The Suicides

For the killers the time had come to kill themselves. Nazi officials and bigwig Germans began to practice the act for which their language has an expressive word--Selbstmord, self-murder.

Near the Swiss border, Frau Gertrud Heissmeyer Scholtz-Klink, Reichsfrauen-fuehrerin of all the Nazi women's organizations, was reported to have taken her life.

In Weimar, after viewing the horrors of Buchenwald, the Mayor and his wife died by slashing their wrists.

In Nuernberg, Nazi Boss Karl Holz shot Mayor Willi Liebel and then himself.

In Leipzig Herr Dr. Bundin chose to die by a method in keeping with his professional interests (he was owner of a big bazooka factory). To a caviar-and-cham-pagne banquet he invited 100 of his cronies. When the last course was eaten, the fat cigars smoked and the fine cognac gone, Herr Bundin pressed a button. He had mined the banquet hall. He and his guests were atomized into dust.

In Leipzig G.I.s scouted the deserted Rathaus (City Hall), reported: "There's some civilian stiffs upstairs."

In his solid mayoral chair sat Oberbuergermeister Alfred Freiberg, his sightless eyes fixed on the carved ceiling. In armchairs beside him, waxen-faced in death, sat his matronly wife and bespectacled daughter. In an adjoining room Stadtkaemmerer (City Treasurer) Kurt Lisso, his wife and daughter also sat in poisoned death. The rigid bodies of four Volkstuermers sprawled in other offices. Two, it was plain, had sat across a table, sipping brandy until one had drunk enough to pick up a machine pistol, shoot his comrade and then himself.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.