Savitri Devi Mukherji

Some Lesser Known Facts About Savitri Devi Mukherji

• Savitri Devi Mukherji was a French-born Greek fascist and Nazi sympathizer who was known as Adolf Hitler’s priestess.

• She was born on 30 September 1905 in Lyon, France Lyons, France at 8:45 am.

• Maximiani Julia Portaz’s maiden name was Morgan.

• She had a difficult relationship with her father, Maxim Portaz, which was the reason she spoke so little about him.

  

• Maximiani’s mother’s sister, Noor Nash, was a pious Christian who made her read the Bible every Sunday. The Bible studies are what made Maximiani turn against Jews at such a tender age.

  

• In 1907, when Savitri was two years old, she got a cat as her first pet. Later, she continued to have many cats such as a black one named Black Velvet, another named Long-Whiskers, and one named Miu.

  

• In 1913, she visited The Guimet museum in Lyons and was fascinated with a statue of Indian goddess Kali, which had an inscription ‘She does not forgive’ as she stated that she had been “fed up with a god who always forgives.”

• In 1914, when Savitri was studying in school, she refused to pray for the defeat of Germany during the school prayer. During World War I, she wrote “A bas les Alliés! Vive l’Allemagne!” (meaning “Down with the Allies! Long live Germany!”) with chalk in meter-high letters on a wall of the Gare des Brotteaux in Lyon, France.

• In 1920, she won a bicycle in a regional essay contest, which was based on the biography of Louis Pasteur; however, she returned the bicycle when she learnt about Pasteur’s experimentation on animals. Since the age of five, Savitri had developed a dynamic interest in animal rights and until the time of her death, she remained a vegetarian.

• Savitri, despite having strong beliefs against the non-Hindu and Jews, had always believed that humans do not stand above animals. In 1959, she authored a book titled ‘The Impeachment of Man,’ which was based on animal rights in which she presented her ecological views about respecting animals and nature, and executing anybody who disrespected them. She strongly believed vivisection, circuses, slaughter, and fur industries among others did not belong in a civilized society.

• In 1923, she received a superior diploma, which allowed her to go directly into a MA or MS program.

• She lived in India from 1932 to 1945. In 1935, she taught English and Indian history at Jallundhar College near New Delhi. After the end of the academic year, she quit her job and went on a foot pilgrimage from Hardiwar to Gangotri. Later, she also went on another expedition to the Ice Lingam of Amarnath.

• In 1936, she met Swami Satyananda, founder of the Hindu Mission movement. From 1937 until to the early 1940s, her work on behalf of the Hindu Mission involved her lecturing widely on popular Hinduism in Bengal, Bihar, and Assam.

• During the Hindu Mission, she met Subhas Chandra Bose and claimed that she helped him contact Japanese authorities to uplift the formation of the Indian National Army.

• Savitri Devi was a victim of several robberies that included the loss of a total of sixty sarees and jewellery that belonged to her. That is when she authored a book titled ‘A Warning to the Hindus.’

• In 1940, she wrote books titled ‘The Non-Hindu Indians and Indian Unity’ and ‘L’Etang aux lotus’ (meaning “The Lotus Pond”).

• Savitri had a vast knowledge of religion and history. She was fluent in more than eight languages including Italian, German, Icelandic, Hindi, Urdu, French, and Greek. When Savitri was residing at Rabindranath Tagore’s Shantiniketan Ashram in Bengal, she learnt the Bengali language and did Hindi readings.

• Her students suggested she change her name from Maximiani Portaz to Savitri Devi, which means Sun-rays Goddess in the Sanskrit language.

• In 1945, she made an attempt to commit suicide at the Varkala beach in Kerala due to unknown reasons.

• In 1957, she got sick from contaminated water in Egypt and suffered an elephantiasis attack. When she came to India, she was assaulted and robbed on the train in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh.

• Savitri Devi persisted to communicate with Nazi enthusiasts in Europe and America, particularly with Colin Jordan, John Tyndall, Matt Koehl, Miguel Serrano, Einar Åberg and Ernst Zündel. She was the first person to tell Zündel that the Nazi genocide of the Jews was untrue; he proposed a series of taped interviews (conducted in November 1978).

  

• In 1962, she visited the Cotswolds camp in Austria and met George Lincoln Rockwell. When Savitri returned to camp for her luggage, she was stopped by Special Branch officers who inserted a stamp in her passport banning her from England.

  

• Apart from working as an animal rights activist, Savitri Devi worked as a teacher. In 1970, she took retirement from teaching following which she spent nine months at the Normandy home of her close friend, Françoise Dior, French socialite and neo-Nazi. It was later revealed by Françoise Dior that Savitri Devi did not take baths during her stay and continually chewed garlic. Françoise urged Savitri to go back to India, where she lived alone, with a number of cats and at least one cobra.

• Throughout her life, she had published several books including ‘A Son of God: The Life and Philosophy of Akhnaton, King of Egypt’ (1946), ‘Gold in the Furnace’ (1952), and ‘Forever and Ever: Devotional Poems’ (2012; written 1952-53). In 1958, she penned ‘The Lightning and the Sun’ in which she claimed Adolf Hitler as an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu. She characterised Hitler as a sacrifice for humanity that would lead to the end of the worst world age, the Kali Yuga (the last yuga of the yuga cycle), which she believed was induced by the Jews, whom she saw as the powers of evil.

• Savitri Devi never consumed alcohol.

• She had developed cataracts and was undergoing treatment in India. In 1981, she suffered from the 27th attack of elephantiasis due to which the right side of her body was partially paralysed.

• On 22 October 1982, she died due to a heart attack and coronary thrombosis at Sible Hedingham, Essex, UK, at the age of 77. Before her death, she was invited by Matthias Koehl, an American neo-Nazi politician, to deliver a lecture in the United States. Her ashes were shipped to the headquarters of the American Nazi Party in Arlington, Virginia, and placed next to those of American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell at the headquarters of the American Nazi Party in Arlington, Virginia.