13 Facts About Gudrun Burwitz

Gudrun Margarete Elfriede Emma Anna Burwitz was the daughter of Heinrich Himmler and Margarete Himmler.

Gudrun Burwitz's father, as Reichsfuhrer-SS, was a leading member of the Nazi Party, and chief architect of the Final Solution.

Gudrun Burwitz married Wulf Dieter Burwitz, an official of the extremist NPD.

Gudrun Burwitz was the only biological and legitimate child of Himmler and his wife Margarete Siegroth, nee Boden, though her parents later adopted a son named Gerhard von der Ahe.

Gudrun Burwitz accompanied her father on some official duties, including a visit to Dachau concentration camp, where more than 30,000 prisoners died.

Gudrun Burwitz never renounced the Nazi ideology and repeatedly sought to justify the actions of her father.

Gudrun Burwitz blamed Allied propaganda for besmirching Himmler's "good name".

People who knew her say that Gudrun Burwitz created a "golden image" of her father, like the father she wished she had.

Gudrun Burwitz was affiliated with Stille Hilfe, an organization formed to aid former SS members, which assisted Klaus Barbie 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.

For decades Gudrun Burwitz was a prominent public figure in Stille Hilfe fur Kriegsgefangene und Internierte, who provided legal and financial support to former SS members from its founding in 1951.

Gudrun Burwitz has been described by theologian Katharina von Kellenbach as "a prominent spokesperson for the neo-Nazi movement and an important link between old perpetrator networks and young sympathisers".

Peter Finkelgrun, a German-Jewish investigative journalist, discovered that Gudrun Burwitz provided financial support for SS-Scharfuhrer Anton Malloth, a former Nazi prison guard and a fugitive war criminal.

Gudrun Burwitz died on 24 May 2018 at her home near Munich at the age of 88.