Berlin, Germany – It is the first time authorities have allowed the site of Hitler’s bunker, just 200 metres (220 yards) from Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, to be officially identified. There had been fears marking the site would attract right-wing extremists.
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Hitler killed himself in the bunker at the end of April 1945 as Soviet troops closed in on the city.
One of Hitler’s former bodyguards, 88-year-old Rochus Misch, who was at the unveiling, said people should be informed of history, even when it was the history of a devil. “During the last 12 days of the war, I was down here with Hitler and the other bodyguards all the time,” he said. After the war, Soviet soldiers blew up most of the bunker, and in the 1980s the remaining foundation and walls were filled with rubble, making it inaccessible.
It is now buried under a car park surrounded by blocks of apartments built by the former East German government.