AFP - Getty Images

German Nazi Chancellor Adolf Hitler sits between his close collaborator Martin Bormann (right) and future Governor of Austria Arthur Seyss Inquart (left) in March 1938 at Vienna's Opera, while officers give the Nazi salute from the next box.

VIENNA — Marina Plistiev, a Kyrgyzstan-born Jew, has lived in Vienna for 34 years but still doesn't like to take public transport.

She recalls the day in 1986 as a teenager when she and her four-year-old brother, whom she'd collected from school with a fever, were told to get off a tram for having the wrong tickets, and nobody stuck up for them, apparently because they were Jews.

"With me (now), you don't see I'm Jewish but with my children you see that they're Jews. They get funny looks," she told Reuters at Kosherland, the grocery store that she and her husband started 13 years ago.

While Austria is one of the world's wealthiest, most law-abiding and stable democracies, the anti-Semitism that Plistiev senses quietly lingers in a nation that was once a enthusiastic executor of Nazi Germany's Holocaust against Jews.

After decades of airbrushing it out of history, Austria has come a long way in acknowledging its Nazi past, and the 75th anniversary on Tuesday of its annexation by Hitler's Third Reich will be the occasion for various soul-searching ceremonies.

But Jewish leaders who fought hard to win restitution after World War Two are on guard against a rising trend in anti-Semitic incidents, occasionally condemned by Austrian political leaders but seen more generally as a regrettable fact of life.

AFP - Getty Images

Passersby offer flowers to a German soldier in a street of Vienna to welcome the German Nazi troops on March 15, 1938 after the Anschluss, the invasion of Austria by the troops of the German Wehrmacht.

Austrian Jews have grown more vigilant as hooligans have verbally abused a rabbi, Austria's popular far-right party chief posted a cartoon widely seen as suggestively anti-Semitic, and a debate has opened on the legality of infant male circumcision.

A new poll timed to coincide with the anniversary found that three of five Austrians want a "strong man" to lead the country and two out of five think things were not all bad under Adolf Hitler. That was more than in previous surveys.

The history of Vienna — once home to Jewish luminaries of 20th-century culture such as Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Arnold Schoenberg, but later Adolf Eichmann's testing ground for what would become the "Final Solution" that led to genocide of 6 million Jews — means its Jews are always on the alert.

Today Austria's Jewish community of 15,000 is diverse, formed mainly of post-war immigrants from eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

But before Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, the "Anschluss", Austria's Jewish population was 195,000, the same size as present-day Linz, a provincial capital not far from Hitler's birthplace.

Two-thirds of them were driven out in the "Aryanisation" program immediately following the Anschluss and all but about 2,000 left behind were killed in concentration camps. Today's Austrian Jewish community is almost entirely in Vienna.

Austrians, many of whom had wanted a union with Germany, maintained for decades that their country was Hitler's first victim, ignoring the fact that huge, cheering crowds had greeted Hitler in March 1938 with flowers, Nazi flags and salutes.

Within days of March 12, tens of thousands of Jews and dissenters were under arrest, imprisoned or packed off to concentration camps. Jews were shut out of jobs and schools, forced to wear yellow badges, and had their property confiscated.

The IKG, Austria's official Jewish organization, says the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Austria of which it knows doubled last year to 135.

The anti-foreigner Freedom Party of Heinz-Christian Strache, who posted the disputed cartoon, consistently scores above 20 percent in opinion polls and has a chance of joining a coalition government after elections this year.

Still, many Viennese Jews freely stroll through the streets in Orthodox garb, especially in districts such as Leopoldstadt, the former Jewish ghetto where many Jews live again today.

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Ajit Solanki / AP

Indians walk past a shop named "Hitler" in Ahmadabad, India, on Aug. 29, 2012. According to reports, the owner has decided to change its name after sparking a controversy.

The owner of a clothing store in western India who sparked a row for naming his shop "Hitler" has decided to change its name, according to reports.

Rajesh Shah, whose store opened last month in Ahmedabad city in the western state of Gujarat, had claimed he only recently learned why the name would offend people. 

Shah told The Indian Express newspaper that he decided on Monday to change the shop's name because he was "getting political pressure" to do so.

'Hitler' clothing store in India sparks row

"We received at least 10 calls every day from the U.S., the U.K., Dubai, Germany and Israel," Shah said according to the Express. "It was getting very annoying, as many of these people called at odd hours."

Israel's consul general in Mumbai also asked Indian state officials to intervene, The Associated Press reported.

Shah has said the idea for the shop's name came from a nickname for one of his business partner's grandfather, who was known for his "strict nature."

