Chopin's sister smuggled his heart into Warsaw, an SS officer took it in 1944, and scientists examined it in 2014 without opening the jar

Frédéric Chopin died in Paris in 1849. He feared being buried alive and wrote that since "this cough will choke me", he wanted his body opened. He asked that his heart be taken to Poland. His eldest sister, Ludwika Jędrzejewicz, carried it from Paris to Warsaw in a jar of alcohol. Smithsonian reports that she hid it under her cloak past Austrian and Russian officials. In 1880 the heart was walled into a pillar of the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw. During the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 it was taken from the church and kept at the headquarters of the SS officer Heinz Reinefarth. It was returned to the church in 1945. On 14 April 2014 a team was allowed to examine it, but not to open the jar, which was sealed with wax. They found signs that he had tuberculosis and that the direct cause of death was probably tuberculous pericarditis. Because the jar stayed closed, no DNA test has been done, and the heart has never been tested for cystic fibrosis. It was sealed back into the pillar. Researchers may not examine it again for 50 years.