Brunhilde Pomsel (11 January 1911 – 27 January 2017) was a personal secretary to

Joseph Goebbels Paul Joseph Goebbels (; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German Nazi politician who was the ''Gauleiter'' (district leader) of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 19 ...

, the Reich Minister of Propaganda of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. She started work at the ministry's offices in the

Ordenspalais The Ordenspalais ("Palace of the Order f Saint John) was a building on the northern corner of Wilhelmplatz with Wilhelmstraße in Berlin (now in Berlin-Mitte). Erection of the building at Wilhelmplatz No. 7/8 began in 1737 as the residence of ...

opposite the

Reich Chancellery The Reich Chancellery (german: Reichskanzlei) was the traditional name of the office of the Chancellor of Germany (then called ''Reichskanzler'') in the period of the German Reich from 1878 to 1945. The Chancellery's seat, selected and prepared s ...

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

in 1942. In 2014, aged 103, she gave a series of interviews for a

film documentary A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

entitled ''A German Life''. She told the interviewer, "It is absolutely not about clearing my conscience" and that " one believes me now, but I knew nothing". The film was released in 2016 when she was 105 years old.

Biography

Pomsel was born in Berlin in 1911. Her first two employers were Jews: first, a Jewish-owned clothing store where she worked as an assistant, then Dr. Hugo Goldberg, a lawyer and insurance agent.

"I obviously didn't tell him that on January 30, 1933, I cheered Hitler at the Brandenburg Gate ... You can’t do something like that to a poor Jew."

Later in 1933, she voted for Hitler and joined the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

. She got a job in the news department of the government radio station. On the recommendation of a friend, she was transferred to the

Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda The Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (; RMVP), also known simply as the Ministry of Propaganda (), controlled the content of the press, literature, visual arts, film, theater, music and radio in Nazi Germany. The ministry ...

in 1942, where she worked under

as a stenographer until the end of the war. According to Kate Connolly in the ''

Guardian Guardian usually refers to: * Legal guardian, a person with the authority and duty to care for the interests of another * ''The Guardian'', a British daily newspaper (The) Guardian(s) may also refer to: Places * Guardian, West Virginia, Unite ...

'', she was more than just a secretary/stenographer; her tasks included "massaging downwards statistics about fallen soldiers, as well as exaggerating the number of rapes of German women by the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...

". At the end of the war in 1945, Pomsel was imprisoned by the Soviet

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...

until 1950 in three different concentration camps,

Buchenwald Buchenwald (; literally 'beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or su ...

Hohenschönhausen Hohenschönhausen () was a borough of Berlin, that existed from 1985 until Berlin's 2001 administrative reform. It comprised the localities of Alt-Hohenschönhausen (the core of the borough), Neu-Hohenschönhausen, Malchow, Wartenberg and Falken ...

and

Sachsenhausen Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners ...

. She was released from the NKVD camp in 1950, and escaped from the Soviet-occupied zone to

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

, where she worked as a secretary with the state broadcaster Südwestfunk in

Baden-Baden Baden-Baden () is a spa town in the states of Germany, state of Baden-Württemberg, south-western Germany, at the north-western border of the Black Forest mountain range on the small river Oos (river), Oos, ten kilometres (six miles) east of the ...

and then at ARD in Munich until her retirement in 1971. On her 100th birthday in 2011, she publicly spoke out against Goebbels. A documentary called ''A German Life'', drawn from a 30-hour interview with Pomsel, was shown at Filmfest München in 2016. An award-winning theatre play (

monologue In theatre, a monologue (from el, μονόλογος, from μόνος ''mónos'', "alone, solitary" and λόγος ''lógos'', "speech") is a speech presented by a single character, most often to express their thoughts aloud, though sometimes a ...

with Dame

Maggie Smith Dame Margaret Natalie Smith (born 28 December 1934) is an English actress. With an extensive career on screen and stage beginning in the mid-1950s, Smith has appeared in more than sixty films and seventy plays. She is one of the few performer ...

) of the same name was performed at the

Bridge Theatre The Bridge Theatre is a commercial theatre near Tower Bridge in London that opened in October 2017. It was developed by Nick Starr and Nicholas Hytner as the home of the London Theatre Company, which they founded following their tenancy as execut ...

in London in 2019. Shortly before her death she claimed she had been in love with a man named Gottfried Kirchbach, who had a Jewish mother. They planned to leave Germany together. In 1936, Kirchbach fled to Amsterdam. She visited him regularly until he told her she was endangering her life by doing so. She aborted their child after a doctor advised her the pregnancy might kill her because she had a serious lung complaint. Towards the end of her life, Pomsel lived in Munich-Schwabing. She died there on 27 January 2017 at the age of 106.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pomsel, Brunhilde 1911 births 2017 deaths German broadcasters German centenarians Nazi Party members People from Berlin Secretaries Stenographers Women centenarians

Biography

See also

References