Gudrun Burwitz
Gudrun Margarete Elfriede Emma Anna Burwitz (née Himmler; 8 August 1929 – 24 May 2018) was the daughter of Heinrich Himmler and Margarete Himmler. Her father, as Reichsführer-SS, was a leading member of the Nazi Party, and chief architect of the Final Solution.[1] After the Allied victory, she was arrested and made to testify at the Nuremberg trials. Never renouncing Nazi ideology, she consistently fought to defend her father's reputation and became closely involved in Neo-Nazi groups that give support to ex-members of the SS. She married Wulf Dieter Burwitz, an official of the extremist NPD.
Gudrun Burwitz
24 May 2018 (aged 88)
Püppi
Daughter of Nazi Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler
Wulf Dieter Burwitz
2
- Heinrich Himmler (father)
- Margarete Siegroth (mother)
- Gebhard Ludwig Himmler (uncle)
- Ernst Hermann Himmler (uncle)
Later life
She married the far-right propagandist and author Wulf Dieter Burwitz, who later became a party official in the Bavarian section of the far-right NPD,[3] and had two children. She was affiliated with Stille Hilfe ("Silent Aid"), an organization formed to aid former SS members, which assisted Klaus Barbie ("the Butcher of Lyon") of the Lyon Gestapo and Martin Sommer, otherwise known as the "Hangman of Buchenwald", and she reportedly continued to support a Protestant old people's home in Pullach, near Munich.[9]
From 1961 to 1963, she worked, under an assumed name, as a secretary for West Germany's intelligence agency, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), at its headquarters in Pullach. At the time the agency was headed by Reinhard Gehlen, an American-recruited general who hired, among others, ex-Nazis to work for BND based on their connections and experience with Eastern Europe and anti-communist activities.[2][10]
For decades Gudrun Burwitz was a prominent public figure in Stille Hilfe. At various meetings, for instance the annual Ulrichsberg gathering in Austria, she received the status of both a star and an authority. Oliver Schröm, author of a book about the organisation, described her as a "flamboyant Nazi princess" ("schillernde Nazi-Prinzessin").[11]
Peter Finkelgrun, a German-Jewish investigative journalist, discovered that Burwitz provided financial support for SS-Scharführer Anton Malloth, a former Nazi prison guard and a fugitive war criminal. In 2001, Malloth was convicted of beating at least 100 prisoners to death at the Theresienstadt concentration camp, including Finkelgrun's grandfather in 1943.[8]
Gudrun Burwitz died on 24 May 2018 at her home near Munich at the age of 88.[2][12]
