RUSSIA CLAIMS IT HAS PIECES OF HITLER'S SKULL

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 20, 1993                   TAG: 9302200027
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                LENGTH: Medium
RUSSIA CLAIMS IT HAS PIECES OF HITLER'S SKULL
Russian Television showed two bones on Friday that it said were pieces of Adolf Hitler's skull. A report said they were kept for years in Russia's state archives in a box labeled "blue ink."
News reports said Soviet agents obtained the fragments to prove to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin that his fears that Hitler was still alive after World War II were wrong.
The latest news reports were more detailed and persuasive than some other accounts of a frantic Soviet search for Hitler's remains in 1945 and 1946.
But they still left major questions unanswered, such as how the agents concluded that the skull fragments were Hitler's and why it was kept secret.
The two flat bones shown on TV each were about the size of a man's palm. The daily Izvestia said the fragments had been kept for years in Russia's state archives in a cardboard box.
An official at the Russian state archives confirmed that the bone fragments are held there, but would say no more.
Izvestia said its account was based on files of the People's Commissariat for Interior Affairs, or NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB and current Security Ministry.
The newspaper said the NKVD interrogated Hans Bauer, Hitler's personal pilot; Heinz Linge, his valet; and Otto Gunsche, an aide. Investigators spent months trying in vain to obtain confessions that Hitler was alive.
The NKVD was competing with Smersh, the Soviet military counterintelligence agency, which was first to inspect Hitler's bunker and command posts.
Historians are likely to remain skeptical that the bones shown Friday are actually Hitler's.
Most historians believe Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker on April 29, 1945, with his wife, Eva Braun. Aides reportedly doused the corpses with gasoline and burned them to prevent them from falling into Soviet hands. The bunker then came under heavy Soviet shelling.
The lack of identifiable remains permitted rumors that Hitler had escaped the advancing Soviet army.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB