The piece of skull had a hole on its left side, consistent with a bullet wound, with black charring around the edges. Gruesome pictures of the teeth published in the study show a jaw made mostly of metal. The analysis corroborated frequently-cited claims that Hitler was a vegetarian, but could not conclusively prove whether he took cyanide before the gunshot. Bluish deposits on his false teeth, the researchers wrote, suggest a variety of different hypotheses—did some chemical reaction take place between his fake teeth and the cyanide at the moment of death, during his cremation, or while the remains were buried?
The remains were dumped in a shallow shell crater and covered up. On the morning of May 2, Ivan Churakov, a private in the Soviet Army, noticed an oblong patch of recently turned soil as he and the 79th Rifle Corps searched the Chancellery. He began to dig, thinking he might uncover some hastily buried Nazi treasure. Instead, his shovel hit bone. This would be just one of several moves the corpse would make in the next few decades. In early June that year, the Soviets re-buried the body in a forest near the town of Rathenau.
Eight months later, they moved it again—this time, to the Soviet Army garrison in Magdeburg. There it remained until March , when the Soviets decided to abandon the garrison and turn it over to the East German civilian government.
Soviet leaders worried that if the body were left in the garrison or buried somewhere else not under their watchful eye, the gravesite would become a shrine for neo-Nazis. KGB director Yuri Andropov decided that the remains should be destroyed and authorized an operation to dispose of the body.
The only things that were kept were fragments of a jawbone and skull, which were stored in government buildings in Moscow. The lease is renewable and can be willed to friends or relatives. Asked whether he would have trouble persuading people to let their loved ones share a grave with the parents of a man whose name is a universal epitome of evil, Pitterschatscher said: "I really haven't thought about it. He said the stone and black marble marker, topped by a granite cross, was removed without ceremony by a stonemason hired by the relative, described as an elderly female descendant of Alois Hitler's first wife, Anna.
What's left at the site is a white gravel square and a tree. He said he did not know the woman personally and did not identify her by name but cited her request for termination of the grave lease as saying she was too old to care for it and tired of it "being used for manifestations of sympathy" for Hitler. Hitler's roots are in Braunau, about 75 miles away by road. Braunau is commonly identified as his hometown after the village where he was born Ranshofen was incorporated into Braunau in But he and his family moved to Leonding in when he was nine and lived there until he was Leonding itself first assumed cult status for his followers after Hitler visited his parents' grave and the nearby family house following the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany.
The family's Leonding house now warehouses coffins for the cemetery, and Brunner said in a telephone interview that — unlike the more than year-old grave — it did not draw Hitler fans. Anti-extremist groups say neo-Nazis, sometimes coming in groups, placed flowers and Nazi symbols on the grave.
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