Was Hitler a self-hating Jew?
by
ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ

I believe in most extreme forms of hatred and stigmatizing certain groups there is an element of self-hatred. A person who obsessively fights against homosexuals may be fighting against his actual self, his homosexual dark persona. The one who hates the Roma may be fighting against his “colorful,” marginal threads to protect his dull life, governed by the dictatorship of “shoulds.” I have many times observed in Turkey that most hard-line secularists come from devout Muslim families, and with their Islamophobic attitudes they actually express their shame and discontent with their background.

When I first heard the story of this Turkish nationalist Armenian guy, I thought this was a divine message from God to him. All of a sudden he was given an opportunity to reflect on his entire life, his purpose, his attitude and the way he relates with other people. Did he receive the message? I did not believe that he had no clue about his background; he most probably kept pushing every sign showing that he is not Turkish into the dark corners of his subconscious. Apparently, later on, some undeniable evidence showed up and he entered in a kind of shock. Or maybe with this sudden revelation everything became much clearer. Things started to make sense.

Can he continue on with his life as if nothing has happened? After this kind of painful confrontation, nothing can be the same. He would either abandon his Turkish nationalism or become more and more nationalistic.

This guy did not know his background (at least consciously) and became a Turkish nationalist. But in Turkey we have some other interesting cases in which people of different backgrounds became important figures in the Turkish nationalist movement. One of the founders of Turkish nationalism was Jewish. Tekin Alp, a fervent advocate of Pan-Turkist ideas, was born into a Jewish family and named Moiz Cohen. He believed in what he was doing so much that he invited all Jews in Turkey to become Turks and to abandon their ethnic identity.

All these memories and thoughts come to my mind when I read an article that said Adolf Hitler’s DNAs had shown that he was of Jewish and African descent. I would not be surprised if somehow it came out one day that Hitler was also aware of his racial background. The whole story would then make more sense. We would understand the root causes of his deeply seated hatred towards Jews. In his war against Jews and in his endless struggle to purify the German nation, he was probably expressing his self-hatred and abhorrence.

According to the Belgian magazine Knack, Jean-Paul Mulders tracked down Hitler’s genetic code and said, “One can from this postulate that Hitler was related to people whom he despised.”

A statement by Ronny Decorte, a genetic specialist at the Catholic University of Leuven, was also included in Knack’s report. Decorte said, “The affair is fascinating if one compares it with the conception of the world of the Nazis, in which race and blood was central.”