Hitler's hatred driven by mother's death

London: Adolf Hitler`s hatred of the Jews, which led to the Holocaust, was driven by grief over his beloved mother`s death after her treatment for breast cancer by a Jewish doctor, says a new book.
According to the book, titled `November 9: How World War One Led To The Holocaust`, Hitler believed that his mother, Klara, was poisoned by Dr Eduard Bloch and his grief was a cause of his anti-semitism.

Klara died in 1907, aged 47, when Hitler was 18. A devout Roman Catholic, she died from idoform poisoning caused by her treatment of her breast cancer, a common medical practice at the time.

"Her painful death was a key moment in his development. Hitler never forgave the Jewish doctor. In conversations with aides such as Josef Goebbels he referred to the Jews as being like TB and himself as a `healer` who had to stamp it, and consequently them, out," Joachim Riecker, author of the book, was quoted by the a news daily as saying.

Dr Bloch later emigrated from Austria to the US and died in 1945.

The book goes against conventional wisdom which has emphasised the young Hitler`s respect for the doctor. It also highlights the significance of November 9.

This was the date of the birth of the Weimar Republic in 1918, the date when Hitler attempted to seize power in 1923
and the night in 1938 when he launched Kristallnacht pogrom against the Jews -- the precursor to the Holocaust.

PTI