- BERLIN (Reuters) - Adolf
Hitler's last secretary, who was in the Nazi leader's bunker when he
committed
suicide in 1945, has died just days after publishing her memoirs and making
a film appearance, director Othmar Schmiderer said Wednesday.
-
- Traudl Junge, who was 82, died from cancer Sunday night,
filmmaker Schmiderer told Reuters.
-
- Junge became Hitler's private secretary in 1942, at the
mid-point of World War II. She served him until the bitter end, and took
down the Fuehrer's last will and testament before escaping from the Berlin
bunker days later.
-
- After keeping a low profile for half a century, Junge
told her story in depth in a film screened at the Berlinale film festival
Sunday and in a book "Through the Final Hours" published days
earlier.
-
- "She said I have now told my life story and now
I am ready to die," said Schmiderer, the director of the film.
"We
had the impression she felt that a great burden was lifted after she told
her story."
-
- Schmiderer said he had spoken with Junge just days
before.
-
- "The longer I live and the older I become, the
greater
my feeling of guilt," Junge said in the documentary film "Blind
Spot, Hitler's Secretary."
-
- "Today I can say that he was a real criminal,"
she says.
-
- She had wanted to be a ballet dancer, but when she heard
of a vacancy in the chancellery she played up her typing and shorthand
skills to land the job. She first met Hitler at his Prussian Wolf's Lair
complex in what is now Poland.
-
- "He was a pleasant elder man who welcomed us with
real friendliness," she recalled about her first meeting. "I
thought I would be at the source of all information. But I was really in
a blind spot."
-
- She and other secretaries frequently dined with Hitler
but he shied away from controversial topics.
-
- "Sometimes I think if I had the chance to meet
Hitler
again, I would ask him if he discovered he had Jewish blood in his family
tree, would he have gassed himself?" she said in the film.
-
- Under Hitler, the Nazis systematically exterminated six
million Jews. Junge's account of the last days in the bunker helped provide
historians with a picture of despair and banality during the final days
of the Third Reich.
-
- She was there when Hitler kissed his companion Eva Braun
in front of others before marrying her and killing her and himself.
-
- She also spent time alone with Hitler in his final hours
as he dictated a final testament.
-
- "I thought, now I'll find out what really
happened,"
she said. "It was all the old phrases such as the Jews were to blame
... it was maddeningly senseless."
-
- Junge had no children but is survived by a sister who
lives in Australia.
-
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