This story begins with an acknowledgement of the lives lost to the Katzbach concentration camp at Adlerwerke in Frankfurt, Germany during World War II.
It will become abundantly clear why this is important and relevant to the subjects noted in the title as the Kleyer family tree is untangled throughout this piece.
Rodger Cleye, a recent subject of public controversy regarding inappropriate online behavior towards women and minors, is the uncle of Austin Russell. Austin Russell is the CEO of Luminar Technologies (LAZR) and was named the Youngest Self Made Billionaire by Forbes after taking the company public in 2020. He is now at the center of his own actively unfolding scandal, with his current attempt to purchase Forbes under intense scrutiny due to national security concerns.
Austin Russell is also a direct descendant of Heinrich Ludwig Kleyer, founder of Adlerwerke vorm. Heinrich Kleyer.
A 2018 post from a racing forum states that Rudy Cleye, Austin’s grandfather and race car driver, said he is “the grandson of the founder of the Adler automobile company, Heinrich Kleyer,” although there is no birth record available to confirm which of Heinrich Kleyer’s children is his parent. Rudy Cleye submitted his US Petition for Naturalization in 1960 noting his given name as “Heinrich Wilhelm Kleyer” and birthplace as Frankfurt, although a social security application in 1951 notes his birthplace as Amsterdam and name as Rudolf William Cleye.
Acquired from publicly available records on ancestry.com
In his Petition for Naturalization he also notes that he has a child named Ramona that was born in California in 1954 and currently resides in Frankfurt, although the document also states that he himself did not make his lawful admission for permanent residence until 1959. Ramona Kleyer eventually arrived in the US by boat from Germany in 1960 with Thea Kleyer, wife of Robert Kleyer (nephew and employee of Heinrich).
There are suspiciously few public records available for any of the children of Heinrich Kleyer under their legal names after WW2, besides the 2 Brazilian immigration cards for Irmengard Kleyer in 1939 and Gertrud Dencker (Kleyer) in 1958.
Although Heinrich passed away in 1932, members of his immediate family continued his "legacy" and remained very involved in the family business. Otto and Erwin Kleyer are 2 of the sons pictured and documented as being more heavily involved at Adlerwerke, along with Robert Kleyer (nephew of Heinrich).
Adlerwerke vorm. Heinrich Kleyer (Adler) and the Katzbach Concentration Camp
Sources: kz-adlerwerke.de and Judische Allgemeine
Adlerwerke vorm. Heinrich Kleyer, as described in the current version of its Wikipedia article, was a “German aircraft manufacturer established by Heinrich Kleyer in Frankfurt am Main in 1934” and it “was also known as an automobile manufacturer, producing cars under the Adler name from 1899 to 1945.”
A more thorough and lesser known description of the company's activities during WWI and WWII is translated below from the LAGG Initiative Against Forgetting associated site:
The largest bicycle company in the German Empire became Frankfurt's largest armaments factory during the First World War. Even then, the Adlerwerke gained experience with the use of conscripted women and prisoners of war.
During National Socialism, Adlerwerke produced almost exclusively for the Wehrmacht and became the largest manufacturer of infantry fighting vehicle chassis.
As early as July 1941, barracks for French civilian workers were built on the site between works I and II, which until 1938 belonged to the Jewish entrepreneurs of “Flesch-Werke AG für Tannstoff-Fabrikation und Chemical Products Ffm”, the “OHG Erste Frankfurter Malzfabrik Matthias & Salomon” and the “machine tool wholesaler Schack & Co.” had been pressed out, i.e. “Aryanized”.
The air raid on April 22, 1944 led to severe destruction at the Adlerwerke. There was a shortage of workers due to outsourcing and loss of time. The flow of civilian forced laborers had now dried up.
In August 1944, a concentration camp subcamp was established in the Adlerwerke factory under the name "Katzbach" where, until March 1945, a total of 1,616 primarily Polish prisoners were forced to work and endure conditions that led to an enormously high death rate compared to other military equipment production camps. 527 prisoners died while working in the Frankfurt factory, 165 died shortly after they were transferred to “sick camps,” 450 were deported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and the remaining 360-370 prisoners were sent on a “death march” on March 24th, 1945. There are only 11 known survivors of this camp, a horrifying 99% death rate.
The death rate in the Adlerwerke concentration camp exceeded that of all Hessian concentration camp subcamps. The prisoners had to work 84 hours a week in unheated, partly destroyed halls. In the icy winter of 1944/45 they only had their tattered summer outfits. Hygiene and medical care were practically non-existent. Violence and harassment were commonplace. People literally starved to death or, completely weakened, fell victim to disease. Attempts to escape were punished with public execution.
There is minimal information publicly available about the "business" activities that occurred at Adlerwerke throughout WW2, and there is even less general awareness around the brutal concentration camp held on their premises. Erwin Kleyer was on the board of directors throughout the war and following, but no one, including Adlerwerke executives, ever faced any true repercussions for their alleged involvement and/or complacency in this tragedy.
