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Hitler's secretary tried to find a new life in Australia

A woman who worked loyally for Adolf Hitler and was close to his lover Eva Braun came to live in Australia during the 1970s and 1980s to escape depression and begin a new life, according to a report yesterday. Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge, whose life was characterized as the main role in the recent German film Downfall, quietly lived in Australia for several years in the 1970s and 80s, the Weekend Australian said.

Junge, who was with Hitler in his bunker during the final days of the Third Reich, had been refused permanent residency in Australia for being a Nazi sympathizer.

But family and friends said Junge lived with her younger sister in Sydney for two years in 1975-76 and spent a further 18 months there in the early 1980s. She also visited Melbourne in 1992 and 1995.

They could not remember whether she came to Australia as a tourist or under a family reunion program but said she had been frustrated by her inability to emigrate there.

Junge, who was 22 when Hitler chose her to work as one of his secretaries, was later exonerated by Germany's denazification commission as a "youthful fellow traveller," the paper said.

But she was troubled by her association with Hitler and his crimes and later told a German interviewer she dreamed of living in Australia after "long periods of depression, hospitalization, unsuccessful psychotherapy, lack of enthusiasm for her career."

Junge died in 2002.
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