Brunhilde Pomsel was born in Berlin on the 11th January 1911. After training to become a typist, she began a job in the news department of the state radio station in Berlin in 1933. Nine years later she joined the Propaganda ministry as Joseph Goebbels' secretary. Pomsel lived in Munich until her death in January 2017. She was 106 years old. Thore D. Hansen is a political journalist and communications consultant based in Germany and Austria.
The last surviving eyewitness to the Nazi power apparatus ... Her memories are remarkable given her age. Yet this book is also notable for what is not recalled ... These gaps result not from memory's decay, but from willful denial ... An effective warning -- Gerard DeGroot * The Times * A valuable and chilling addition to the histories of Nazi Germany ... Whatever Pomsel's degree of guilt, her choice of words and actions raise important questions about coercion and complicity ... Sometimes, as with Pomsel's testimony, it is the absences from the record or the contradictions within it that are the most telling. Reading this book we must hope that we can learn from history in a way that she could not -- Claire Mulley * Daily Telegraph * Not only one of the most important contributions to analyses of the Holocaust, but in light of today's political situation, it is a long overdue, timeless warning to today's generation and those yet to come -- Daniel Chanoch, Holocaust Survivor It shows, both by what it says and by what it omits, what it was like to be an ordinary young German woman in Berlin during the War * Catholic Herald *