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Itongadol.- Eva Braun, who married Adolf Hitler hours before their joint suicide in his Berlin bunker, may have had Jewish ancestry, according to ground-breaking DNA testing.
The revelation appears in a British Channel 4 documentary, "Dead Famous DNA," to broadcast next week, in which leading scientists attempt to extract DNA from relics and analyze their genome to solve mysteries associated with them.
DNA analysis of hair samples from a hairbrush claimed to belong to Braun, found by an American army intelligence officer at the end of the World War II in Braun\’s apartment at Hitler\’s Alpine residence, the Berghof in Bavaria, suggests that the Nazi leader may have unknowingly married a woman of Semitic descent.
Experts found a specific sequence within the mitochondrial DNA, a small genome within the mitochondria of the cell that is passed down the maternal line from mother to daughter unchanged over the generations, belonging to haplogroup N1b1, which is associated with Ashkenazi Jews.
According to traditional Jewish law, Judaism is passed down through matrilineal descent.
Hitler had ordered his private secretary Martin Bormann to investigate Braun\’s family to ensure that they were "Aryan" and that she had no Jewish ancestors. After being assured there were none, he pursued the relationship.
A Channel 4 spokesman said: "In the 19th Century, many Ashkenazi Jews in Germany converted to Catholicism, so Eva Braun is highly unlikely to have known her ancestry and — despite research he instigated into Braun\’s race — neither would Hitler."
The results, however, are still not definitive. To prove the hair came from Eva Braun\’s head, experts attempted to get a DNA swab from one of Braun\’s two surviving female descendants, but both refused.