Eva Braun: Hitler’s Wife May Have Had Jewish Ancestry
A British TV program claims Eva Braun, wife of German dictator Adolf Hitler may have been from Jewish ancestry, based on DNA testing from a hairbrush.
The Channel 4 show Dead Famous DNA acquired the hairs from dealer John Reznikoff. They are believed to have come from Braun’s apartment at the Berghof, Hitler’s private quarters in the Bavarian Alps.
The hairs came from a brush monogrammed with the initials EB. It was found by a U.S. army intelligence officer named Paul Baer, a 7th Army captain who had access and took several items. Photographs show Baer with the hairbrush at the Berghof in 1945.
The Huffington Post reported the DNA sample had a particular sequence passed down in the maternal line called haplogroup N1b1, which is “strongly associated” with Ashkenazi Jews.
Ashkenazi Jews came to central and eastern Europe in the middle ages, many converted to Catholicism in Germany in the 1800s.
According to The Times Of Israel, Baer’s son Alan said his father had kept the items in a duffel bag in the basement of the family’s home. After his death in the 1970s, his son sold the items to Reznikoff- who then sold them to Dead Famous DNA presenter Mark Evans for about $2,000.
“This is a thought-provoking outcome- I never dreamed that I would find such a potentially extraordinary and profound result,” Evans said.
In March, channel 4 drew criticism for buying a lock of hair they claimed belonged to Hitler which turned out to be fake.
Hitler met Braun in 1929 when he went to the shop of personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffman. The 17-year old Braun was a new employee and was taken with the 40-year old leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party.
Hitler took great steps to steps to make sure she was not Jewish and being raised Catholic certainly helped.
It has been speculated that Braun wanted to marry Hitler but he refused for 16 years. “I am married to the German people and their fate! No, I cannot marry, I must not.”
When Hitler was in prison for committing “political crimes”, he wrote Mein Kampf, a 720 page book that spoke of his aspirations. “The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew,” he wrote. The book was published in 1925.
With the Soviet army just days from taking Berlin, the couple went to the chancellery, Hitler’s headquarters as chancellor.
They were married in a civil ceremony just after midnight on April 29, 1945.
Forty hours later, they committed suicide on April 30. Both had taken Cyanide with Hitler shooting himself for good measure.
Their bodies were cremated in the chancellery garden by the bunker survivors, as per Hitler’s orders.
[Image via history.com]
