Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels’ secretary dies at 106 with no regrets

One of the last surviving people with access to the Nazi leadership’s inner circle has died with no regrets. 

Brunhilde Pomsel, a former secretary for Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, died at her Munich home on Friday. She was 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 people who had access to the Nazi leadership’s inner circle.

Her death was confirmed Sunday to The Associated Press by Christian Kroenes, a director and producer of the film, A German Life. In that documentary, Pomsel talks about her three years working for the man responsible for spreading Adolf Hitler’s lethal ideology in newspapers and across the airwaves.

She describes Goebbels as a vain man whose hate-filled public speeches were difficult to reconcile with what she said was his considerable charm when not in the spotlight.

Kroenes said Pomsel had been lucid when he last spoke to her on her birthday, January 11.

“What she recounted in the film is a warning to the current and future generations,” he said.

In the film, however, Pomsel claimed she did not know about the systematic murder of the Jews perpetrated by the government, saying she was merely a secretary. She said she did not feel guilty about the Holocaust.

BBC reported that Pomsel had a Jewish friend, Eva Lowenthal, who disappeared in November 1943. Pomsel discovered 60 years later that Lowenthal had died in Auschwitz.

By: AP and World Israel News Staff

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