Germany – A secretary to one of Adolf Hitler’s top henchmen has broken a 66-year vow of silence, providing fascinating new details about one of the men at the center of the Third Reich.
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Brunhilde Pomsel, now 100 years old, told the German newspaper Bild how Joseph Goebbels-Hitler’s top propaganda minister-dictated to her, among other things, the orders to rid Berlin of Jews.
“I will never forgive Goebbels for what he brought into this world,” Pomsel said. “He got away lightly with suicide. He knew he would be condemned to death by the Allies. His suicide was cowardly, but he was also smart because he knew what was coming if he didn’t take that way out.”
From 1942 to 1945, Pomsel jotted down almost every word, both official orders and private correspondence, Goebbels saw fit to dictate.
For 66 years, she has refused continued requests to speak of her extraordinary experiences. Now, after five months of negotiations, according to the Daily Mail, which translated the German newspaper article, she has provided a chilling account.
“You couldn’t get close to him,” said Pomsel. “He never once asked me a personal question. Right up until the end I don’t think he knew my name.
“A lot of the stuff I did was somewhat boring. But I gradually became his chief stenographer, recording everything that gushed out from him and from his chief aides.”
She told Bild that she spent the last 10 days of the war in Europe in the propaganda ministry’s cellar. Then the Russians arrived.
“On May 1 (1945) the news came that The Boss – Hitler – had committed suicide the day before,” Pomsel reportedly said.
“The Russians came shortly afterwards and dragged me from the cellar. I spent the next five years as a prisoner of the Russians in special camps.”
After the war Pomsel learned her former boss and his wife, Magda, forced their six children to commit suicide by swallowing cyanide vials.
Goebbels then shot his wife and shot himself before having aides burn their bodies.
Pomesel said that she found redemption following her stint with Goebbels. “I never believed that I would have a happy life after working for him,” she told Bild. “But I found a way somehow.”
Joseph Goebbels was a club footed dwarf, some example of the master race!
in the interview she says she did not know about the holocaust amazing that in such a big country one cannot find anybody or maybe just a few that will admit they knew they never repented
yet some lived to a ripe healthy old age of 100 is that justice? and so many survives died at an early age
what the answer
given the she’s 100 years old, one must ask how much of this interview was in the reporter’s own mind….
Like all Germans, she pleads innocence. Everything was so detached. She didn’t know anything was going on. No one else knew. She worked like a robot. Typical of the German race. If (according to her) she wasn’t aware of any of the atrocities of the nazis, what does she have to tell?! Who can believe some 100 year old what happened almost Seventy years ago?!
though i haven’t read the entire interview in german i fail to see her stating she didnt know rather that she can not forgive him for what he did and as to why is she alive as a low level sect. she had no control but would eventually give testimony to the horrors that were perpetrated on man kind by those peace loving germans
To be fair, she was basically just a secretary doing her job. What could she have done? Who knows what we would have done in her position? I would like to think that I would do all that I can to save a life, but if my own life and that of my family were in danger? who knows? It is not for us to judge (I am talking about her individually not the thousands of Germans, poles, etc.. that actually had a hand in the killings).
Sounds like another Yitta Halberstam fiction story.
Insofar as her not knowing what was going on, it was impossible not to know.
That she was a low ranking person who _personally_ didn’t kill people, maybe. But she knew about it, profited from it, had a job in the system, had all the benefits and perks.
I recommend the following article that appeared recently which shows that people knew about the camps
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2012901/Olga-Watkins-tells-astonishing-love-story-Second-World-War.html
and the book “Judeophobia–History of an Obsession” (written by a German historian–born in 1942) in which he points out that that everyone knew but they had a tacit pact–I won’t tell on you if you don’t tell on me.
And for #9 –to paraphrase a comment in “Judeophobia”–“How do you differentiate the guilt of the concentration camp guard with that of the stationmaster who made sure the trains ran on time?”
She participated in some fashion. She could have gotten a different job.
And now she is complaining about Goebbels and how he was an unfriendly boss!? You must be kidding.
How do we know someone isn’t taking advantage of this very old lady, who may have dementia? What was there for her not to volunteer to talk about all these years? Can it be verified?!