Gudrun Margarete Elfriede Emma Anna Burwitz is the daughter of Heinrich
Himmler, a Minister in Nazi Germany. After the allied victory, she was
arrested and made to testify at the Nuremberg trials, but has never
renounced Nazi ideology. She has consistently fought to defend her
father’s reputation, and has become closely involved in Neo-Nazi groups that
give support to ex-members of the SS. She married Wulf Dieter Burwitz, an
official of the far-right NPD. Relationship with her father
Gudrun Himmler is the daughter of Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS, Chief
of Police, and Minister of the Interior in Nazi Germany. She was the only child
of Himmler and his wife Margarete Siegroth, née Boden, though her parents
later adopted a son. Gudrun was born in Munich and baptised a Protestant.
Heinrich Himmler adored his daughter and had her regularly flown to his offices
in Berlin from Munich where she lived with her mother. When she was at home he
telephoned her most days and wrote to her every week. He continued to call her
by her childhood nickname "Püppi" throughout his life. She accompanied her
father on some official duties. Heinrich Himmler died in British
captivity on 23 May 1945. She disputed that his death was a suicide from a
concealed cyanide capsule, claiming that he was murdered. After the Second World
War she and her mother were arrested by the Americans and held in various camps
in Italy, France and Germany. They were brought to Nuremberg to testify at the
trials, and were released in November 1946. Gudrun later bitterly referred to
these years as the most difficult of her life, and said that she and her mother
were treated as though they had to atone for the sins of her father.
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.
People who know her say that Gudrun has created a "golden image" of her father.
Nazi sympathies She married the journalist and author
Wulf Dieter Burwitz, who would become a party official in the Bavarian section
of the far-right NPD, and had two children. She has remained active in the
Nazi community, and has since 1951 been a member of Stille Hilfe, an
organisation providing support to arrested, condemned or fugitive former
SS-members. To place Gudrun's affiliation with this organisation into
additional context, Stille Hilfe assisted Klaus Barbie of the Lyon
Gestapo, Martin Sommer, otherwise known as the 'Hangman of Buchenwald' and
"continues to support a Protestant old people's home in Pullach, near Munich".
In 1952, Gudrun helped to found Wiking-Jugend which was organised after
the Hitler Youth model. She was a longtime friend of Florentine Rost van
Tonningen, who was known in the Netherlands as "the black widow" and who
was active in Nazi circles after the war.
For decades Gudrun Burwitz has been a prominent public figure in Stille Hilfe.
At various meetings, for instance the annual Ulrichsberg gathering in Austria,
she receives the status of both a star and an authority. Oliver Schröm, author
of a book about Stille Hilfe, has described her as a "flamboyant Nazi
princess". Gudrun Burwitz has intensified the
support for alleged Nazi war criminals in recent years. This was particularly
evident in the case of Anton Malloth, a supervisor of Theresienstadt
concentration camp, who was extradited to Germany in 1988 and after a prolonged
public trial was sentenced in 2001 to life in prison. She arranged his stay at
a nursing home in Pullach at the southern outskirts of Munich from 1988
to 2001. See also
Diana Mitford Notes
References Andersen, Dan H. Nazimyter—blodreligion
og dødskult i Det Tredje Rige. Aschehoug 2007, ISBN 978-87-11-11847-4
Lebert, Norbert, and Stephan. Denn Du trägst meinen Namen: das schwere Erbe
der prominenten Nazi-Kinder. Goldmann Verlag 2002, ISBN 3-442-15188-0
Lebert, Norbert, and Stephan. My Father's Keeper: Children of Nazi
Leadership: An Intimate History of Damage and Denial, translated by Julian
Evans. New York: Little, Brown, 2001. ISBN 0-316-51929-4
Longerich, Peter. Heinrich Himmler: A Life. Oxford; New York: Oxford
University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-959232-6.
Pike, David Wingeate. Spaniards in the Holocaust: Mauthausen, the Horror on the
Danube. London: Routledge, 2000. Schröm, Oliver and Andrea Röpke. Stille
Hilfe für braune Kameraden. Christoph Links Verlag 2001, ISBN 3-86153-231-X