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Joseph Goebbels' secretary, Brunhilde Pomsel, dies aged 106 Joseph Goebbels' secretary, Brunhilde Pomsel, dies aged 106
(about 1 hour later)
Brunhilde Pomsel, a former secretary of the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, has died aged 106. Brunhilde Pomsel, a former secretary to Nazi Germany’s propaganda boss Joseph Goebbels, has died aged 106.
Pomsel lived most of her life in relative obscurity until a German newspaper published an interview with her in 2011, prompting a flurry of interest in one of the last surviving members of the Nazi leadership’s inner circle. 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.
Her death was confirmed on Sunday by Christian Kroenes, a director and producer of the film A German Life. In the documentary, Pomsel talks about her three years working for the man responsible for spreading Adolf Hitler’s ideology in newspapers and across the airwaves. Pomsel, who worked for Goebbels for three years, had insisted she had no idea about the killing of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.
Kroenes said Pomsel had been lucid when he last spoke to her on her birthday on 11 January. He said she died at her home in Munich on Friday. “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.
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.
In A German Life, she insisted she felt no guilt, saying: “I could not put up resistance – I was too much of a coward.”
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.
“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.”
He said a book on Pomsel’s memories, based on the interviews, would be published this year.
Kroenes said in view of the rise of rightwing populism in the west, the book served “as a warning to current and future generations”.