Hitler Was Jewish, DNA Test Reveals

Adolf Hitler probably never had a bar mitzvah or anything, but a series of new DNA tests indicate that he had Jewish and even African ancestors. A journalist and a historian tracked down 39 relatives of the Fuhrer and performed DNA tests on them. They found a common chromosome among them, E1b1b1, that is rare in Western Europe, but common in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, and among Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, the Daily Telegraph reports.

“One can from this postulate that Hitler was related to people whom he despised,” the journalist, Belgian Jean-Paul Mulders, wrote in a Belgian magazine. “This is a surprising result,” agreed a genetic specialist. “Hitler’s concern over his descent was not unjustified. He was apparently not ‘pure’ or ‘Aryan.” Historians have suggested that Hitler might have Jewish roots in the past; his father is thought to have been the illegitimate son of a maid and a young Jewish man. (More Adolf Hitler stories.)