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Today is the anniversary of the death of one of history's worst monsters, Adolf Hitler (April 30,1945). This week is also the Days of Rememberance, to memorialize the Holocaust.
I've often been struck, which viewing interviews of Hitler's minions, how many of them seem to have lived well to ripe old age, and how rarely they expressed any person responsibility remorse.
"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 that 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 when 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."
- Gertraud (Traudl) Junge, Hitler's secretary
At least Frau Junge seems to have had some sense of remorse at the end.
On the other hand:
'He was a charming man, someone who was only ever nice to me, a great boss to work for. You can say what you like, but he was a good man to us.'
- Rosa Mitterer, maid at the Berghof, reported in "Daily Mail", Dec 4,2008
It reminds me of Franz Liebkind in "The Producers"
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