Last Hitler Bodyguard Dies at 96
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JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images(BERLIN) — The last of Adolf Hitler’s former bodyguards died in Germany on Thursday. Rochus Misch was 96 and passed away following a short illness.
Misch witnessed Hitler’s final hours, operating telephones in the dictator’s bunker when Hitler killed himself.
He served as a telephone operator, courier and bodyguard for five years, according to the BBC.
After living with his grandparents in Poland, Misch worked as a painter and joined the SS when he was 20 years old.
He travelled with Hitler through the 1940s and accompanied him to the Berlin bunker when the Nazis were close to being defeated.
On April 30, 1945, Misch was on the phone when gunshots erupted.
“I saw Hitler slumped with his head on the table. [Hitler’s wife] Eva Bruan was lying on the sofa, with her head towards him,” Misch tpld the BBC.
“Her knees were drawn tightly up to her chest. She was wearing a dark blue dress with white frills. I will never forget that.”
Days later, Misch fled the bunker and was captured by Soviet forces. He spent nine years in a prisoner of war camp.
He said he knew about concentration camps but wasn’t aware of the scale of the crimes at the time, explaining, “it wasn’t part of our conversations.”
Misch ran a home decorating business until he retired in the mid-1980s. His memoir, The Last Witness, became a bestseller in Germany.
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