The controversy over Hitler’s remains kicked up (again) last fall when American DNA analysis revealed a sliver of skull fragment to be actually that of a woman’s.  Yesterday, though, Russia’s chief archivist of the Federal Security Service (FSB) dismissed such a claim.  Along with the skull fragment, the fragment of jaw preserved in the Lubyanka—Russia’s secret police HQ—is all that truly remains of the Führer because:

the KGB destroyed almost all traces of the dictator’s corpse.  Lieutenant-General Vasily Khristoforov said that the remains had been incinerated in 1970 and the ashes thrown into a river in East Germany.

Agents under orders from the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, had dug up a grave containing Hitler, his wife Eva Braun and the family of his henchman Joseph Goebbels.  The officers had removed the remains from a burial ground in a Soviet base at Magdeburg, Andropov having written to Soviet party chiefs recommending that the bodies be destroyed after it was decided to pass the base to East Germany.

In April 1970, Andropov compiled a report declaring that “the remains were burnt on a vacant area outside Schönebeck, 11 kilometres from Magdeburg, ground into ashes, gathered and thrown into the Biederitz river” — either the Ehle river near Biederitz suburb or the Biederitzer See.

General Khristoforov told the Interfax news agency that Hitler’s remains had been destroyed out of concern that his grave could become a Nazi shrine.  “It was not worth leaving any grounds for the rise of a cult of worship…there are people who profess the fascist ideology, regrettably even in Russia.”

Battle of Hitler’s Skull Prompts Russia To Reveal All

Five-hour disappearance of Auschwitz museum and memorial's new Facebook page was 'due to a technical problem'

The Facebook page of the Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, launched on Tuesday, can now be reached again. The page has gained a lot of media attention over the past few days; but from 3.30pm yetserday, those who tried to visit it were redirected to the Facebook start page. It took hours until the page came back up.

"The site was offline due to a technical problem.", explains museum official Pawel Sawicki this morning. "We wanted to add a new box and were not able to. Therefore the side was broken for about five hours. But with the help of Facebook technicians the problem was fixed around 9pm." Since the page came back it has already gained another 1,000 "fans". The museum has also added photos and an interview with Marian Kołodziej, a Polish scenographer and former prisoner of Auschwitz; it is aiming to constantly develop the page.

Although the Auschwitz memorial is not the first Holocaust-related organisation to appear on Facebook, most of the Facebook groups dedicated to Auschwitz are started by individuals. One exception is the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which opened a fan page on Facebook with about 2,250 followers. The centre, which is dedicated to teaching lessons of the Holocaust for future generations, also started to use Twitter @simonwiesenthal. The use of the social networks seems logical, since the idea of organisations dedicated to memorialisting the Holocaust is to reach out to as many people as possible. Indeed the arrival of Holocaust organisations on social networks comes rather late compared with that of groups that promote race hate.

In May a report found that militants and hate groups were increasingly using social networking sites as propaganda tools to recruit new members. The social network came under heavy fire for hosting pages promoting hatred against Jews. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre reported back then a 25% rise in "problematic" social networking groups within a year. Facebook and experts from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre met to focus on the problem. The centre launched its own Facebook page a few months later.