The Father Who Abandoned Her: The Nazi Father Audrey Never Forgave

The Father Who Abandoned Her: The Nazi Father Audrey Never Forgave 

May 1935, Brussels, Belgium. A six-year-old girl woke up on her birthday to find her father gone. No note, no explanation, no goodbye. Joseph Victor Anthony Rustin had [music] walked out in the middle of the night. He’d just returned from Germany where he’d met Adolf Hitler at [music] Nazi headquarters in Munich.

 And he decided his wife and daughter were no longer worth his time. That six-year-old girl was Audrey Hepburn. And that [music] abandonment, that moment when her father chose fascism over family, would haunt her for 58 years. In 1964, nearly three decades [music] later, Audrey finally tracked him down in Dublin, Ireland.

 The reunion [music] lasted less than an hour. When she tried to embrace him, he stood cold and distant. When she spoke to him, he barely responded. Her friend John Isaac [music] later said when she was telling me the story, she was crying. She said he was so cold. He did not receive her. And she said that really hurt her. Audrey Hepburn [music] spent her entire life searching for the love of a father who was incapable of giving it.

A father who chose Hitler over his own child. A father who received money from Gerbles, who was imprisoned [music] as a Nazi sympathizer, who never once tried to contact the daughter who became one of Hollywood’s biggest [music] stars. This is the story Hollywood buried. The story of the Nazi father who abandoned Audrey Heppern when she was 6 years old and the devastating [music] reunion 29 years later that proved some wounds never heal.

 To understand why Joseph Rustin [music] abandoned his six-year-old daughter, you have to understand who he was and what he believed. Joseph Victor Anthony Rustin [music] was born in 1889 in Bohemia, Austria, Hungary to a British father and Austrian mother. He grew up [music] privileged, educated, ambitious. By the 1920s, [music] he was working as a banker in the Dutch East Indies, modern-day Indonesia, where he [music] served as honorary British consul.

That’s where he met his first wife, Cornelia Bishop, a wealthy Dutch [music] ays. But that marriage ended in divorce. And in 1926 in Jakarta, Joseph married [music] again. His second wife was Baroness Ella Van Heimstra, a Dutch aristocrat from one of the most prominent [music] families in the Netherlands. Ella’s father had been mayor of Arnim and governor of Surinam.

She was beautiful, sophisticated, connected, and like Joseph, she was drawn to fascism. By the early 1930s, both Joseph and Ella had become [music] active members of the British Union of Fascists, Oswald Mosley’s [music] Black Shirts, the Nazi Party of Britain. They attended rallies, they fundraised, they recruited new members.

 Ella was particularly devoted. She wrote articles for the fascist newspaper The Black Shirt, praising Hitler and promoting Nazi ideology. She became close friends with Unity Mitford, one of Hitler’s [music] most devoted British followers, a woman who literally shot herself when Britain declared war on Germany. And Joseph, he was equally [music] committed.

 He believed Hitler was saving Europe from communism. He believed [music] the Jews were a threat. He believed fascism was the future. On May 4th, [music] 1929, Ella gave birth to a daughter in Brussels, Audrey Kathleen [music] Rustin. Later, Joseph would change their surname [music] to Heepburn Rustin, falsely claiming descent from Scottish nobility.

For the first 6 years of Audrey’s life, she lived in privilege. The family moved between [music] Brussels, England, and the Netherlands. Joseph’s banking career provided wealth. Ella’s aristocratic connections provided status. But beneath [music] the surface, there were problems. Joseph was cold, distant, emotionally unavailable.

 Friends later described him [music] as narcissistic, manipulative, incapable of real affection. Ella was no better. She was stern, demanding, critical. She treated Audrey more like a prop than a child. Something to be dressed up and shown off, but never truly loved. Still, Audrey adored her father. Every [music] child does.

 She craved his attention, his approval, his love, and she rarely got any of it. In May 1935, when Audrey was about to turn six, her parents took a trip. They left Audrey behind and traveled [music] to Germany with a delegation from Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. The group toured factories, schools, housing [music] developments, propaganda showcases of Nazi efficiency.

And at the Brownhouse in Munich, Nazi headquarters, [music] they met Adolf Hitler himself. There’s a photograph [music] of Ella standing in front of the Brownhouse with Unity Mittford and her sisters. Ella was so proud of that photo that when she returned home, she had it framed in silver and displayed it [music] prominently in her house.

 When Audrey’s parents returned from Germany, something had [music] changed. They had a terrible argument. And on May [music] 4th, 1935, Audrey’s sixth birthday, Joseph walked out. No explanation. No goodbye, [music] just gone. Audrey woke up on her sixth birthday to find her father missing. Ella was sobbing.

 And nobody would tell the little girl what had happened [music] or where her father had gone. But it wasn’t just the divorce. It was the abandonment, the complete [music] and total rejection. Joseph didn’t leave because of problems with Ella. He left because he’d [music] found something he cared about more than his family. fascism.

 After abandoning his six-year-old daughter, Joseph Rustin disappeared into a world [music] of fascist politics and criminal business dealings. He moved between Belgium and England, becoming increasingly active in both the British Union [music] of Fascists and the Belgian Fascist Party, the Regists. He attended meetings.

 He distributed [music] propaganda. And he began working on something even darker. Nazi financial operations. From 1935 to 1940, Joseph was involved in multiple questionable business transactions. [music] That’s how historians describe them. That kept landing [music] his name in newspapers across Europe. He was being investigated, questioned, suspected.

In 1938, [music] the Belgian Parliament and the British House of Commons launched simultaneous investigations [music] into Joseph’s activities. He was a director of the European press agency luted, a corporation with direct [music] financial ties to the Third Reich. The allegations were explosive. Joseph had received [music] 110,000 from German industrial chiefs in close touch with Dr.

 Gerbles, that’s Joseph Gerbles, Hitler’s propaganda minister, to start an anti-communist [music] newspaper. His two business partners at the European press agency were a Nazi lawyer and a [music] member of the Gestapo. Let that sink in. Audrey Hepburn’s father was working directly with the Gestapo. taking money from Nazi Germany to spread [music] propaganda.

While his six-year-old daughter wondered why her father didn’t love her, the investigations [music] revealed more. Joseph wasn’t just a sympathizer. He was an active agent for Nazi [music] interests in Britain and Belgium. He was laundering money, distributing propaganda, recruiting for the cause. And through all [music] of this, 5 years of fascist activity, criminal investigations, newspaper scandals, Joseph never [music] once contacted his daughter, never sent a letter, never asked how she was.

Audrey, meanwhile, was struggling. She’d been sent to boarding school in England, Miss Rigdon’s school [music] in Kent. She saw her father occasionally during those years. Brief awkward visits where [music] he remained emotionally distant. In one of her few comments about [music] this period, Audrey later said, “I remember being introduced to him.

 He looked the way I remembered him. Older, yes, but much the same. Slim and tall. introduced as if he were a stranger, which in many ways he was. In September 1939, [music] when Britain declared war on Germany, everything changed. Joseph took Audrey out of boarding school and put her on a plane to the Netherlands, one of the last passenger flights before the war shut everything down.

He told Audrey the Netherlands would be neutral, [music] safe. He was wrong. But more importantly, he used the war as an excuse to rid himself of the burden of his daughter. He sent her away and never looked back. Ella met Audrey in Amsterdam and took her to Arnum where Ella’s family lived. Audrey, now 10 [music] years old, didn’t speak Dutch.

She had a British passport and an English sounding [music] name. She was terrified. And where was Joseph? in London, continuing [music] his fascist activities right up until the moment the British government arrested him. In June 1940, Joseph Victor [music] Anthony Hepern Rustin was arrested in London under defense regulation 18B, a wartime law that allowed the British [music] government to detain people without trial if they were deemed threats to national security.

Joseph [music] was arrested specifically for his membership in the British Union of Fascists and as an associate of foreign fascists. The evidence was overwhelming. The Nazi business [music] dealings, the propaganda work, the Gestapo connections. He was classified [music] as an enemy of the state.

