Traudl Junge

It does not take nearly as much courage as one might think to admit to our mistakes and learn from them. Human beings are in this world to learn and to change themselves in learning.

Traudl Junge (March 16, 1920 – February 10, 2002) was Adolf Hitler's private secretary from 1942 to 1945.

Quotes

• Of course, the terrible things I heard from the Nuremberg Trials, about the six million Jews and the people from other races who were killed, were facts that shocked me deeply. But I wasn't able to see the connection with my own past. I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things. I wasn't aware of the extent. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out.
  • On her emotions on learning she was the same age as a famous martyr of the White Rose anti-Nazi activist group, in Im toten Winkel - Hitlers Sekretärin (2002) [Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary]

• Now that I've let go of my story, I can let go of my life.
  • As quoted in her obituary in The Guardian (14 February 2002).

• We should listen to the voice of conscience. It does not take nearly as much courage as one might think to admit to our mistakes and learn from them. Human beings are in this world to learn and to change themselves in learning.
  • Until the Final Hour : Hitler's Last Secretary (2004) edited by Melissa Müller, Foreword, p. 3.

• I admit, I was fascinated by Adolf Hitler. He was a pleasant boss and a fatherly friend. I deliberately ignored all the warning voices inside me and enjoyed the time by his side almost until the bitter end. It wasn't what he said, but the way he said things and how he did things.
  • Quoted in In Hitler's Bunker: A Boy Soldier's Eyewitness Account of the Fuhrer's Last Days (2005) by Armin D. Lehmann and Tim Carroll, p. 91, and in The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America (2009) by Jim Marrs, p. 342.

• They say something about being safe in the bunker, and how it's almost fun to hear the explosions when they know the bangs can't hurt them. Suddenly there is the sound of a shot, so loud, so close that we all fall silent. It echoes on through all the rooms. "That was a direct hit," cried Helmut [Goebbels] with no idea how right he is. The Fuhrer is dead now.
  • Five Days That Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End (2011) by Nicholas Best, p. 185.

Quotes about Junge

• Her story reflects the blind loyalty of far too many Germans whose allegiance to Hitler and the Nazi party enabled the implementation of the final solution.
  • Efraim Zuroff, as quoted in Junge's obituary in The Guardian (14 February 2002).

External links

• Traudl Junge at Find-A-Grave
• Profile at IMDb
• "The Line", an illustrated essay, a comparison and contrasting of Traudl Junge and Sophie Scholl