"It was only recently that we read about Hitler on the Internet," Shah told The Times of India newspaper last week.

Many people in Ahmedabad believe the shop's name was a marketing gimmick, the AP said.

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Ajit Solanki / AP

Indians walk past a shop named "Hitler" in Ahmedabad, India, on Wednesday.

The owner of an Indian men's clothing store whose name has sparked a row in Ahmedabad city in the western state of Gujarat said he only recently learned why the name Hitler would disturb people, the AFP news agency reported. 

"I didn't know how much the name would disturb people," Rajesh Shah told AFP. "It was only when the store opened I learned Hitler had killed six million people."

The store opened 10 days ago, boasting a storefront that spells out "Hitler" in big letters and a swastika as the dot on the "i."

"We had put up a cloth banner for over a month saying, 'Hitler opening shortly,' no one objected to the name then," Shah told The Times of India.

He added that to him Hitler was just the nickname given to his business partner's grandfather, who was known for his "strict nature."

"Frankly, till the time we applied for the trademark permission, I had only heard that Hitler was a strict man. It was only recently that we read about Hitler on the internet," Shah told The Times of India. 

Shah said he cannot afford to change the name after spending his money on the original branding effort, but said he'd be willing to change it if he were compensated. 

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The city's small Jewish community has condemned the name, AFP reported.

"In the city of Mahatma Gandhi and non-violence, how can anyone celebrate a person like Hitler who is known to have murdered millions of unarmed ordinary civilians?" Nikitin Contractor, convener of the Friends of Israel organization from Vadodara told The Times of India. 

"Youngsters need to be told of the atrocities that [Adolf] Hitler committed and the millions who were killed in gas chambers more than 70 years ago," he added.

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According to a BBC report, Hitler memorabilia has become a growing business in India, attracting particularly younger Indians. Many reportedly admire Hitler's discipline.

Prayag Thakkar, a 19-year-old student in Gujarat state, told the BBC: "I have idolized Hitler ever since I have had a sense of history. I admire his leadership qualities and his discipline."

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The Jewish Voice From Germany website displays the story about the discovery of a letter saying Adolf Hitler wanted to protect Ernst Hess, a Jew who briefly was Hitler's commander during World War I.

Adolf Hitler personally intervened to protect a Jewish man who had been his commanding officer during World War I, according to a letter unearthed by the Jewish Voice from Germany newspaper.

The letter, written in Aug. 27, 1940, by Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazis' feared paramilitary SS, said Ernst Hess, a judge, should be spared persecution or deportation and receive “relief and protection as per the Fuhrer's wishes.”

Historian Susanne Mauss discovered the letter.

"It was a wonderful chance find," she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Friday. "There had always been rumors, but this was the first written reference to a protection by Hitler."

The letter was found in official archives containing files that the Nazi secret police, or Gestapo, kept on Jewish lawyers and judges. Mauss said its authenticity is corroborated by other documents, including one owned by Hess' surviving daughter, Ursula Hess, 86.

Hess, a decorated World War I hero who briefly commanded Hitler's company in Flanders, worked as a judge until Nazi racial laws forced him to resign in 1936. The same year he was beaten up by Nazi thugs outside his house, the paper said.

Hitler had ordered the genocide of all Europe’s Jews. His orders led to the deaths of 6 million Jews.

In a petition to Hitler at that time, Hess wrote: "For us it is a kind of spiritual death to now be branded as Jews and exposed to general contempt."

Hess and his family moved for a time to a German-speaking area of northern Italy but were then forced to return to Germany, where he discovered Hitler's protection order had been revoked.

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He spent the rest of World War II doing slave labor but he escaped death partly thanks to the fact that his wife was a gentile. Hess' sister died in the Auschwitz death camp, but his mother managed to escape to Switzerland.

Hess remained in Germany after the war, becoming head of the Federal Railway Authority based in Frankfurt. He died in 1983.

Ursula Hess, still living in Germany, told the paper in an interview that her father had benefited from a chance encounter with another World War I comrade, Fritz Wiedemann. He became Hitler's adjutant and used his influence to win concessions for Hess, she was quoted as saying.

Ursula Hess also recalled her father saying that as a young corporal in World War I, Hitler had no friends in their regiment and had kept himself very much to himself.

The paper's publisher, Rafael Seligmann, said that whether Hitler had helped protect Hess or not didn't change the Nazi leader's genocidal record.

"History won't need to be rewritten because of this," he said.

This article includes reporting by Reuters, The Associated Press and msnbc.com's Jim Gold. Follow him on Facebook here.

