Samuel Saver

Paula Hitler (Paula Wolff), the younger and only surviving full sister of Adolf Hitler, photographed in May 1945 while in U.S. Army custody.... Paula Hitler (1896-1960) was the youngest child of Alois and Klara Hitler and Adolf Hitler's only full-sibling to survive into adulthood. Orphaned at a young age after her father died when she was six and her mother when she was eleven, she and Adolf lived on a meager state pension. Personal documents and research later revealed a troubled home life; journals noted that Adolf was a strict and sometimes physical presence during their youth. She worked as a secretary and clerical worker in Vienna, including for the Austrian State Insurance Company, from which she was fired in August 1930 once her relationship to Adolf became known. To protect her from public scrutiny, Adolf insisted she use the assumed surname "Wolff" (a childhood nickname of his). Adolf provided her with a regular monthly financial stipend throughout the 1930s and WWII. Her life wasn’t completely separate from the regime, though. In the early 1940s, she was briefly engaged to Erwin Jekelius, a Viennese psychiatrist and prominent Nazi euthanasia doctor, but Adolf intervened and forced the engagement to be called off. She never married or had children. She worked as a secretary in a military field hospital. She never officially joined the Nazi Party. At the end of WWII, she was arrested and interrogated by U.S. counter-intelligence officers. She was released without charges after investigators found no evidence of war crimes or direct political complicity. She lived a quiet, reclusive life in Berchtesgaden, supported by former members of her brother's inner circle. In February 1959, she gave her only filmed television interview to British producer Peter Morley, where she spoke cautiously about their childhood and avoided political questions. She died on June 1, 1960, in Berchtesgaden, marking the end of Adolf Hitler's immediate family line. #archaeohistories