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ADOLF HITLER’S PERSONAL bodyguard, who was the last surviving witness of the Nazi dictator’s final days in the bunker towards the end of World War II, has died, his agent said today.
Rochus Misch, who once referred to Hitler in a documentary as “the boss”, died aged 96 in Berlin yesterday after failing to recover from a heart attack, Michael Stehle, who owns the rights to a book written by Misch, said.
“He was a good boss,” he said of Hitler, in the 2005 film entitled The Last Witness by Israeli Yael Katz Ben Shalom.
Misch was among those who joined the Nazi leader in his bunker where Hitler eventually took his own life days before Germany’s surrender.
In a 2005 interview with AFP, Misch described how he had seen the Nazi leader and his wife Eva Braun dead in their bunker deep under the shattered city of Berlin.
“Hitler was sitting at the table, slumped forward, and Eva Braun was lying next to him. I saw that with my own eyes,” Misch told AFP.
I remember that he said goodbye in the corridor and went into the rooms. He said he didn’t want to be disturbed.
Hitler poisoned a willing Braun and shot himself in the head. Historians believe their bodies were then soaked with fuel and burned.
Misch added that it was not a surprise.
The commanders had all wanted to evacuate Hitler, but he said no, he was staying in Berlin.
Two days later, Misch, then aged 27, was one of the last people to flee the bunker, where he had worked as a telephone operator, on May 2 1945 as Soviet troops stormed the chancellery in Berlin.
He was taken prisoner by Soviet forces and held captive in Kazakhstan and Siberia until 1953.
Rochus Misch in Hitler’s bunker in Poland in 1944 (AP Photo)
His 2008 book The Last Witness (Der Letzte Zeuge) made it onto the bestseller list and brought Misch much attention.
An English translation is due to be published next month, Stehle said.
Born in Silesia in today’s Poland, Misch trained as a house painter before joining the SS and, from 1940, was part of Hitler’s personal guard. He returned to working as a painter after his captivity.
He told news site Spiegel online in 2007 that at his first meeting with the dictator, he had thought:
He wasn’t a monster, he wasn’t an Ubermensch, he stood opposite me like a perfectly normal gentleman, and spoke kind words.
In The Last Witness, his daughter Brigitta Jacob-Engelken said that her mother, Misch’s wife, had Jewish origins and that her father still did not know. She later said he refused to know.
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Unnecessary hysterics, we all know everything is done on pen and paper in this country, that’s why we have schoolteachers as ministers, won’t affect us for another 50years probably
@Stevie Doran: how about the new PPS card that’s not mandatory but obligatory even to make a tax query? All of the information will be kept in America because there’s less protection there? Sounds legit!
@Stevie Doran: I thought we had politicians as ministers. I worked in a bar once when I was in college and have never do so since, am I still a barman?
@Stevie Doran: at least if someone gets the details for €40 you’d know what it says! Be more efficient than the HSE anyway! Plus as Stevie said f all is digital here so we’ll be grand
@Deborah Behan: that’s a lie Deborah. The data is not being stored in the US.
@Deborah Behan: “All of the information will be kept in America”
That’s about the tenth time you have written that, and it has been false every time. How many times do you need to be told?
All your Twitter data is stored in America and you don’t seem to have a problem with that.
@Stevie Doran: The Revenue have ROS, The Gards have PULSE, Social Welfare and Healthcare are similarly digitised. A flippant facetious attitude isn’t going to protect us from cyber attacks.
@Patrick Kearns: Such ignorance on how data is stored and accessed. Take Pulse for example the minute records are being looked up had a high rate the connection is terminated and locked. Not just speed but volume. That is after getting through the security measures which you do either.
The amount of monitoring on traffic on such services is huge. Imagine you have a private road and suddenly you see 1000 trucks on it and you can simply block the road, that is what you do. Or you see a car using it way more than anybody else you stop the car and then find out what they are at.
@Gary: Dail bar?
The one in the Dáil? ;-)
@Deborah Behan: Re your last point: that can’t be done under the new European data protection legislation GDPR, unless they storage company agree to abide by European regulations. So this will either be illegal or the storage company have agree to adhere to forthcoming EU rules. I guess it is the latter.
Roll out the usual suspects from State and semi State bodies assuring us that this simply could not happen in Ireland because we are smarter than smart in protecting our ‘systems’.
@John Campbell: nope calling bull, no government takes lightly the threat of cybercrime anywhere. All they or anyone else can do is try to react quickly to any new threat when it occurs.
Even countries with far far greater resources than Ireland cannot mitigate the risk. You’re barking up the wrong tree if you’re blaming governments for cybercrime.
Cybersecurity/Cybercrime is a self fulfilling prophecy. It’s a small community driving wealth on both sides of the equation…..
Why are medical records so valuable?
@Christy McCarthy: They like to know which viruses your infected with, so they can find a backdoor.
Morning all. Good weekend?
Im in bits..thats for free
It is no cyber-criminals or darkweb looking for our personal data. It is multibillion international companies – insurance brokers, banks or shops who pay for that. Hackers are only middlemen. Why not to point real criminals here ??
Start using blockchain tech
40 euros eh? Hmm new dryer, would i get 10 takers. Who do I talk to?
The password is mam and dads house name or 1956
That all 40 euro? tight B#stards on the dark web
American Social security are not exactly difficult to get.
…..
have your say