 Joseph was interned on the aisle of man, where Britain held hundreds of Nazi sympathizers and suspected spies for the duration of the war. He would remain there from 1940 [music] to 1945. 5 years of imprisonment while his daughter suffered through Nazi occupation in Holland. Think about the irony. While Joseph was being held for being a Nazi [music] sympathizer, his 11-year-old daughter was living under Nazi occupation.

While he had three meals a day in a bed, Audrey was [music] starving, eating tulip bulbs, developing anemia and edema. While Joseph spent his [music] days writing a history of Celtic peoples, his prison project, Audrey was working for the Dutch [music] resistance, delivering secret messages, dancing in underground performances [music] to raise money, risking her life to fight the very ideology her father had embraced.

[music] Audrey’s uncle Otto, Ella’s brother-in-law, was executed by the Nazis in 1942 for resistance activities. Audrey’s half-brother, Ian, was deported to a German labor camp. Audrey’s half-brother, [music] Alex, went into hiding. And where was Joseph during all of this? Safe in [music] his internment camp, far from the consequences of the ideology he’d promoted.

The psychological impact on Audrey [music] was devastating. She later told friends that the abandonment by her father was worse than the war. The war she understood. It was evil, but it made sense. Her father’s rejection made no sense. She would say, “I realized how much I cared about my father. I’d always cared.

 Obviously, I just couldn’t bear the idea that I would never get the chance to see [music] him again. But throughout the war years, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, [music] Joseph never tried to contact her, never wrote, never asked the Red [music] Cross to find her. He knew she was in Nazi occupied Holland.

 He knew [music] conditions were brutal, and he did nothing. In May 1945, when Allied forces liberated the [music] Netherlands, Audrey was 15 years old. She weighed less than [music] 90 pounds. She had acute anemia, respiratory problems, and severe [music] edema from malnutrition. She was so weak she could barely walk. And still, [music] Joseph didn’t reach out.

 When he was released from internment in 1945, he moved to Ireland and [music] started a new life. He remarried, a woman 30 years younger, almost Audrey’s [music] age. He got a job in insurance, and he never contacted his daughter. While Joseph was settling into his [music] new life in Dublin, Audrey was trying to survive.

After the war, she and Ella moved to Amsterdam, then the Hague, then London. Audrey trained as a ballet dancer, but years of malnutrition [music] had stunted her growth and weakened her body. She was too tall for ballet, and her feet had [music] been damaged by wearing wooden shoes during the war. So, she turned to modeling [music] and acting, small parts in British films, chorus work in theater productions, anything to make money.

 And then in 1951, [music] everything changed. French author Colette saw Audrey in a hotel in Monaco and [music] insisted she play the title role in the Broadway production of Xiji. The show was a hit. Audrey was discovered. In 1953, she starred in Roman Holiday opposite Gregory Peek. The film was a sensation. Audrey won the Academy Award for best actress.

 At 24 years old, she was a [music] star. But with fame came danger, specifically [music] the danger that someone might discover her family’s Nazi past. Hollywood went into overdrive, creating the myth of Perfect Audrey. The official biography claimed her father was an international [music] banker. Technically true, but misleading. It claimed her mother was a Dutch [music] noble woman.

 True, but leaving out the fascist activities. It emphasized Audrey’s resistance work during the war while completely burying her parents’ [music] Nazi connections. The studios were terrified. If Americans learned that Audrey Hepern’s parents were active Nazi sympathizers, her career would be over. In 1950s [music] America, there was zero tolerance for Nazi connections.

So they buried it deep. Audrey [music] went along with it because she had no choice. She needed the work. She needed the money to support Ella, who was now dependent on her. And more than anything, she was ashamed. Friends later said Audrey lived in constant [music] fear that the truth would come out, that someone would find the newspaper articles about Joseph’s Nazi business dealings, that someone [music] would discover Ella’s articles in the black shirt, that someone would reveal the Hitler meeting in [music] 1935.

