A Jewish woman who revealed last year that she used to live next door to Adolf Hitler prior to World War II, has provided new details about the Nazi leader’s life.
Alice Frank Stock, who recently turned 102, said that she spent her early years living near Hitler in Munich during the 1920s and 1930s, according to British news agency SWNS. Stock, whose family lived on Prinzregentenplatz, added she saw a coffin coming out of Hitler’s apartment, rumored to contain his niece, Geli Raubal.
“We heard many [rumors], from the cook and others,” Stock said. “We saw a coffin being carried out of the entrance. I think a niece of Hitler’s was living there and then she died. There was speculation of how and when she died. I think there was truth in it that the coffin was carried out and in it was a woman.”
Raubal was Hitler’s half-niece and is widely believed to have committed suicide in 1931, at the age of 23. It is believed she shot herself in the head with a gun that belonged to the German dictator. Hitler, who kept a tight rein on his half-niece, acting possessive of her, eventually declared that Raubal was the only woman he ever loved, according to the 1960 book, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.”
An exact cause of Raubal’s death has never been confirmed and is still the subject of much speculation amongst scholars.
Stock, who now lives at the Druid Stoke Bupa Care Home in Bristol, England, added that she once saw the future Führer at the opera, sitting just a few feet away from her.
“Once I went to the opera – I got tickets through the school, it was in the royal box,” Stock continued. “I was very pleased. “I got there in the evening and there were SS men saying, ‘You can’t come in here – go two boxes further down’. As the curtain went up I looked at the royal box – and there was Hitler sitting there.”
The Schutzstaffel, otherwise known as the SS, was originally established as Adolf Hitler’s “personal bodyguard unit,” according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. However, under the direction of Heinrich Himmler, the SS would later become the elite guard of the Nazis, as well as Hitler’s paramilitary organization, taking on security and surveillance tasks “without regard for legal restraint,” the museum added.
Although Stock and her family had little interaction with Hitler, there was a significant fear of him in the building, even though it was the early stage of his rise to power.
“We had a wonderful cook who was elderly and very Catholic – and very anti-Hitler,” Stock explained. “Once she went out and saw a photo of Hitler hanging on the wall and she said, ‘Yes he should be hanged, the scoundrel – but not like this!’”
Stock replied telling the cook, “‘You’ll get us all into a concentration camp.’”
Decades later, Stock said she would not know what to say to Hitler, knowing what she knows now. “I wouldn’t want to talk to him because my feelings would be too strong – I couldn’t.”
Hitler remained in the apartment building, which was also the birthplace of the Nazi Party, until 1934, when he became chancellor and spent time at a villa near Berchtesgaden. He, however, retained ownership of the property, visiting infrequently.
After years of speculation, a study was published in August 2019 that suggested that the grandfather of the Nazi leader was Jewish.
Research published in May 2018 confirmed that Hitler died during World War II, despite rumors to the contrary.