Russia displays 'Hitler skull fragment'

Russian experts say the fragment is genuine

An exhibition has opened in Russia showing visitors part of a skull which officials claim was Adolf Hitler's.

The fragment, with a bullet hole through it, has been kept in a secret vault for decades.

The exhibition at the Federal Archives Service in Moscow is called "The Agony of the Third Reich: The Retribution" and marks the 55th anniversary of the end of the war.

The exhibition includes documents on Soviet work to identify Hitler's remains, an investigation into his suicide, and some of his belongings recovered from his bunker.

The jaw: "too fragile" to display

The authenticity of the claim has been questioned since Moscow first announced it had the fragment in 1993.

Hitler biographer, Werner Maser, said the fragment was fake.

However, director of the exhibition Aliya Borkovets insisted that "no doubts remain" about its origin.

Officials from the Federal Security Service - the main successor to the KGB - were non-committal about how the alleged remains came to be in Moscow.

The archivists also claim to have Hitler's jaw, but say it is too fragile to be displayed. They have put photographs on show instead.

Red Army soldiers took 'trophies' from the ruins of Berlin.

Hitler shot himself in his Berlin bunker on 30 April, 1945. His longtime companion Eva Braun, whom he had married hours earlier, also killed herself with cyanide.

The bodies were then taken outside by staff, doused with petrol and set ablaze. They were buried in a shallow grave.

Conflicting reports

There have long been unconfirmed and conflicting reports about what happened to Hitler's body next.

A mural from Hitler's bunker

Soviet troops dug up the remains after they entered Berlin in 1945, and reburied them in Magdeburg, East Germany, according to Russian reports.

In 1970, then-KGB chief Yuri Andropov ordered the bones dug up to "permanently destroy them through incineration," according to some reports.

Other reports suggest that some skull fragments were found separately in Hitler's bunker by the KGB and may have been brought to Moscow.

Controversy

Five years ago, Russia displayed some of Hitler's uniforms, boots and other relics of Nazi Germany taken from the ruins of Berlin by a Soviet unit charged with collecting war trophies.

The exhibition sparked criticism at the time from some war veterans, who said it was improper to put Nazi memorabilia on display.

Aliya Borkovets rejected such criticism, and said that the exhibition "is not dedicated to Adolf Hitler, after all, but to victory".