i24news

PublishedApril 05th 2014                                                                                                                     

Adolf Hitler's wife may have been Jewish

British documentary finds DNA evidence linking Hitler's long-term mistress Eva Braun to Jewish maternal line

Notorious Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's long time mistress and wife of one day, Eva Braun, may have been of Jewish descent, a TV documentary that is to air on British Channel 4 on Wednesday claims, according to the Huffington Post.

The makers of the documentary, titled Dead Famous DNA, had a team of scientist conduct DNA tests on a hair sample they believe to be from a hairbrush that belonged to Braun. The brush was found in a wooden box with the initials E.B. at Hitler's Alpine retreat, the Berghof, where Braun would spend most of her time.

The scientists found a particular sequence within the DNA which is passed down the maternal line called N1B1 which, according to Channel 4, is "strongly associated" with Ashkenazi Jews.

Braun, who married Hitler a day before the two committed suicide in 1945, came from a German middle-class Catholic family, but many Ashkenazi Jews converted to Catholicism in 19th century Germany.

The program-makers said the DNA evidence gathered from the hair sample was strong, but it was not clear beyond a doubt that the hair was indeed of Braun. A DNA comparison with Braun's two only living female descendents is necessary to clear up any doubts, but both refused when approached by the filmmakers.

The brush containing the hair in question was found at the Berghof at the end of World War II by American army intelligence officer Paul Baer who took several items from Braun's private apartment.

His son Alan Baer told the Huffington Post: "In our basement, I remember there was a duffel bag and in the duffel bag there were several Nazi ceremonial daggers, a human skull and this case with the initials in gold, E.B."

"My father was a German-born Jew who came to America in 1929," he continued. "Because of his background, he was in the CIC, which was a forerunner of the CIA, and he was allowed to go to these places."

"When the concentration camps were liberated, he was allowed to go into them. His mother and two sisters were taken to the camps. He never found them."