New MI6 chief's grandfather was Nazi spy known as ‘The Butcher'
Blaise Metreweli was appointed earlier this month as the first female spy chief in the Secret Intelligence Service's 116-year history.
According to an archive of documents reported by the Daily Mail, her grandfather, Constantine Dobrowolski, was a Nazi collaborator who boasted of killing Jews.
Dobrowolski, who was Ukrainian, defected from the Red Army to become Adolf Hitler's chief informant in the Chernihiv region, the newspaper reported.
Ms Metreweli, 47, never met her grandfather. He stayed in Nazi-occupied Ukraine when his family fled the Red Army's liberation of the region in 1943.
Documents uncovered in a German archive reportedly show that Dobrowolski was known as 'Agent No 30' by the Nazis.
At one point the Soviet Union put a bounty on Dobrowolski of 50,000 roubles – worth about £200,000 now – and called him 'the worst enemy of the Ukrainian people'.
According to the newspaper, Dobrowolski wanted revenge on Russia for killing his family and seizing their estate in the revolution of 1917.
One file reportedly contains a handwritten letter from Dobrowolski to his Nazi superiors signed: 'Heil Hitler'.
In another, he boasts of 'personally' taking part 'in the extermination of the Jews' and killing hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers.
A Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office spokesman said: 'Blaise Metreweli neither knew nor met her paternal grandfather. Blaise's ancestry is characterised by conflict and division and, as is the case for many with eastern European heritage, only partially understood.
'It is precisely this complex heritage which has contributed to her commitment to prevent conflict and protect the British public from modern threats from today's hostile states, as the next chief of MI6.'
Ms Metreweli grew up abroad before studying anthropology at Cambridge, where she was in the winning crew in the 1997 Boat Race.
She joined MI6 in 1999 and served the agency in Europe and the Middle East for two decades.
Ms Metreweli currently holds the position of 'Q', the head of the service's technical branch, made famous by the James Bond films.
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