[vienna]

Some small, clinging bit of my remaining memory just rustled awake and reminded me of something I had seen in the movie Downfall, about the fall of Nazi Germany, as told through the eyes of Hitler's personal secretary, Traudl Junge, who was present in The Bunker when Hitler took the easy way out; I looked her up in Wikipedia and they have the quote in their article:

Junge died from cancer in Munich on 10 February 2002 at the age of 81,[15] reportedly having said shortly before her death, "Now that I've let go of my story, I can let go of my life." She is buried at Nordfriedhof München.

Further attention came two years later, when some of Junge's experiences with Hitler were portrayed in the Academy Award-nominated film Downfall. Excerpts from her interviews are seen at the beginning and at the end of the film. At the end of the film, she states:

Of course, the horrors, of which I heard in connection of the Nuremberg trials; the fate of the 6 million Jews, their killing and those of many others who represented different races and creeds, shocked me greatly, but, at that time, I could not see any connection between these things and my own past. I was only happy that I had not personally been guilty of these things and that I had not been aware of the scale of these things. However, one day, I walked past a plaque on the Franz-Joseph Straße (in Munich), on the wall in memory of Sophie Scholl. I could see that she had been born the same year as I, and that she had been executed the same year I entered into Hitler's service. And, at that moment, I really realised that it was no excuse that I had been so young. I could perhaps have tried to find out about things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traudl_Junge




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