A pioneering DNA test revealed that Eva Braun, German dictator Adolf Hitler’s longtime companion and wife for less than 40 hours, came from a Jewish lineage, The Independent reports.
Dead Famous DNA, a documentary series in shown in Channel 4, inspected hair samples taken from a brush which reportedly was owned and used by Eva Braun, the Fuehrer’s secret lover, and was found in his mountain retreat.
The DNA analysis which resulted from the investigation showed that Hitler may have unintentionally married a woman from the race which he so abhorred to the point of starting a war just so he could annihilate them all.
Forensic scientists studied the order of the hypervariable region of the mitochondrial DNA found in hair samples taken from a monogrammed hairbrush. This said hairbrush was a WWII artifact found by an American intelligence officer at the end of the war in the apartment of Eva Braun in Berghof, Bavaria, Hitler’s Alpine residence.
They spotted a specific sequence inside the mithochondrial DNA, a tiny genome within the cell’s mitochondria. This genome, according to the investigating scientists, is passed down the maternal line – from mother to daughter – and remaines unchanged throughout generations. The genetic material found in the hair samples believed to be of Eva Braun belongs to the haplogroup N1b1. This human mitchodrial DNA is strongly connected with the Ashkenazi Jews.
Even at a young age of 17, Eva Braun, a photography assistant, had been madly smitten with the German dictator even though a considerable age difference of 23 years divided them.
Hitler gave orders to his private secretary, Martin Bormann, to investigate the family of Eva Braun. When he found out that her family sent her to a Catholic School to establish that they were Aryans and that she had no Jewish progenitors, the German dictator then went on to court her.
However, Eva Braun was kept a state secret as Hitler feared her existence in his life would harm his public image. He hid her in his Alpine residence in Berghof.
Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun became lovers when she became 20. But they never showed any affections towards each other in public upon the dictator’s insistence. They got married in a small civil ceremony April 29, 1945 at the Führerbunker with Bormann and Joseph Goebbels as their witnesses.
The next day, as Soviet Union’s Red Army closed into Berlin, Eva Braun took in a cyanide pill as the Fuehrer also poisoned himself and shot himself on the temple. Their dead bodies were laid side-to-side in the gardens of the bunker, doused with petrol and were burned.
Experts from Channel 4’s Dead Famous DNA used hair samples originally taken by US 7th Army captain Paul Baer in the summer of 1945. Baer was assigned at Berghof this time and he took several personal items from Braun’s private apartment including the monogrammed brush with the hair strands.
There are photographs of the US army officer in Berghof dated 1945 and the brush itself has been properly authenticated.
The Eva Braun hairbrush had been sold by Baer’s son to a relic dealer. The said dealer then separated the hair found in the brush and sold them off to hair dealer John Reznikoff.
Mark Evans, the show’s presenter, bought exactly eight strands of the hair from Rezkinoff for $2,000. These hair strands were then sent to an international team composed of forensic experts to be analyzed.
According to a Channel 4 spokesman, the DNA results were feasible as many Ashkenazi Jews in Germany converted to Catholicism in the 19th century. If Eva Braun did really came from an Ashkenazi Jew lineage, there was a strong possibility that that part of her family’s history was unknown to her and in spite of the investigation the German dictator did on his secret lover, neither would Hitler.
However, as one of the two surviving female descendants of Eva Braun refused to allow Mr. Evans to get DNA samples from her to prove that the tested hair were really of Hitler’s wife, the results of the DNA are not conclusive. They do provide an interesting talking topic, though.
As Mr. Evans puts it, the result was “thought-provoking” as fascism and racism so promoted by Hitler was turned into mockery for marrying someone from the race he promoted as impure.
Recently, Dead Famous DNA had been involved in a controversy when the show producers attempt to get hold of Hitler’s hair ended up with the relic being fake.
The said Hitler hair clippings were sold to them by David Irving, known for being a Holocaust denier and dubious historian, for £3,000.
Watch Dead Famous DNA’s episode on Eva Braun this Wednesday, April 9, at 9 PM (UK).