The following is another translated quote from the site associated with the Leben und Arbeiten in Gallus und Griesheim e. V. (LAGG) "Initiative Against Forgetting":
"Before the Americans invaded, the Adlerwerke had taken care to eliminate as much evidence of the existence of the concentration camp as possible. It was only months later that military authorities became aware of it through the cremation book in the main cemetery. 528 prisoners are buried there. When they then searched the Adlerwerke, they came across the prisoner statistics.
In September 1945, investigations led to the indictment of, among others, Ernst Hagemeier, the general director and main shareholder of Adlerwerke. But the factory management's denial of any responsibility was successful: the crimes against the concentration camp prisoners were never atoned for. The Frankfurt public prosecutor stopped the proceedings in November 1947. In July 1948, Hagemeier was able to assume the chairmanship of the Adlerwerke board again and just a few years later he received the Federal Cross of Merit.
Adlerwerke's shareholders, such as Dresdner Bank, were not only not held accountable, but were also honored with awards in the early post-war years. According to Supervisory Board Chairman Carl Goetz, he received the Grand Cross of Merit with star and shoulder ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. From 1943 at the latest, Dresdner Bank was the second largest shareholder in Adlerwerke and had 48% of the shareholder votes through representation of share portfolios. With Carl Goetz, its chairman, it was the chairman of the Adlerwerke supervisory board from 1939 until the end of the war.
To this day, Dresdner Bank rejects any historical responsibility. Although they transferred a total of 80,000 DM to the ten survivors in 1998, she only did this under political pressure and was careful to describe this as “humanitarian aid” – a donation."
The company was eventually acquired in 1969 by Litton Industries, a large defense contractor that struck a $1.6 billion deal with the Saudi Arabian Air Force just 4 years later in 1973. Because Litton Industries was “the best known economic link between Canada and the nuclear arms race,” it was also the target of a bombing by a group known as The Squamish Five (Direct Action) in 1982.
But wait...where does Peter Thiel come in?
Charles Johnson, a tech investor and entrepreneur, wrote a piece in 2022 entitled "The Gen X Files: The Mysteries of Peter Thiel's Father, Grandfather and Grandparents" that gives some insight into Peter Thiel's family and contradictory backstory. He poses the question, "Why is the nephew of foreign military intelligence allowed to build our defense technology?"
"Peter Thiel once told me his father was a truck driver. In fact Klaus Thiel was a mining executive and project manager, who has not become an American citizen. Klaus Thiel’s American colleagues called him “The Gestapo” and Peter visited Klaus at least once in Papa New Guinea...Klaus Thiel helped mine the uranium in Namibia for the South African, Israeli, French, and Chinese atomic bombs."
Charles Johnson, The X-Files
Both Peter's father and his uncle Herbert Thiel remain elusive figures with murky backstories. Herbert Thiel is even mentioned in a 1961 newsletter published "by and for East German exiles"
Source: Charles Johnson Substack
It's an understatement to say that these tidbits of information are already particularly suspicious given the context, but where does the Kleyer family tree come back in?
Alright...so remember how Erwin Kleyer, Otto Kleyer, and Robert Kleyer were particularly involved at Adlerwerke before and during WW2? Unsurprisingly, these 3 are also the ones with the most fragmented-looking branches of the family tree that, despite our best research efforts, still lack complete clarity. It appears that this was done very intentionally.
It is unconfirmed whether Erwin or Otto Kleyer had any children in their lifetime, but given the overall lack of documentation around the family it is not unreasonable to assume that there would not be a record of it if they did.
Knowing that they themselves (Erwin/Otto) would be inevitably implicated in the Adlerwerke concentration camp and whatever other nefarious activities they may have been involved in throughout the Nazi regime, they would have likely been well aware of the imminent "uphill battle" a child of the Kleyer family may face should they stay in Germany. And while it appears that Robert Kleyer was more "easily" able to escape to Brazil, it is unclear whether Erwin or Otto left Europe following the war.
What we do know is that Thea, wife of Robert Kleyer, sailed to America in 1960 with Ramona Kleyer. Ramona is documented as Rudy Cleye's daughter on his naturalization papers, however, she is listed as Ramona Guttlein of Frankfurt in his obituary.
This name was only able to be (additionally) located in a summons out of Cordoba, Spain - a well known section of the Nazi Ratlines. It is listed among 3 other names, all of which turn up suspiciously sparse results and appear to be aliases used to quietly relocate temporarily.
The other names Ramona is listed alongside include "Elvira Amelia Dominguez", "Olegario Dominguez", and "Manual Luciano Rodas". "Elvira", according to the Immigration Card found from 1957, appears to have immigrated to Brazil. This card also, in the opinion of HGHH LLC, indicates a possibility that this female alias was being used by a male family member to further cover their tracks.
If "Elvira" may be an alias, what about "Manuel" and "Olegario"?
