SS chief Himmler's daughter worked for German spy agency

In bid for transparency about Nazi links in its past, BND reveals Gudrun Burwitz-Himmler was employed by it from 1961 to 1963, when the service had many ex-Nazis on its payroll

BERLIN — Germany’s foreign intelligence agency has confirmed that the daughter of top Nazi Heinrich Himmler, who led the SS, worked for it as a secretary in the early 1960s.

The BND told the Bild newspaper Friday that Gudrun Burwitz-Himmler, who herself was a notorious postwar supporter of the extreme right, worked as a secretary from 1961 to 1963.

The agency says it ordinarily doesn’t comment on personnel issues but confirmed Burwitz worked there as part of its effort to be transparent about Nazi links in its past.

Burwitz-Himmler worked at the BND at a time when it was led by Reinhard Gehlen, a controversial ex-WWII German general who also worked for US intelligence postwar and employed many former military officers and Nazis as spies.

Burwitz-Himmler died in May at age 88.

Margarete, left, and Gudrun Himmler, right, the wife and daughter of Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler, at the International Military Tribunal trial of war criminals at Nuremberg, November 24, 1945. (Public domain/Wikipedia/USHMM Photograph #83123, courtesy of US National Archives and Records Administration)