The testimony of a woman whose family was exterminated by the Nazi helped convinced a Bavarian town council to vote unanimously to revoke the honorary citizen that the municipality had granted Hitler in 1933.
The town council of Dietramszell was deadlocked over whether to adopt the resolution revoking the honorary citizenship after the discovery of a document in the town archives that both Hitler and Paul von Hindenburg, president of Germany at the time, were awarded the honor as honorary citizens.
An outcry over an 8-8 tie in a council vote last week prompted it to meet again on Tuesday, when it voted 21-0 to strip Hitler of the award.
“It was never our intention to trivialize the crimes of Adolf Hitler. We underestimated that our voting behavior could be understood in such a way,” the council said. It added that the council members were impressed by impassioned testimony of a woman whose family was wiped out in the Holocaust.