But there was something else, too. Audrey still wanted her father’s love. Despite everything, the abandonment, the fascism, the Nazi connections, the complete absence for 18 years, Audrey still carried a child’s hope that maybe somehow [music] her father would reach out, would acknowledge her success, would be proud of her. He never did.

Through all of Audrey’s success in the 1950s [music] and early 1960s, Sabrina 1954, Funny Face, 1957, The Nun [music] Story, 1959, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1961, My Fair Lady, 1964. Joseph never [music] contacted her, never wrote, never came to see her films. In interviews, Audrey would say vague things about her father being estranged or distant.

She never explained why. She never [music] admitted the Nazi connections. She protected him even though he’d never protected her. But by 1964, [music] something had changed. Audrey was 35 years old. She’d been married to Mel Ferrer for 10 years. She had a son, [music] Shawn, who was four years old, and she was tired of carrying the weight of her father’s absence.

 She wanted [music] closure. Or maybe she wanted one more chance for him to finally be the father she’d always needed. So, she asked Mel to help her find Joseph. Mel Faraher for all his faults [music] as a husband, and they were many. manipulation, control, psychological abuse did one decent [music] thing. He helped Audrey find her father.

Using connections with the Red Cross, Mel tracked Joseph down in Dublin, [music] Ireland. Joseph was living in a groundf flooror flat on Sidnham Road in Ballsbridge, a quiet neighborhood near the Royal Dublin [music] Society. He was 75 years old, married to his much younger wife, Fidelma, and working in insurance.

He had never tried to find Audrey. In nearly [music] 30 years, he had never once reached out. When Mel told Audrey he’d found Joseph, she was overwhelmed. Hope, fear, anger, grief, all at once. She later [music] said, “Curiosity took over. I wanted to know where he was, [music] whether he was still alive, but there was more than curiosity.

 There was a desperate childlike hope that [music] maybe, just maybe, her father would finally [music] give her what she’d always wanted, love, acknowledgement, an apology. Audrey and Mel flew [music] to Dublin. They stayed at the Russell Hotel on St. Stevens Green, one of the city’s finest hotels. They arranged to meet Joseph at the Shelborn Hotel, another prestigious location.

Audrey chose the setting carefully. Neutral ground, public, but private, a place where she could maintain her dignity [music] if things went badly. and things went badly when Audrey walked into the hotel [music] and saw her father for the first time in decades. She later described what happened. He looked the way I remembered [music] him.

Older, yes, but much the same. Slim and tall. She stepped forward [music] to embrace him, and he stood there cold and unmoving. He didn’t hug [music] her back, didn’t smile, didn’t show any emotion at all. Audrey’s friend, John Isaac, a photographer who worked with her on UNICEF missions, later recounted what Audrey told him.

 When she was telling [music] me the story, she was crying. She said he was so cold. He did not receive her. And she said that really hurt her. The meeting lasted less than an hour. Joseph was distant, emotionally unavailable, exactly [music] as he’d been 30 years earlier. He made small talk. He asked prefuncter questions about her career.

But there was [music] no warmth, no regret, no acknowledgement of what he’d done. No apology. Audrey tried. She tried to [music] connect. She tried to get him to see her, really see her as his daughter. But Joseph was incapable. Friends later described him as emotionally invalid. A man so [music] damaged, so narcissistic, so fundamentally broken that he couldn’t form real emotional connections with anyone, not even [music] his own child.

When Audrey left that hotel, she was devastated. She cried in the car. She cried in the hotel room. She cried for days afterward because she finally understood what she’d refused to accept for 30 years. Her father would never love her. Not because she wasn’t worthy of love, but because he was incapable of giving it.

After the devastating [music] reunion in Dublin, Audrey made a decision that many people couldn’t understand. She [music] decided to support her father. financially for the rest of his life. Starting in 1964, Audrey [music] sent Joseph regular payments. She paid for his rent. She covered his expenses.

 When he had medical [music] bills, she paid those, too. She provided for him generously until his death in [music] 1980. Why? Why would Audrey Hepburn, who had suffered so much at her father’s hands, who had been abandoned [music] and rejected and ignored, choose to support the man who had caused her so much pain? [clears throat] Some people [music] thought it was weakness.

