"My mother was a nurse on Dr. Weismoeler's special medical staff. That's why I was there. With the Goebbels family there were seven of us in the Bunker, children I mean, and we didn't have much to do with the grown-ups. But I liked Uncle Hermann and he used to give me things, medals and things."

Hermann Fegelein, of the SS.

"I saw them bring him in. He had left the Bunker and they brought him back. I heard Hitler shouting at him, then they took him into the Chancellery garden and shot him and I didn't even cry. It was too much for crying. I kept asking my mother why they'd killed poor Uncle Hermann, and she said he'd been wicked. It was the first time I understood what death was: it meant that people went away and you never saw them again. Then the nightmare started and everything began going to pieces inside me. The grown-ups were acting strangely and I used to hide in cupboards and listen in the passages because I was desperate to know what was happening to everyone. At one time I heard a shot and later Frau Junge told me that the Fuhrer was dead; of course I didn't believe her: he was a god to me, to all of us; but there was the smell of burning, in the garden, and one of the Escort found me and sent me back where I belonged. But I didn't belong anywhere now. Even my mother was strange to me. Even my mother."

The first self-pity had passed and she spoke without emotion, sitting hunched with her arms across her knees, her body as black and angular as the chair behind. Her gold hair made the only softness in the room.

"The ground began shaking and people said there were Russian soldiers coming. The whole Bunker shook and there was nowhere to run. I stayed with the Goebbels children because the grown-ups frightened me now, but then my mother took me away from them and I never saw them again. I knew they were dead. I didn't know for a long time afterwards that it was my mother who had given them the capsules. Of course it was on the orders of Frau Goebbels. There were six of them. Six children."