-Engelken whose father, now 92, is still alive. Her father has always denied his wife’s ancestry but “Brigitta learnt Hebrew… spent time on a kibbutz in Israel. Back in Germany, she made a career as an architect. Among the projects she worked on were the restoration of local synagogues.” There are good things, she says, about having a father who worked in the final bunker, at least she knows for sure Hitler was killed — “My father is someone who can say ‘I’ve seen him dead!’.”
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