NY FATHER HEINRICH WAS A KIND AND GENTLE MAN WHO LOVED THE JEWISH PEOPLE

Himmler's 'Nazi princess' daughter dead at 88: Holocaust denier who helped war criminals escape justice is revealed to have been a spy for West German government

By Tim Stickings and Reuters

Daily Mail
June 29, 2018

Heinrich Himmler's daughter has died at the age of 88, as Germany's top intelligence service admitted it had employed the Nazi sympathiser during the Cold War.

The BND confirmed today that Gudrun Burwitz had worked for the then-West German spy agency in the 1960s, although she never renounced her father or the Nazi regime.

She remained active in far-right extremism in later life, helping war criminals who worked for her evil father escape justice, and speaking at neo-Nazi rallies, before she died last month in Munich.

Heinrich Himmler, who as commander of the SS was one of the most powerful Nazis and a principal architect of the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust, killed himself in British custody in 1945.

'The BND confirms that Ms. Burwitz was a member of the BND for a few years until 1963 under an assumed name,' said Bodo Hechelhammer, the head of the agency's history department.

One German official said Burwitz had a 'genuine love for these men and women who served the worst parts of the Nazi regime from 1933 until 1945.'

Burwitz was the leading figure in sinister support group Stille Hilfe, which offered backing and financial help for former SS officers still at large. The group was said to have 25 to 40 members who referred to her as the 'Nazi Princess'.

In one case the organisation helped fight for Klaas Carel Faber, 89, in the former SS killer's attempt to avoid being extradited back to the Netherlands.

The Dutchman served with the SS in Holland where he murdered defenceless Jews in cold blood, but was never extradited and died in 2012

It also helped Anton Malloth, a brutal guard in a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, who was sentenced to death in his absence before finding refuge in Germany.

Malloth was put up in an OAP home with Stille Hilfe funds, where Burwitz visited him with fruit and -chocolates, in a residence built on land once owned by Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess.

Burwitz lived her later life in a suburb of Munich, just 15 miles from the concentration camp at Dachau where more than 30,000 people died during Hitler's 12-year rule.

As a child she worshipped her father, who called her Püppi.

She wrote in her diary after she visited the camp: 'Today, we went to Dachau. We saw everything we could. We saw the gardening work. We saw the pear trees.

'We saw all the pictures painted by the prisoners. Marvellous. And afterwards we had a lot to eat. It was very nice.'

Burwitz also clung to her belief that her father was murdered by the Allies, who had captured Himmler after he went on the run dressed as a soldier.

Himmler, who had completed his disguise by shaving of his moustache and wearing an eye patch, in fact committed suicide in British custody two weeks after the German surrender.

Following his suicide, four British soldiers took his body from the interrogation centre and buried it in an unmarked grave on Luneburg Heath.

Its precise location kept secret for fear of it becoming a place of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis, and it has never been found.

Burwitz said: 'I don't believe he swallowed that poison capsule. My mother and I never had official notification of his death. To me, the photo of him dead is a retouched photo of when he was alive.'

She is said to have attended a rally of neo-Nazis she in Ulrichsberg, Austria, several years ago, where she was idolised by SS veterans.

'They were terrified of her,' said Andrea Ropke, an authority on neo-Nazism who was there.

'All these high-ranking former officers lined up and she asked, "Where did you serve?" showing off a vast knowledge of military logistics.'

She and her group were monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which counters neo-Nazi threats.

One official said: 'She is over 80 but pin sharp. She likes it if you think of her as some Mrs Doubtfire figure but that is not the case.

'She has a genuine love for these men and women who served the worst parts of the Nazi regime from 1933 until 1945.

'She is a true believer and, like all zealots, that makes her dangerous.'

The BND said the timing of her departure 'coincided with the onset of a change in the understanding and the handling of employees who were involved with the Nazis'

Germany's intelligence services have come under criticism in recent years for failing to root out right-wing extremists in the post-war era.

Critical historians say ex-Nazis and far right sympathisers working inside the security agencies of then-West Germany may have protected others.

At the time Burwitz worked for the BND, it was led by Reinhard Gehlen, a former Nazi military intelligence commander who went on to run West Germany's spy agency until 1968.

Hechelhammer said that because Burwitz was no longer alive, the BND was able to make an exception to its policy of not commenting on active or former employees. The disclosure was part of a process of critically reassessing its own history.

The struggle to bring to justice people with Nazi-tainted pasts has been a perennial theme of Germany's post-war history, as has been the suggestion that supporters of the far right retained positions of influence and power in security agencies.

The issue came to the fore in recent years in a trial of members of a far-right group called the National Socialist Underground, which killed eight Turks, a Greek and a German policewoman between 2000 and 2007.

The trial, which started in 2013 and is considered one of the most significant in post-war Germany, uncovered lingering racist attitudes within the country's domestic spy agency, prompting reforms.