‘Hitler’s suicide was no surprise – it’s a pity it wasn’t earlier’

It was December 1944 when Nazi stormtroopers burst into Waltraud Hollman’s office in Berlin to arrest her for “sabotage”. To the people of Berlin, it had become clear their country would lose the Second World War.

But Waltraud – now 98 and one of the last survivors to witness the horrors of Nazi Germany – was one of the underground “traitors” caught sharing leaflets calling for a coup against Adolf Hitler. While most of those found to be undermining the regime were executed, Waltraud, who says her family had also sheltered Jews, managed to escape the firing squad. Today (April 30) marks 75 years since the evil dictator took his own life alongside his wife Eva Braun – who he had married 40 hours earlier as the Soviets closed in on his Berlin bunker.

“To be honest, we were expecting the news [of Hitler’s suicide] for a long time,” Waltraud recalls.

“It wasn’t a surprise – it was a pity he didn’t do it earlier.” Waltraud, who now lives in Staple, performed a gymnastics routine in front of Hitler at the 1936 Summer Olympics opening ceremony.

But despite her rejoice at the news of his death, Germany was left numb by the horrors of the war.

“I can’t think of any celebrations,” she adds. “It took a long time until I could go to Berlin – I didn’t get back until two or three months after the war had finished.

“I think at the time, we had so many bad times and it was so terrible – you didn’t have any feelings left. “Coming back to Berlin, everything had been bombed. “Nothing really could get you excited very much and I don’t think there was all that much time for celebrating.” Waltraud had been spurred into action against the evil

Third Reich after witnessing the horrors of Kristalnacht, and then seeing her parents shelter a young Jewish mother and her child.

One of her father’s customers was caught out after 8pm – breaching a curfew imposed on Jews by the brutal Nazi regime – and went missing. The customer’s wife was afraid to go to her house with their baby, so Waltraud’s family hid them in their home.

“The trouble was that every time there was an air raid, we had to go in the cellar and we were afraid to take her,” Waltraud said.

“Then one day she went out; we told her to be careful. She went out with the baby in the pram and we never saw her again.” Today, Waltraud still wonders what happened to them both.

Asked by a fellow antinazi to distribute illegal leaflets calling on Berliners to rebel against their government and stop the war, Waltraud agreed.

“I got involved in the group with friends, but I had to move away from them because I was evacuated from Berlin,” she previously said.

“Then I met up with one of them again, Ernst. He said to me, ‘Come on, help us. We have got to get rid of them’. “We handed out leaflets that said the public should start a revolution to end the war. I was told to hand the leaflets to as many people as possible, but it was so dangerous.”

We handed out leaflets that said the public should start a revolution