Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on April 6, 2014

Paul Baer, a German-born Jew whose mother and sisters were taken to concentration camps, kept a selection of items from Brauns apartment, including several Nazi ceremonial daggers, a human skull and a cosmetics case with the initials E.B.

His son Alan has now donated the hair for investigation, in the hopes of contributing to historical and scientific understanding.

A spokesman for the television programme said the hair collected from the brush came from someone who could have had Jewish ancestry.

He added the unexpected and extraordinary discovery showed a specific sequence within mitochondrial DNA belonging to haplogroup N1b1, which is strongly associated with Ashkenazi Jews.

Despite Hitler conducting research into Brauns background, it is unlikely any link with Judaism would have been found; not least because many Ashkenazi Jews in Germany are known to have converted to Catholicism.

Programme-makers said they had attempted to obtain DNA evidence from two of Brauns surviving descendents, to confirm the hair on the brush did belong to her, but have not been successful.

This is a thought-provoking outcome - I never dreamt that I would find such a potentially extraordinary and profound result, says Mark Evans, the programmes presenter. Racism and fascism ideas that one racial group is superior to another made a mockery of by studying dead famous DNA.

Read more:

Hitler may have 'unwittingly married a Jew'

Category: Ashkenazi
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