1. Gitta Sereny, CBE was an Austrian-British biographer, historian, and investigative journalist who became known for her interviews and profiles of infamous figures, including Mary Bell, who was convicted in 1968 of killing two children when she herself was a child, and Franz Stangl, the commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp.
Gitta Sereny was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2004 for services to journalism.
Gitta Sereny's father was a Hungarian Protestant aristocrat, Ferdinand Sereny, who died when she was two.
Gitta Sereny's mother was a former actress from Hamburg, Margit Herzfeld, of German background.
Gitta Sereny attended the Nurnberg trials for four days in 1945 as an observer, and it was here that she first saw Albert Speer, about whom she would later write the book Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth.
Gitta Sereny married Don Honeyman in 1948 and moved to London, where they raised their two children.
Gitta Sereny spent 70 hours interviewing him in prison for the article and when she had finished he finally admitted his guilt; he died of a heart attack nineteen hours later.
However, Gitta Sereny concludes that Speer must have known based on a letter he wrote to the Jewish community in South Africa, and the fact that his closest assistant attended the Wannsee Conference and could not have failed to inform him about the proceedings.
Gitta Sereny was initially criticized in the British press and by the British government, though the book quickly became, and remains, a standard text for professionals working with problem children.
In 1977, Gitta Sereny cross-checked the source he cited for his assertion that Hitler knew nothing about the "Final Solution", and therefore could not have ordered the "Final Solution".
Gitta Sereny died on 14 June 2012 at age 91 while in Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, after a long illness.