Gudrun Burwitz
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| Gudrun Burwitz | |
|---|---|
 Gudrun Himmler (aka Gudrun Burwitz) (standing right) with her mother at the International Military Tribunal trial of war criminals at Nuremberg, 1945. |
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| Born | Gudrun Himmler August 8, 1929 Munich |
| Nationality | German |
| Known for | Stille Hilfe, Wiking-Jugend |
| Spouse | Wulf Dieter Burwitz |
| Parents | Heinrich Himmler, Margarete Boden |
Gudrun Burwitz (née Himmler, born 8 August 1929) is the daughter of Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police (and from August 1943 onward, the Minister of the Interior), and Margarete Siegroth, née Boden. Gudrun was the first child of Himmler's marriage; they later adopted a son. In 1940, Heinrich Himmler started an affair with the secretary Hedwig Potthast with whom he had two children.[1]
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[edit] Relation to father
Heinrich Himmler adored his daughter and had her regularly flown to his offices in Berlin from Munich where she lived with her mother.[2] She accompanied Heinrich Himmler on some official duties, for instance, inspecting concentration camps (picture), or in other appearances. She has never renounced the Nazi ideology and has repeatedly sought to justify the actions of her father, relative to the context of his time.[3] People who know her say that she has created a golden image of her father.[4]
Heinrich Himmler died in British captivity. She contested that his death was a suicide from a concealed cyanide capsule,[2] as others did.[5] After World War II she and her mother were held in detention by the British occupying powers for four years. She later bitterly referred to these years as the most difficult of her life, and that they had to atone for her father.[2]
[edit] Nazi sympathies
She married the journalist and author Wulf Dieter Burwitz and had two children. She has remained active in the Nazi community (Neo-Nazism), and has since 1951 been a member of Stille Hilfe, an organisation providing support to arrested, condemned or fugitive former SS-members.[6] In 1952 she helped to found Wiking-Jugend which was organised after the Hitler Youth model. She was a longtime friend of Florentine Rost van Tonningen (died in 2007), who was known in the Netherlands as "the black widow" and was active in Nazi circles after the war.
For decades Gudrun Burwitz has been a prominent symbol and idol in Stille Hilfe. At various meetings, for instance the annual Ulrichsberg gathering in Austria, she enjoys the status as both a star and an authority. Oliver Schröm, author of a book about Stille Hilfe, has described her as a "flamboyant Nazi princess" ("schillernde Nazi-Prinzessin").[7]
Gudrun Burwitz has intensified the support for Nazi war criminals in recent years. This was particularly evident in the case of Anton Malloth, a supervisor of Theresienstadt, who was extradited to Germany in 1988 and after a prolonged public trial was sentenced in 2001 to life in prison. During 1988-2001 she arranged his stay at an expensive nursing home in Pullach at the southern outskirts of Munich. There was a public outcry when it was discovered that the premises had been the property of the prominent Nazi Rudolf Hess and that the stay was largely financed by public welfare funds.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] Books
- Oliver Schröm, Andrea Röpke: Stille Hilfe für braune Kameraden. Christoph Links Verlag 2001, ISBN 386153231X (in German)
- Norbert und Stephan Lebert: Denn Du trägst meinen Namen. Goldmann Verlag 2002, ISBN 3-442-15188-0 (in German)
- Andersen, Dan H (2007) (in Danish). Nazimyter - blodreligion og dødskult i Det Tredje Rige (Danish) (Nazi myths - blood religion and death cult in the Third Reich). Aschehoug. ISBN 978-87-11-11847-4.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Andersen 2007:165
- ^ a b c Helm, Siegfried (1998). "Himmlers Tochter hilft den alten Gefährten". Berliner Morgenpost. http://www.hagalil.com/archiv/98/03/ss-himmler.htm. Retrieved 5 October 2008.
- ^ The German wiki
- ^ Sanai, Darius (1999). "The sins of my father". The Independent (London). http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19990201/ai_n14214264/pg_2?tag=artBody;col1. Retrieved 5 October 2008.[dead link]
- ^ Bellinger, Joseph (2005). Himmlers Tod. Freitod oder Mord? Die letzten Tage des Reichsführers-SS (Himmler's death. Suicide or murder? The last days of the SS Reichfürher). Kiel: Arndt Verlag. http://www.arndtverlag.de/homepages/himmlers-tod/index2.htm.
- ^ The Daily Mail Himmler's daughter aged 81: She works with neo-Nazis and helps SS officers evade justice, June 17, 2011
- ^ Fabian Leber: Gudrun Burwitz und die „Stille Hilfe“: Die schillernde Nazi-Prinzessin; in: Der Tagesspiegel vom 10. Juni 2001 (In German)
(To a great extent, this article is a translation of the info in the German Wikipedia, 15 September 2008 )
