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BARCELONA - Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Nazi SS, made a secret war-time mission to an abbey in Spain in search of what he believed was the "Aryan" Holy Grail, a new book claims.
Himmler visited the Monserrat Abbey near Barcelona where he thought he would find the Grail which Jesus Christ was said to have used to consecrate the Last Supper.
According to The Desecrated Abbey, by Monserrat Rico Gongora, the Reichsfuhrer thought if he could lay claim to the Holy Grail it would help Germany win the war and personally give him supernatural powers.
The book claims that, far from seeing Christ as the King of the Jews, Himmler shared the belief with other leading Nazis that he was actually descended from Aryan stock.
Gongora writes that Adolf Hitler's right-hand man and the head of the feared SS believed Jacob was in fact of Aryan blood and his descendants, including Jesus Christ, were also Aryan.
Gongora has interviewed a former monk who was ordered by his superiors to greet Himmler during the visit in 1940.
Now a pensioner living in an old people's home near Barcelona, Andreu Ripol Noble was at the time the only German-speaker in the abbey and was told to help Himmler.
The then Abbot Antoni Maria Marcet knew Himmler had launched public attacks on the Catholic Church in Germany and had no time for him, the book claims.
But Ripol related how Himmler came to Montserrat inspired by Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal, which mentions the Holy Grail could be kept in "the marvellous castle of Montsalvat in the Pyrenees".
It was widely believed in Nazi circles the castle was in fact Montserrat - a belief strengthened by the fact the first performance of the opera was at the Liceu Opera House in Barcelona in 1913. Others have said it was in fact Montsegur in France.
According to the book, Himmler was also inspired by a folk song from Catalonia, which has a cryptic mention of a "mystical font of life" which was situated in the area.
Himmler, a former chicken farmer who rose through the Nazi ranks to become Adolf Hitler's most trusted lieutenant, is known to have an interest in racially based mysticism.
After initially proclaiming himself a devout Catholic, Himmler publicly attacked the German Church and turned to a fanatical belief in racially based paganism. But, the book claims, despite his quest to find the Grail, he came away from Montserrat empty-handed.
- INDEPENDENT
