What Russians claim is a fragment of Adolf Hitler’s skull – kept for decades in a top-secret archive – will be put on exhibit tomorrow in Moscow.
The fragment – allegedly complete with a bullet hole where the Fuehrer shot himself as his Nazi empire crumbled around him – will be displayed at the Federal Archives Service in an exhibit marking the 55th anniversary of the end of World War II.
Historians have expressed doubt ever since Moscow first announced it had the bone fragment in 1993.
Noted Hitler biographer Werner Maser, for one, declared it was a fake.
But the director of the exhibition hall, Aliya Borkovets, insisted yesterday that “no doubts remain” about its authenticity.
She said the exhibition – called “The Agony of the Third Reich: The Retribution” – will include documents on Soviet work to identify the fragment.
Officials said they also had Hitler’s jaw, but it’s too fragile to put on display and a photograph of it will be shown in its place.
Vladimir Kozlov, head of the archives service, and officials from the Federal Security Service – the main successor to the KGB – would not divulge how the remains came to Moscow.
After Hitler shot himself in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945, his body was taken outside by his staff, doused with gasoline and set ablaze, along with the remains of his longtime companion, Eva Braun.
There have been conflicting reports over the years about what happened after that.
Russia claims Soviet troops, who captured the Berlin bunker, dug up the bones in 1945, then buried them again in Magdeburg, in East Germany.
It has also been reported that in 1970 then-KGB chief Yuri Andropov ordered them dug up and incinerated.
Other reports suggest some skull fragments were found separately in Hitler’s bunker by the KGB and may have been taken to Moscow.