Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, who in his genocidal schemes attempted to murder every single Jew in the world, apparently himself married a woman of Jewish descent.
The shocking discovery was made through DNA testing on hair taken from an hairbrush, allegedly belonging to Eva Braun, Hitler's long-time lover who married him hours before their joint suicide as the Nazi war machine crashed and burned.
Forensic scientists ran tests on hair samples from a monogrammed hairbrush found in 1945 by a US army intelligence officer in Braun's private apartment at Hitler's Alpine residence. Experts have confirmed that the brush belonged to Hitler's wife.
The test revealed a specific sequence in the DNA passed through the maternal line through the generations known as haplogroup N1b1, associated with Ashkenazic Jews, reports The Independent. The sequence is considered strong proof that Braun may have actually been Jewish herself, given that Jewish identity is passed through the maternal line.
The shocking results are to broadcasted next week on British TV's Channel 4 documentary "Dead Famous DNA," which bought eight strands of the hair for $2,000, and sent them to an international team of experts for analysis.
Last week the show received harsh criticism for paying 3,000 British pounds (roughly $5,000) for a lock of Hitler's hair from a Holocaust denier, only to discover the hair was a fake.
Hitler had no idea
Speaking about the findings on Braun, a spokesman for the channel said "in the nineteenth century, many Ashkenazic 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.”
Indeed the genocidally racist Hitler investigated Braun's heritage after their relationship began in 1932. Braun, who was 23 years younger than Hitler, had been sent to a Catholic school, and Hitler's investigation ended with the conclusion that she was "Aryan."
The relationship between the two was kept secret to maintain Hitler's public image. They were married on April 29, 1945 in Hitler's bunker; the next day, the two took poison and Hitler shot himself, with assistants then pouring gasoline on the bodies and burning them.
“This is a thought-provoking outcome - I never dreamt that I would find such a potentially extraordinary and profound result," said Mark Evans, presenter of the TV show. "Racism and fascism – ideas that one racial group is superior to another – made a mockery of by studying dead famous DNA.”
However, some doubts remain about the findings. To verify that the hair was indeed Braun's, the show requested a DNA swab from one of her two surviving female descendants, but was turned down by both.