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Joseph Goebbels' secretary, Brunhilde Pomsel, dies aged 106 Joseph Goebbels' secretary, Brunhilde Pomsel, dies aged 106
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Brunhilde Pomsel, a former secretary to Nazi Germany’s propaganda boss Joseph Goebbels, has died aged 106. Brunhilde Pomsel, a former secretary to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and one of the last people alive who had close contact with the Nazi leadership, has died at the age of 106.
She died on 27 January in a care home in the southern city of Munich, said the film-maker Christian Kroenes, who conducted extensive interviews with her for his 2016 film A German Life. Pomsel died in her sleep in Munich on Friday night, said Florian Weigensamer, a director and producer of a documentary feature about her life.
Pomsel, who worked for Goebbels for three years, had insisted she had no idea about the killing of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust. In an interview with the Guardian last summer, Pomsel said she had no regrets about the role she played at the heart of the Nazi propaganda machine, and felt no remorse or sense of responsibility for the crimes committed by Hitler’s regime.
“We knew nothing. We ourselves were all trapped in a vast concentration camp,” she said in the film, referring to the totalitarian state of Adolf Hitler. “Really, I didn’t do anything other than type in Goebbels’ office,” she said, insisting that she had simply acted like most Germans by not resisting the regime.
As one of half a dozen secretaries in Goebbels’ office, working there from 1942 until the collapse of the Nazi regime in 1945, Pomsel was among the last witnesses to the inner circle of top Nazis. “Those people nowadays who say they would have stood up against the Nazis – I believe they are sincere in meaning that, but believe me, most of them wouldn’t have.” She described how, after the rise of the Nazi party, “the whole country was as if under a kind of a spell. I could open myself up to the accusations that I wasn’t interested in politics but the truth is, the idealism of youth might easily have led to you having your neck broken.”
In A German Life, she insisted she felt no guilt, saying: “I could not put up resistance – I was too much of a coward.” Pomsel worked for Goebbels for three years, right up until his death in 1945, when he and his wife Magda poisoned their six children before killing themselves.
Kroenes said Pomsel had remained full of energy until her death. “We were in contact. I last spoke to her on the occasion of her birthday on 11 January,” he said. Pomsel described how she had been “dumbstruck” on hearing the news. She told the film-makers: “I will never forgive Goebbels for what he did to the world or for the fact that he murdered his innocent children.”
“She was still full of energy, full of hope for the future. There were some ups and downs owing to her advanced age. Mentally there was no change, she was still alert.” Weigensamer said Pomsel’s health had deteriorated in the months since the film’s release at the Munich film festival last July. She was interviewed again by the film-makers during the last months of her life for a book to accompany the documentary.
He said a book on Pomsel’s memories, based on the interviews, would be published this year. “Her attention span had waned, but she was still up to date with events in the world from Turkey to the USA,” he said. “She was very proud that the film was made about her, even if parts of it were very unpleasant for her, but she thought it was important that she left something behind which will be shown in schools.”
Kroenes said in view of the rise of rightwing populism in the west, the book served “as a warning to current and future generations”. He said that even towards the end of her life Pomsel had felt no sense of guilt, “except towards people she said she should have taken better care of”. One of those people was her best friend Eva Löwenthal, a vivacious, red-haired Jewish girl. Only in 2005 did Pomsel discover Löwenthal had been murdered in Auschwitz.
“She didn’t feel any sense of guilt,” Weigensamer said. “She remained true to herself until the end, only seeing her own fate, never seeing it in terms of the societal dimensions or putting it into its historical context.”
Pomsel said in 2016 she was glad her days were numbered. “In the little time that’s left to me – and I hope it will be months rather than years – I just cling to the hope that the world doesn’t turn upside down again as it did then, though there have been some ghastly developments, haven’t there? I’m relieved I never had any children that I have to worry about.”