Three Quiet Brothers on Long Island, All of Them Related to Hitler – The New York Times

They have moved away from the two-story clapboard house where they grew up on Silver Street in Patchogue, where their father ran a diagnostic blood lab. To their former neighbors in Patchogue, much about them and their upbringing seemed all-American — even aggressively so — but some of those neighbors remember a family just a little bit apart from everyone else, speaking German at home, and a patriarch with the slightest, just the slightest, resemblance to a certain dark figure in history.

A new play, “Little Willy,” based on their father’s life is playing this month in Manhattan, and when a reporter went to the cabin shared by Louis and Brian to ask their reaction, Louis, as the other brothers had, declined to be interviewed. He said they would soon be telling their story themselves. “Why would we talk to someone else when we’re writing our own book?” he said. “We have a lawyer and an agent.”

Would the book address the intriguing stories that have circulated about them in this part of Long Island for decades? Did Willy really blackmail Uncle Adolf with information suggesting that the Führer could be half-Jewish? Did one of Willy’s sons really have the middle name Adolf? Since all four brothers were childless, was it because of a pact to end the Hitler bloodline?

Louis didn’t answer, saying he did not want to discuss his family.

Willy Hitler’s family on Long Island is a fascinating family narrative, and scraps can be gleaned from the occasional news article. The cover of a 2001 book, “The Last of the Hitlers,” displays each brother’s high school yearbook picture over Hitler’s face and suggests that the brothers made a pact not to have children.

The book and many articles withhold the brothers’ last name and whereabouts; this article does the same, at their vehement and repeated request, because the brothers say they fear a media barrage and people misconstruing them as Nazis.