“I Was Hitler’s Neighbor”: Jewish Centenarian Recalls Hidden Childhood

Edgar Feuchtwanger, who turned 100 last year, reveals the extraordinary story of his Jewish family living directly across from Adolf Hitler’s Munich apartment during the Nazi rise to power, saying that discovery of their identity would have meant certain death.

“If he’d known we were Jewish, we’d have been sent to Dachau,” Feuchtwanger told The Guardian in a rare interview, recounting his childhood years when the future architect of the Holocaust lived just meters away.

An Unlikely Childhood Encounter

In 1929, when Feuchtwanger was just five years old, Hitler moved into a grand apartment at Prinzregentenplatz 16 in Munich – directly opposite the Feuchtwanger family home. For nearly a decade, the Jewish boy would witness history unfold from his bedroom window.

“I’m still here at over 100 years old, while most of them are gone. Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, they were all wiped out,” Feuchtwanger reflected according to The Jerusalem Post, which noted his remarkable position as “perhaps the only living witness who saw and experienced Hitler directly.”

A Face-to-Face Meeting

Feuchtwanger recalls one particularly chilling moment in 1933 when, while walking with his nanny, he came face-to-face with the Nazi leader. “He looked at me quite pleasantly,” Feuchtwanger told The Times of Israel, adding “I have to emphasize that if he had known who I was, I wouldn’t be here.”

The risk was compounded by the fact that Edgar’s uncle was Lion Feuchtwanger, a famous novelist and prominent critic of Hitler whose satirical 1930 book “Success” had portrayed a character clearly modeled after the Nazi leader. The book at times rivaled “Mein Kampf” in sales.

Witnessing History Unfold

From his window, the young Feuchtwanger observed the transformation of Germany. “We noticed that Hitler was a very clever man, the way he managed everything,” he told the media, describing how counterdemonstrations disappeared and were replaced by salutes and visiting dignitaries.

At school, Feuchtwanger was forced to participate in Nazi education, even drawing swastikas in his notebooks despite knowing that “it was a bad business for us,” as he explained to CNN in a previous interview.

The Family’s Escape

The family’s precarious situation came to a head during Kristallnacht in November 1938, when Feuchtwanger’s father was arrested and imprisoned at Dachau concentration camp. Released six weeks later, he returned “frighteningly thin” and immediately went to bed.

Recognizing the mortal danger, the family secured visas to England at great expense. “The day I crossed the border was 19 February 1939, and it felt as if I had left an evil empire,” Feuchtwanger recalled of his escape at age 14.

A Witness to History

Feuchtwanger went on to become a respected historian in England, teaching at the University of Southampton until his retirement in 1989. In 2012, he co-authored the memoir “Hitler, My Neighbor: Memories of a Jewish Childhood” with French journalist Bertil Scali, documenting his extraordinary childhood.

Now in his second century of life, Feuchtwanger represents one of the last living links to the personal world of Hitler and offers a unique perspective on one of history’s darkest chapters from someone who witnessed it from an extraordinary vantage point.