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Menahem Kahana / AFP - Getty Images

Workers clean graffiti from the compound of Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and memorial on Monday.

JERUSALEM - Vandals spray-painted anti-Zionist slogans at Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and police said on Monday they suspect radical ultra-Orthodox Jews opposed to Israel's existence were responsible.

"Hitler, thank you for the Holocaust," one slogan read.

Police told The Jerusalem Post that one of the slogans read scrawled on the wall read: "Haredi World Community".  Haredi are ultra-Orthodox extremists, some of whom regard modern-day Israel as an abomination, believing the establishment of the Jewish state must await the coming of the Messiah.

Israel asks Arab visitors to open emails to search 

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said investigators were working on the assumption the vandals were "members of the extreme ultra-religious community."

Some of the graffiti, all written in Hebrew and daubed overnight on exterior walls, accused Israel's founders of secretly encouraging the slaughter of six million Jews by the Nazis during World War II to hasten the creation, in 1948, of the Jewish state.

"The Zionists wanted the Holocaust," one slogan said.

Descendants of Holocaust victims reclaim German citizenship

According to The Jerusalem Post, other slogans read: "Thanks Hitler for the wonderful Holocaust you organized for us! Only because of you we received a state," "Jews, wake up, the evil regime does not protect us, it only endangers us" and "The war of the Zionist regime is not the war of the Jewish people." 

'Burning hatred'
Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem, said he was "shocked and dazed by this callous expression of burning hatred against the Zionists and Zionism."

Israelis stand in silent remembrance of Holocaust victims

Yad Vashem, a museum and memorial, was established on a Jerusalem hilltop in 1953 and is often visited by foreign leaders who place wreaths in its stark Hall of Remembrance. 

Msnbc.com staff and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Stringer/Austria / Reuters

The tombstone marking the grave of Adolf Hitler's parents, Alois and Klara Hitler, was removed from an Austrian cemetery this week to deter neo-Nazi commemorations of the German dictator.

VIENNA -- The tombstone marking the grave of Adolf Hitler's parents, a place of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis, has been removed from an upper Austrian village cemetery at the request of a descendant, and the grave is now available to receive new mortal remains, officials said Friday.

Walter Brunner, mayor of Leonding village, said the stone with the faded black and white portrait photos of Alois and Klara Hitler was taken down Wednesday. Village priest Kurt Pitterschatscher said the rented grave was ready for a new lease.

Asked whether he would have trouble persuading people to let their loved ones share a grave with the parents of a man whose name is a universal epitome of evil, Pitterschatscher said, "I really haven't thought about it."

Pitterschatscher said the black marble marker was removed without ceremony by a stonemason hired by the relative, described as an elderly female descendant of Alois Hitler's first wife, Anna. What's left at the site is a white gravel square and a tree.

He said he did not know the woman personally and did not identify her by name but cited her request for termination of the grave lease as saying she was too old to care for it and tired of it "being used for manifestations of sympathy" for Hitler.

Flowers, wreaths from admirers
Hitler's roots are in Braunau, near Leonding, which is commonly identified as his hometown after the village that he was born in was incorporated into Braunau in 1938. But he and his family moved to Leonding in 1898 when he was 9 and lived there until age 15.

Leonding itself first assumed cult status for his followers after Hitler visited his parents' grave and the nearby family house following the 1938 annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany.

The house now warehouses coffins for the cemetery, and Brunner said in a telephone interview that — unlike the more than 100-year-old grave — it did not draw Hitler fans.

Jews protest Hitler shampoo ad in Turkey

Anti-extremist groups say neo-Nazis, sometimes coming in groups, placed flowers and Nazi symbols on the grave.

Robert Eiter, with the Upper Austrian Network Against Racism and Right-Extremism, said the latest incident was on All Saints day, Nov. 1, when an urn was left with the inscription "UnvergeSSlich" — German for "unforgettable" and alluding to Hitler's SS shock troops.

"A lot of flowers and wreaths were deposited there from people who clearly were admirers," he said. "It had to do with the son and not the parents."

Brunner, the mayor, said he was "happy with the decision," and Eiter said most Leonding residents also supported it.

Austria has moved from its postwar portrayal of being Nazi Germany's first victim to acknowledging that it was Hitler's willing partner. Most young Austrians reject Nazi ideology and condemn the part their parents might have played in the Holocaust.

At the same time, the rightist-populist Freedom Party — whose supporters range from those disillusioned with more traditional parties to Islamophobes and Holocaust-deniers — has become Austria's second-strongest political force.

An Anti-Defamation League survey taken this year and published last week said that — while remaining high — anti-Semitic attitudes decreased from 30 percent to 28 percent in Austria last year compared to 2009.

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ANKARA, Turkey -- Turkey's Jewish community was on Monday protesting a Turkish commercial that uses an old film footage of Adolf Hitler to sell shampoo.

The Chief Rabbi's office called Hitler "the most striking example of cruelty and savagery" and said using his image in a commercial was unacceptable in a statement.

The statement also demanded a public apology from the advertising company "to repair the damage this commercial has caused to society's conscience."

The commercial for a men's brand of shampoo has Hitler appear to be shouting in a dubbed-over Turkish voice: "If you are not wearing women's dress, you shouldn't be using women's shampoo either!"

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Adolf Hitler purportedly fathered Jean-Marie Loret in 1917 with a 16-year-old French mistress.

New evidence has emerged to support the disputed theory that Adolf Hitler had a secret son in 1918 after an affair with a teenage French mistress, a French newsmagazine reported Friday.

The man, Jean-Marie Loret, died in 1985 after an eventful life that saw him join the French Resistance and fight German forces led by the man who the evidence suggests was his father. 

Loret claimed to be Hitler's son in an autobiography he published in 1981. The claim has been hotly debated by historians ever since, with the weight of opinion concluding that the story was bunk.

M. Alex Johnson is a reporter for msnbc.com. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

The new evidence — which includes handwriting analysis, documents indicating Hitler secretly supported the woman financially and paintings signed "Adolf Hitler" discovered in her home — is outlined by Le Point magazine, whose report Friday was widely picked up in the French media but largely ignored by German news outlets.

The evidence comes from Loret's lawyer, Francois Gibault, who said Loret's children could use it to establish a claim to royalties from Hitler's manifesto, "Mein Kampf."

Loret's 30-year-old autobiography is also expected to be republished to include the new evidence.

Loret's mother, Charlotte Lobjoie, was 16 when Hitler, who was a corporal serving with German forces in France in World War I, supposedly had an affair with her while on leave in 1917. 

Loret wrote that his mother told him that she was working in a hayfield in Fournes-en-Weppe with other young women when they spotted the young soldier drawing on a sketch pad across the street. She was chosen to go ask him what he was doing.

"He was attentive and friendly," she told her son, and that sparked a relationship that lasted several weeks.

Read the Le Point story (in French)

Le Point writes:

One evening in June 1917, returning a little drunk from a night out with a friend, he [Hitler] got frisky with Charlotte. In March of the next year, a son was born. ...

Years passed, and Charlotte refused to talk about the mysterious circumstances of her son's birth. Destitute and vaguely shamed, she gave up custody of her son to another family in 1934.

His "real father" refused to see him but continued from time to seek to ask for news about him from his mother. 

A few weeks before she died in the early '50s, Charlotte confessed to her son the true identity of her father. The shock was terrible.

In his 1981 book, "Your Father's Name Was Hitler," Loret wrote: "In order not to fall into anxiety, I worked tirelessly, never taking vacation — 20 years without going to a movie."

Le Point quoted Guibalt on Friday as saying that during the 1970s, however, Loret began seeking evidence of his parentage. He hired several experts: a historian, who visited his childhood home and questioned witnesses; a geneticist from the University of Heidelberg, who compared Hitler's and Loret's blood types; and a handwriting analyst, who compared their writings. 

"All reached the same conclusion," Le Point reported. "Jean-Marie Loret was probably the son of Adolf Hitler."

See the handwriting comparison published by Le Point (.pdf)

"When he came to me in 1979, I had before me a lost man who did not know whether he wanted to be recognized as the son of Adolf Hitler," the magazine quoted Guibalt as saying.

"He experienced the feelings of many illegitimate children: the desire to discover his past, but also a fear of the old memories. I talked with him a lot, playing more the role of a psychologist than a lawyer," Guibalt said.

The magazine reported that the new evidence includes paintings signed "Adolf Hitler" — Hitler was a painter before going into politics — that were discovered in the attic of Lobjoie's home, as well as a Hitler-signed portrait of a woman believed to be Lobjoie that was discovered in Germany.

It also includes documents that Le Point said establish that officers of the Wehrmacht, the German armed forces, hand-delivered envelopes of cash to Lobjoie during the German occupation of France. 

Loret, meanwhile, was with Resistance forces at the Maginot Line in 1939, Le Point reported, and in 1940, his unit fought a fierce battle against German troops in the Ardennes. During the German occupation, Loret worked as a Resistance spy under the name "Clement," it said.

Now, Gibault said, Loret's children could have a claim to royalties from "Mein Kampf," the philosophy of which Loret fought bitterly during World War II.

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