It is speculated that Peter Thiel's father, similarly to Rodger Cleye's father Rudy, previously used an alias and changed his name to establish himself anonymously in America. One potential alias identified is "Manual Luciano Rodas," a man that appeared out of thin air in CT and MA in 1945 and just as quickly disappeared from public record in 1966. Interestingly, this is the same year that "Klaus Thiel" makes his sudden appearance in CT according to US public records.
It is not unreasonable to call this potential overlap in familial history into question, especially given the immense wealth and power descendants of the Kleyer family (and their associates) still possess in 2023.
Why does this matter in the present day?
The obvious answer here is that we cannot let history repeat itself, and we cannot allow those that have a proven a pattern of deception to be the ones making decisions for us all. Right now, some of the most powerful people in America are implicated in the cover up of historical and present nefarious activities.
While we are not inherently responsible for the actions of our family members, it is becoming abundantly clear that this is not a case of "one bad egg," and that the ideology embodied historically was passed down and acted upon by their descendants.
Peter Thiel provided Austin Russell his initial funding for Luminar Technologies with a grant through the Thiel Fellowship. Thiel is a prominent tech billionaire and has re-emerged as a significant financier of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. He has donated over $20.4 million to support conservative candidates, many of whom promote conspiracy theories espoused by former President Donald Trump. His focus is on hard-right candidates who oppose the Republican establishment. Thiel's contributions and influence have the potential to shift views from the fringe to mainstream and position him as a new power broker in American politics. In his 1995 book "The Diversity Myth," Thiel critiques multiculturalism and political correctness on college campuses, arguing they suppress genuine intellectual diversity. The book showcases Thiel's libertarian leanings and his skepticism towards collectivist ideologies. Thiel has since further embraced this ideology and has amassed the resources to influence American politics, although he is currently giving the illusion that he is uninterested in participating. In the opinion of HGHH LLC, this is to detract from the very obvious moves he has made and continues to make to gain power within the government.
Austin Russell is also currently attempting to purchase Forbes backed by a consortium of controversial foreign investors. Greg Treverton, former Chair of the National Intelligence Council, wrote a letter to the Department of Treasury on July 10, 2023 detailing his concerns:
"The State Council is potentially involved again in the Forbes buyout, but this time with a new group and with the help of Putin loyalists who have strong ties to the State Council. Sun Group, an investment firm with close ties to the Russian and Chinese governments, teamed with a Russian partner named Magomed Musaev who used to run Forbes Russia and prior to that ran some of the Russian Government’s largescale propaganda operations in Moscow. The foreign investors are using U.S. surrogates (two young daughters in
their twenties whose father owns Sun Group, per Axios) to make their buyout of Forbes appear American and shield the foreign ownership from the Congress and U.S. Treasury / CFIUS."
HGHH LLC later located the US-based investment fund owned by the daughter's of Shiv Khemka - Jayashree and Gayatri.
Treverton continues: "Sun Group also tapped Austin Russell, a 28-year-old with no media experience, to be their “lead” to buy Forbes. Russell told the press he is buying 82% of Forbes with only $10 million. That is only possible with backing from much larger foreign investors such as Abu Dhabi Capital Group and Sun Group, which Axios reports is investing up to $300 million, nearly 40% of the capital. Sun Group’s owner is purportedly also using other U.S. surrogates to launder some of its $300 million. Those larger foreign investors are now financing an inexperienced 28-year-old (Mr. Russell) and those two young daughters (in their early 20’s, fresh out of college and grad school with no business experience) to “own” on a combined basis 82% of the voting stock and nearly 40% of the capital of Forbes."
Austin Russell received his $20M of launch money for his start-up company, Luminar, from a U.S.-sanctioned oligarch, Suleyman Kerimov, a senior member of the Russian Government.
-Gregory Treverton, sourced from SF Standard
The biggest concern around the Forbes deal can be boiled down to the fact that it is well known that the credibility and influence the publication holds to the younger generation could be used for nefarious purposes by foreign adversaries or domestic terrorists (i.e. the alt-right/neo-nazi movement).
With the addition of Austin's family tree to the mix of context to consider, it is even more important now that this deal is diligently investigated in accordance with National Security Standards and Federal Law.
Additionally, information has begun surfacing about Austin Russell's potential recent and current involvement in the alt-right movement using an alias. While this is not yet confirmed due to the complexities around the alleged cover-up, HGHH LLC has acquired audio recordings and online posts that give STRONG reason to investigate further and bring it to the public attention.
We cannot let history repeat itself. To do so, we must be open to taking in new information and changing the course. When we choose to not be informed and look the other way, that is when bad people swoop in to take the reigns.
Note from the author:
Thank you so much for reading the entirety of this piece; as a woman of Polish descent I feel strongly about making these injustices known to a larger group of people and ensuring everyone is aware of the patterns we've identified throughout our investigation. The people who are choosing to read this and become informed, aka YOU, are going to be a part of the solution - and for that, I am immensely grateful. Living in blissful ignorance doesn't actually help anyone in the long run, and I am so thankful to anyone that is paying attention to this important story and choosing to stay informed.