98-year-old English great-gran tried to topple Hitler
It was December 1944 when Nazi stormtroopers burst into her office in Berlin to arrest her for 'sabotage'.Waltraud Hollman, 98, has decided to share her story - as one of the last surviving witnesses to the horrors of Nazi Germany - after bottling it up for decades.Waltraud, 98, has decided to share her story - as one of the last surviving witnesses to the horrors of Nazi Germany - before it is too late, after bottling it up for decades.
But on the cold night in December 1944, when Heinrich Himmler's goons came for her, she thought she was done for.“I was held there waiting for something to happen. You were just locked in a cell and I thought, ‘oh my god, how do I get out of here?’”Waltraud says she was one of the underground 'traitors' who were caught sharing leaflets calling for a coup against Hitler.
“Then I met up with one of them again called Ernst. He said to me: ‘Come on, help us. We have got to get rid of them.’“I was told to hand the leaflets to as many people as possible, but it was so dangerous.” By an incredible stroke of fortune, in the chaotic final weeks of Nazi Germany, Waltraud was not executed before the advancing Allies reached the prison where she was staying.There was no room on the busy train back to Berlin, so she and the other prisoners rode on the roof.
One of her father’s customers was caught out after 8pm – breaching a curfew imposed on Jews by the Nazi regime – and went missing. “Then one day she went out; we told her to be careful. She went out with the baby in the pram and we never saw her again.”After the war, Waltraud's amazing life story took another twist, when she met Benjamin Hollman who had been demobilised from the British army a week before, and they fell in love.
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