 Others thought it was manipulation. Maybe Joseph had demanded [music] money in exchange for keeping quiet about things that could damage her career. But the truth is more complex and more heartbreaking. Audrey supported Joseph because she was still his daughter. And despite [music] everything, she couldn’t let him suffer. It wasn’t about getting his love.

She knew by then that was impossible. It was [music] about being the person her father had never been. Compassionate, generous, responsible. Friends [music] said Audrey never spoke of the payments with pride or resentment. She just did it quietly as a duty. She treated it the way she [music] treated everything difficult in her life with grace and dignity even when nobody was watching.

Between 1964 [music] and 1980, Audrey and Joseph maintained occasional contact. They wrote letters. He visited her in Switzerland at [music] least once in the late 1960s. She kept a photograph of that visit in her dressing room. The only photo of the two of them together as adults, but their relationship never became warm.

 Joseph remained distant, emotionally unavailable, and Audrey learned to accept that. In her letters to Joseph during this period, some of which have been [music] preserved, Audrey wrote about her life, her films, her marriage to Mel and later her marriage to Andrea Di, her sons Sha and Luca. She wrote cheerfully, optimistically, as if she [music] were writing to a loving father who cared.

But Joseph’s responses, according to those who saw them, were cold and prefuncter. He acknowledged her successes with brief unemotional [music] congratulations. He never asked deep questions, never expressed real interest, never said, “I love you.” Still, Audrey kept writing, kept sending money, kept hoping in some small corner of her heart that maybe someday he would change.

In October 1980, Audrey received word that her father was gravely ill. Joseph [music] was 91 years old and dying in Bagot Street Hospital in Dublin. Audrey [music] was 51. She was in a relationship with Robert Walders, a Dutch actor who had become her companion after her divorce from Andrea [music] Doy. She was preparing to transition from acting to humanitarian [music] work with UNICEF. He never did.

 and she was faced with a choice. Go to Dublin to see her dying father or let him die without saying goodbye. She was terrified. Despite 29 years of hoping [music] her father would change, despite all the money she’d sent and letters she’d written, Audrey was afraid of [music] seeing him again. Afraid of being rejected one more time.

So she asked Robert Walders to come with her and they flew to [music] Dublin together. What happened in that hospital room is one of the most bittersweet [music] stories in Audrey’s life. Robert Walders later described the scene. We flew to Dublin and it was an amazing experience. [music] Joseph said extraordinary things about Audrey and about his regrets [music] for not having given her more in her childhood, for not showing his love for her.

After 91 years and 45 years since he’d abandoned his six-year-old daughter, Joseph Victor [music] Anthony Heepburn Rustin finally apologized. He told Audrey he was proud of her. He told her [music] he regretted not being a better father. He told Robert Walders, though apparently not Audrey directly, that he’d always [music] loved her, but hadn’t known how to show it.

 It was everything Audrey had wanted to hear for 45 years. And it came when Joseph was literally hours from death. When he had nothing left to lose, nothing left to hide behind. Nothing left but the truth. Audrey stayed with him. She held his hand. She forgave him, though he probably didn’t deserve it. Joseph Hepern Rustin died [music] the next day, October 16th, 1980, at the age of 91.

Audrey [music] didn’t attend his funeral. She couldn’t face the media attention, couldn’t face the questions, couldn’t face the [music] public performance of grief for a man who had given her so little. But privately, she mourned. Not for the father he’d been, but for the father [music] he could have been. For the relationship they’d never had.

For all those wasted years. The abandonment [music] by her father shaped everything about Audrey Hepern’s life. Everything. It shaped [music] her desperate desire to be a mother, to give her children the unconditional love she’d never received. It shaped her choice of men. She was drawn to controlling, emotionally unavailable men like Mel Ferrer and Andrea Doi, unconsciously recreating [music] the dynamic with her father.

