In March 2024, a photograph circulated on social networks, the author of which allegedly captured the grandmother of the current head of the European Commission at the moment when she shook hands with Adolf Hitler. We found out who was actually in this photo.
March 18, member of the Federation Council of the Russian Federation, ex-head of the Roscosmos corporation Dmitry Rogozin published this photo on social network X with the caption: “The grandmother of the current President of the European Commission is in interesting company. You b****s... Now it’s clear.” Ten days later, same photo posted in his Telegram channel, political scientist Alexander Semchenko (92,000 views at the time of writing this analysis). The image was also shared by ordinary users X And Facebook.
A photograph purporting to show Hitler and von der Leyen's grandmother was circulated in different languages (e.g. Croatian And Greek), which attracted the attention of European fact checkers. Ellinikahoaxes project discovered This picture is on the website of the East Prussian Photo Archive, where it is stated that the author captured a girl named Hildegard Sandop next to the Fuhrer. According to the archive, this shot was taken in 1937 in the settlement Naunienen (now the village of Berezovka in the modern Kaliningrad region of the Russian Federation). The Croatian publication Faktograf also found a photograph in the Getty Images photo bank, the same date is indicated there (1937), but a different shooting location is named (the city of Bukeburg), and the girl’s name is not given.
Ursula von der Leyen (nee Albrecht) was born in 1958 in Brussels. Her father is the German politician Ernst Albrecht, her mother is Heidi Adele Strohmaier. The paternal grandmother of the head of the European Commission was called Adelheid Berg, on the mother's side - Gertrud Ohlrogge. Judging by public data, there are no women with the surname Sandop in the von der Leyen family tree, and the grandmothers of the head of the European Commission in 1937, when the viral photo was taken, were older than the girl in the picture. The lack of information about the connection between her and the politician was also confirmed by the press secretary of the East Prussian Photo Archive, Anna Langner.
A photograph distributed on social networks is usually presented in the form of a screenshot of a publication on the social network X, which was posted on his blog by an American political scientist and publicist Norman Finkelstein. The English-language caption reads: “Photo from the family album of Ursula von der Leyen. “My dear grandmother did not wash her hands for a month after this momentous event.” This tweet is really was published in November 2023. The post appears to be satirical, with Finkelstein sharply criticizing Israel's military operation in the Gaza Strip following the Hamas attack last October, while von der Leyen is more reserved on the issue.
In the captions to the photo, some authors also indicatedthat one of the grandfathers (or great-grandfathers) of the head of the European Commission was SS General Karl Albrecht Oberg. “Oberg has 100,000 human souls sent to concentration camps,” say social media users.
Von der Leyen's paternal side is happening from the German Albrecht family, which traces its ancestry back to the 16th century. How installed AFP journalists who studied German genealogical directories found that the grandfather of the head of the European Commission was the doctor and psychologist Karl Eduard Albrecht (1902–1965), and his great-grandfather was the merchant Friedrich Karl Albrecht (1875–1952).
Karl Albrecht Oberg has nothing to do with this family; Albrecht is part of his name, not his surname. He was born in 1897 and indeed occupied high positions in the Nazi hierarchy, rising from an ordinary member of the SS to a general. In 1942–1944, he headed the SS and police in occupied France and received the nickname “Butcher of Paris” from local residents for his particular cruelty. In 1945 Oberga captured in Austria, he was subsequently sentenced to death twice, but was pardoned in 1958, replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment. In 1962, he was released early, and three years later he died in Germany.
Thus, the viral photo does not show Ursula von der Leyen's grandmother shaking hands with Adolf Hitler. For the first time (and apparently as a joke), this photo was associated with the head of the European Commission by the American publicist Norman Finkelstein. There is no evidence of a relationship between the girl in the photo and the politician. The claims that one of von der Leyen's ancestors was a high-ranking SS officer are also false.
This is not the first time that claims that the grandparents and great-grandfathers of European politicians held important positions in Nazi Germany or committed war crimes during World War II have appeared on the Internet. Yes, “Verified” already sorted it out similar statements that Russian pro-government media and officials made about German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and members of his government. Only the information about the grandfather of Foreign Minister Annalena Bärbock, who served in the army of the Third Reich, but did not hold important positions, turned out to be partly correct. The head of the German Foreign Ministry herself, through her press secretary, stated that she did not know much of the information that became known only recently.
Cover photo: screenshot X
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