Gudrun Burwitz, loyal daughter of Holocaust mastermind Heinrich Himmler, dead at 88

Gudrun Burwitz, the true-believing daughter of Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany’s highest-ranking official after Adolf Hitler, died May 24 in or near Munich. She was 88.

Her death was first reported by the German newspaper Bild, which also confirmed that Burwitz had worked for two years in West Germany’s foreign intelligence agency.

The agency’s chief historian, Bodo Hechelhammer, told the newspaper that Burwitz worked as a secretary under an assumed name in the early 1960s. The agency does not comment on current or past employees until they have died.

Burwitz, who was sometimes called a “Nazi princess” by supporters and detractors alike, remained unrepentant and loyal to her father to the end.

Although she had visited a concentration camp, she denied the existence of the Holocaust and, in later years, helped provide money and comfort to former Nazis convicted or suspected of war crimes.

At the time of her birth in 1929, her father was consolidating power as leader of the elite Nazi paramilitary corps known as the SS.