It shaped her humanitarian work. In the 1980s and early 1990s, [music] when Audrey worked as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, she focused specifically on helping [music] abandoned children. children who’d lost parents to war, famine, disease. Children who, like her, wondered why they’d been [music] left behind.

Her friend Christa Roth, a UNICEF [music] colleague, said. Audrey saw herself in every abandoned child we visited. She would hold them and say, [music] “I understand. I know how it feels.” It shaped [music] her relationship with her own sons. Shawn Ferrer later said, “My mother gave us everything her father never gave her.

She was [music] present. She was loving. She made us feel safe. And it shaped [music] her silence.” Even after Joseph’s death, even after she [music] could have told the truth without consequences, Audrey rarely spoke publicly about her father. She protected his reputation until her death. In one of her final interviews in [music] 1992, shortly before she was diagnosed with the cancer that would kill her, Audrey was asked about her father. Her response was brief.

It was one of the traumas that left a very deep mark on me. That was all she would say. Even at the end of her life, she couldn’t fully articulate the damage he’d done. Her granddaughter, Emma Farah, later revealed something heartbreaking. My dad said about [music] my grandmother that the bestkept secret about Audrey is that she was sad.

 It makes me sad to think about it. sad. Despite all her success, despite being one of the most beloved actresses of all time, despite her humanitarian work, her beautiful children, her extraordinary [music] life. Underneath it all, Audrey was sad because the wound her father inflicted never fully healed. You can’t heal [music] abandonment.

 You can only learn to live with it. Joseph [music] Victor Anthony Heepern Rustin was a Nazi sympathizer, a criminal, a narcissist, and a terrible father. He met [music] Adolf Hitler in 1935 and chose fascism over his six-year-old daughter. He received [music] money from Gerbles and worked with the Gestapo while his child suffered under Nazi occupation.

He was imprisoned as an enemy of the state while his daughter risked her life for the Dutch resistance. And even when that daughter [music] became one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, he never reached out, never apologized, [music] never acknowledged her until his deathbed. Audrey Heppern deserved better.

 She deserved a father who loved her, who protected her, who was proud of her, who chose her over his twisted political ideology. But she got Joseph instead, and she spent her entire life trying to fill the hole he left when he walked out on her sixth birthday. The cruel irony is that Audrey became everything Joseph wasn’t. Compassionate, generous, devoted to helping others.

She chose love over ideology. She chose children over politics. She chose to be present in people’s lives even when it was difficult. [music] She was everything her father failed to be. And maybe in some way that was her revenge. Joseph died in obscurity in Dublin in 1980. Few people attended his funeral.

 Few people mourned him. His obituary made no mention of his [music] famous daughter, probably at Audrey’s request. He’s buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery in Dublin. His grave is simple, unmarked by anything [music] indicating the damage he caused or the extraordinary woman he abandoned. Audrey died [music] 13 years later in 1993 at age 63 from appendical [music] cancer.

Her funeral was attended by hundreds. She was mourned by [music] millions. Her legacy continues to inspire people around the world. But until the day she died, she carried the wound her father inflicted. The abandonment, the rejection, the lifelong [music] question, why wasn’t I enough for him to stay? The answer, which Audrey eventually learned, is that it was never about her.

Joseph left because [music] he was broken, because he cared more about fascism than family, because he was [music] incapable of love. Audrey was always enough, more than enough. She was extraordinary. [music] It was Joseph who wasn’t enough. He wasn’t enough of a man to be a father. Wasn’t enough of [music] a human being to love his own child.

 Wasn’t enough of anything that mattered. And in [music] the end, history remembers Audrey Hepburn. Beloved actress, devoted mother, humanitarian hero. Joseph Victor Anthony [music] Heepburn Rustin is remembered, if at all, as a footnote, as the Nazi father [music] who abandoned one of Hollywood’s greatest stars. That’s justice of a sort.

 Not the justice [music] Audrey deserved, which would have been a loving father, but the justice [music] history provides. The good are remembered and the cruel are forgotten. Except in [music] stories like this where we remember the cruelty so we can understand the extraordinary courage it took for Audrey to become who she became despite everything her [music] father did to break