Bunker Children Bunker Children

TERAPROOF:User:GREGMCCANNDate:22/04/2010Time:14:29:39Edition:24/04/2010WeekendWX2404Page:14 Zone:WX feature feature 14 WX - V2 WX - V2 15 A new book gives voice to the six forgotten children murdered by their mother as the Third Reich fell, writes Suzanne Harrington HAPPY FAMILY: German Nazi politician and minister of propaganda Paul Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945) with his wife Magda and their children, Helga, Hildegard, Helmut, Hedwig, Holdine and Heidrun, 1942. Also present is Harald Quandt (in uniform), Magda Goebbels’ son by her first marriage. Picture:Keystone / Hulton Archive / Getty Images ITLER always insisted Magda Goebbels, says Craigie, was a fas- was so isolated — too old to be one of the that Helga Goebbels, the cinating character. “She was brought up by little children and too young for the adults. eldest child of his propa- a Jewish step-father whose name she took, She knew there was something seriously ganda minister, was his and in her teens she had a Zionist wrong.” H favourite little girl. Yo u boyfriend,” she says of Mrs Goebbels prior Until now, Helga Goebbels and the other can see from the picture that his affection to her ideological shift to Nazism. “Her children have been largely ignored by his- was not so visibly reciprocated — Helga, natural father introduced her to Buddhism, tory. When Rochus Misch, the last living then aged around three, holds herself tight- and a belief in reincarnation may have in- survivor of the bunker, called for a memo- ly away from the Fuhrer, her limbs closed, fluenced her decision to kill her children. rial at the site of the bunker to commemo- her entire body language repulsing him. She believed that remaining alive in rate the Goebbels children, at the 2005 un- Nine years later on May 1, 1945, she post-war Berlin would have been worse veiling of the Holocaust Memorial in would die in Hitler’s bunker, killed by her than death. Berlin, he was widely criticised. own mother. Her five younger siblings “Magda had a horrible childhood herself. “Misch was the telephone operator in the were also killed, all wearing white night Her real father ignored her until she was bunker, and he formed a connection with clothes, the little girls with white ribbons five, and then took her off and sent her to the children,” says Craigie. “It was he who in their hair. a convent in Brussels when she was still a suggested a memorial plaque for the chil- “That picture of Helga with Hitler is very little girl who didn’t speak any French. dren on the site of the bunker, but it was what really drew me in,” says writer Emma She was extremely emotionally neglected, rejected because he never renounced Craigie. “I liked the little girl who had got which may explain why she didn’t appear Nazism. But those children were not Nazis. him sussed. Yo u can see her instinctive re- to be very connected to her own children.” then got a Nazi dentist, Helmut Kunz, to the six children were dead in their bunk They were victims.” vulsion.” Craigie also imagined the child’s On the last day of their lives, Uncle Adi inject the children with morphine, but beds — all had died peacefully, except Six little blonde children all sharing the later loneliness and isolation, surrounded by and Auntie Eva were already dead in an ad- he refused to help her actually kill them. Helga, whose face showed signs of bruis- same initials, who regularly gave singing adults who were not telling her the truth joining sitting room, shot in the head and Some reports say that Hitler’s own doc- ing. She had woken up as the marzi- recitals for their relatives, the doomed about what was about to happen to them at poisoned by cyanide, although the children tor, Ludwig Stumpfegger, helped admin- pan-smelling poison had been pushed in- Goebbels children were like the Von Trapp the close of World War II. didn’t know this. Their mother told them ister the fatal cyanide pills into the sleep- to her mouth, and struggled. family — gone horribly, horribly wrong. Emma Craigie has just published Choco- that they were leaving the bunker but prior ing children’s mouths. When the Rus- “Their end was unbearably poignant, ■ Chocolate Cake With Hitler by Emma late Cake With Hitler, the untold story of to departure, needed a ‘vaccination’. She sians entered the bunker on May 3, 1945, especially for Helga,” says Craigie. “She Craigie is published by Short Books. Helga Goebbels, who was 12 when she died, alongside her sisters, Hedwig, six, Heidrun, four, Hildegard, 11, and Holdine, eight, and brother Helmut, who died aged nine. Using source material from a member of the Goebbles’ domestic staff, Craigie traced the 10 days spent by the children and their parents — along with Hitler and Eva Braun — in the Berlin bunker before Bunker the suicides of the adults and the murder of Bunker the children, fictionalising the final days from the perspective of Helga. Taking their six children to the bunker on April 22, 1945, as the Russians were closing in, Joseph and Magda Goebbels refused to try and escape, or to help the children flee Berlin. Instead they chose to die children alongside Hitler, whom the children called Uncle Adi, or Uncle Leader. An untranslat- ed memoir from Kathe Hubner, a gov- DOOMED TO DIE: Adolf Hitler, with his ‘favourite little girl’, the eldest Goebbels daughter, Helga. �� erness who taught the Goebbels children, was an important source of information for Craigie; she was further inspired to write of Hitler’s secretaries, Traudl Junge, who er when assured by Magda that Hitler It was Magda, however, who so fervently about the children’s fate after watching the survived the war. Although Junge re- would defeat the Allies. Instead she saw believed in Nazi ideology that she killed �� award-winning 2004 German film Down- members the younger children being un- through her mother’s fear, despite the her children rather than allow them to live fall, which concentrated on what happened aware of what was really happening, she daily chocolate cake and the jugs of hot on after the regime’s collapse. Writing to �� to the adults. “Nobody had told the chil- sensed that the 12-year-old was not en- chocolate they shared with the Fuhrer. Harald Quandt, her eldest son from a pre- dren’s story before,” she says. tirely fooled by the adults’ all-is-well cha- Also, her father did little to protect the vious relationship, on April 28, 1945, she “During the war the children had spent rade. “Helga sometimes had a sad know- children from overhearing the horror sto- praises the children — “they make do in time in the mountains and with their ing expression in her big, brown eyes,” ries of the approaching Russians, which these very primitive conditions without any grandmother, but then they were brought Craigie reports Junge as recalling. undermined Magda’s attempts to protect help... never a word of complaint or a �� back to Berlin at the end,” she continues. “Sometimes I think with horror that in their peace of mind. Goebbels even tried tear... from time to time they can [even] “Lots of Nazis disappeared around this her heart the child saw through the pre- to have his two eldest daughters appear in get a smile from the Fuhrer.” �� time, which disgusted Goebbels as disloyal. tence of the grown-ups.” a propaganda film in late 1944, which And then she adds chillingly, “God grant And many other Nazi leaders got their The governess’s account verifies this. In would have shown the children giving that I retain the strength to do the last and children out, but at some point the Die Kinder des Reichministers, Kathe flowers to wounded soldiers in a field most difficult thing. We have only one aim Goebbels decided their children would go Hubner told of how the eldest child, un- hospital; the idea was abandoned because in life now — to remain loyal to the �� down with the ship. It would most likely like the others, did not believe her moth- the children could not hide their horror. Fuhrer unto death.” �� have been Magda’s decision. Her husband was far more removed from them.” In his private diary, their father mentions his children only in passing, as though they When the Russians entered the bunker on May 3, 1945, were pets: “They are all so sweet. How at- tached one can become to such tiny, in- “the six children were dead in their bunk beds — all had died �� significant beings.” �� Once in the bunker, their mother could peacefully, except Helga, whose face showed signs of �� not bear to spend time with the children as she most likely knew that they were all go- bruising. She had woken up as the marzipan-smelling poison �� ing to die — one way or another. So Mag- �� da avoided them, leaving the trusting and had been pushed into her mouth, and struggled uncomplaining children to the care of one ” WeekendWSATURDAY, APRIL 24, 2010 eekend SATURDAY, APRIL 24, 2010.

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