Hitler’s Apartment Block Neighbor is Still Alive

And she’s Jewish.

Before gaining power as Germany’s Chancellor in 1933, Hitler was just a failed artist and political enthusiast. One only has as much power as people are willing to give them, after all. Hitler and his Nazi Party had failed in the Munich Putsch (an uprising in Munich) during the Weimar Republic. As a result, he had just spent 9 months in prison for treason where he wrote Mein Kampf. He was just getting back on his feet when he lived in an apartment building in the Prinzregentenplatz neighborhood, Munich, along with Alice Frank Stock — who is now 102 years old.

Was Hitler a Friendly Neighbor?

Alice Frank Stock had been living in the apartment building since her parents had moved there when she was just a newborn baby, in 1919. Her family was Jewish and her father had relocated them because of a job he got in Munich as a High Court judge.

As a result, Stock spent almost a decade as Hitler’s neighbor, ever since she was a small child. She mostly just saw Hitler coming in and out of the building and going to his apartment followed by SS guards. At the time, she didn’t know what they represented.

However, she was close enough to Hitler that rumors of his apartment inevitably reached her family and her young ears. Adolf Hitler had had only one weakness in life — other than the desire to attack Russia during winter. He was infatuated with his half-niece, Geli Raubal.

In 1925, Hitler invited her mother, Angela, to become a housekeeper at his apartment along with her two daughters — Geli, who was 17 at the time, and her sister Elfriede. Hitler was immediately smitten with the young Geli, calling her an “unusual beauty.” He never let her out of his sight for years thereafter and there were many rumors circulating as to the nature of their relationship. Most of the neighbors, along with Stock’s family, suspected it was sexual. Whether this was true or not, we shall never really know. However, what almost every account on the matter agrees on is that the pair shared a deep affection for each other.

Two years later, Hitler asked Geli’s mother to move into his Berghof villa in Berchtesgaden and see to its upkeep. But he insisted that Geli could remain behind at his apartment if she wanted to. She agreed. Hitler then began controlling her social life and dictating her future, even going as far as preventing her from going to a music school in Vienna.

It is speculated that it was Hitler’s possessiveness that drove Geli Raubal to later kill herself on September 18, 1931 — two years before Hitler would become Chancellor and change Germany forever. She shot herself in the chest with Hitler’s handgun. Rumors emerged around the apartment block that it was Hitler himself that had killed her after she had entered into a sexual relationship with his chauffeur. However, the apparent suicide was never investigated. Whether he was directly responsible or not, it is certain that Geli’s death had deeply affected Hitler.

Rudolf Hess — a leading member of the Nazi Party — once said that Hitler fell into a deep depression after her death. He had never been a kind person, but afterward, he became even crueler to those around him. He also talked about ending his own life and stopped eating meat altogether. It was later said that “he became a vegetarian because he couldn’t bear to see meat as it reminded him of her dead flesh.”

Most of Hitler’s neighbors, as well as family members, stopped speaking to him after this incident. Geli’s mother left his employ. For years afterward, Hitler kept the apartment room as it had been when she died. He filled Geli’s room with flowers twice a year to commemorate her birth and death. Alice Frank Stock reported having seen the coffin leave his apartment. In 2021, she said during an interview that “there was speculation of how and when she died… But there was no confirmation ever — and you couldn’t talk openly.”

During the Nuremberg Trials which occurred after World War II ended, Hermann Goring — another powerful member of the Nazi Party — commented that this incident “changed his relationship to all other people.” Hitler’s photographer is also reported as having said that if Geli had not died, things could have gone differently in Hitler’s life, for her death “was when the seeds of inhumanity began to grow inside Hitler.”

Alice Frank Stock had many more “disturbing encounters” with Hitler in the years after the incident. At one point, she had won some tickets for the royal box at the local opera. However, she was driven out of her seat by SS men and told to sit somewhere else. Once the opera started, she saw Hitler sitting in her seat along with all of his cronies.

“I got there in the evening and there were SS men saying, ‘You can’t come in here — go two boxes further down.’ As the curtain went up I looked at the royal box — and there was Hitler sitting there.” — Alice Stock, 2021

After Hitler Became Chancellor

The Nazi Party took control of the government in 1933 and Hitler quickly turned it into a dictatorship. Stock’s father was soon let go from his job as a judge. Alice found herself unable to enroll in any German college because she was Jewish. Her family sent her to Switzerland amid growing worries and she subsequently emigrated again and enrolled in a secretarial college in London.

By 1938, the Nazis began to launch violent riots aimed at the massacre and expulsion of all Jewish Germans. One such pogrom was called Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass) in which the SA and German civilians smashed and demolished thousands of Jewish homes, businesses, hospitals, and synagogues across Germany. Over 7,000 Jewish businesses were destroyed and 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps.

“The day after the Crystal Night a friend of my parents rang them up saying her husband had been taken to a concentration camp.” — Alice Stock, 2021

Stock’s father was almost sent to the Dachau concentration camp but was spared on account of his old age and the fact that all the concentration camps were already full. At that point, the family realized that they had to leave Germany. Stock was living in England at the time with her brother.

“They had to get out and we tried to get them a permit to come to England… The U.K. government said at the time that you had to have £1,000 in England, but we didn’t.” — Alice Stock, 2021

Her father eventually secured their immigration to Great Britain by giving away a precious violin as payment instead. The whole family was reunited safely in London just a few days before Hitler invaded Poland and World War II broke out.

Alice Stock Today

Stock is currently living in Bristol along with her English husband. Due to her close proximity to Hitler, it is a miracle that she is alive today. Other than the bombings of British cities during World War II which Stock also survived, she “had no further run-ins” with the Führer. Asked if she would have had something to say to him if she were back in Germany in her youth knowing what she knows now, she replied:

“I wouldn’t want to talk to him because my feelings would be too strong. I couldn’t.”

References

https://allthatsinteresting.com/alice-frank-stock-hitlers-neighbor https://allthatsinteresting.com/geli-raubal https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/adolf-hitler-munich-apartment-neighbour-3814531 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geli_Raubal