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 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.
"The time of her departure coincided with the implemented change in recognition and dealing with employees harassed by the Nazis," historian Bodo Hechelhammer said.
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 U.S. intelligence postwar and employed many former military officers and Nazis as spies.
According to Bild, Burwitz-Himmler remained highly active in right-wing extremist circles into old age and took part in Nazi marches. She never distanced herself from the crimes of her father, who oversaw a reign of terror and surveillance as Reichsfuehrer of the Schutzstaffel and Adolf Hitler's right-hand man.
Heinrich Himmler, who committed suicide by cyanide poisoning after his capture by British troops in 1945, was seen as one of the main organizers of the Holocaust, in which 6 million European Jews were murdered.
His daughter died in May at age 88.
