On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler shot himself dead in a Berlin bunker as enemy troops closed in.

On the 75th anniversary of his suicide, Brad Harper speaks to a survivor of the Nazi regime who recalls there being little surprise at the Fuhrer's demise...

It was December 1944 when Nazi stormtroopers burst into Waltraud Hollman's office in Berlin to arrest her for "sabotage".

To the people of Berlin, it had become clear their country would lose the Second World War.

But Waltraud - now 98 and one of the last survivors to witness the horrors of Nazi Germany - was one of the underground "traitors" caught sharing leaflets calling for a coup against Adolf Hitler.

While most of those found to be undermining the regime were executed, Waltraud, who says her family had also sheltered Jews, managed to escape the firing squad.

Today (April 30) marks 75 years since the evil dictator took his own life alongside his wife Eva Braun - who he had married 40 hours earlier - as the Soviets closed in on his Berlin bunker.

"To be honest, we were expecting the news [of Hitler's suicide] for a long time," Waltraud recalls.

"It wasn’t a surprise - it was a pity he didn’t do it earlier."

Waltraud, who now lives in Staple, performed a gymnastics routine in front of Hitler at the 1936 Summer Olympics opening ceremony.

But despite her rejoice at the news of his death, Germany was left numb by the horrors of the war.

"I can’t think of any celebrations," she adds. "It took a long time until I could go to Berlin - I didn’t get back until two or three months after the war had finished.

"I think at the time, we had so many bad times and it was so terrible - you didn’t have any feelings left. Coming back to Berlin, everything had been bombed.

"Nothing really could get you excited very much and I don’t think there was all that much time for celebrating."

Waltraud had been spurred into action against the evil Third Reich after witnessing the horrors of Kristalnacht, and then seeing her parents shelter a young Jewish mother and her child.

One of her father’s customers was caught out after 8pm - breaching a curfew imposed on Jews by the brutal Nazi regime - and went missing.

The customer’s wife was afraid to go to her house with their baby, so Waltraud’s family hid them in their home.

'We handed out leaflets that said the public should start a revolution...'

“The trouble was that every time there was an air raid, we had to go in the cellar and we were afraid to take her," Waltraud said.

“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.”

Today, Waltraud still wonders what happened to them both.

Asked by a fellow anti-Nazi to distribute illegal leaflets calling on Berliners to rebel against their government and stop the war, Waltraud agreed.

“I got involved in the group with friends, but I had to move away from them because I was evacuated from Berlin," she previously said.

“Then I met up with one of them again, Ernst. He said to me ‘Come on, help us. We have got to get rid of them’.

“We handed out leaflets which said the public should start a revolution to end the war.

“I was told to hand the leaflets to as many people as possible, but it was so dangerous.”

But on a cold night in December 1944, when the ever-vigilant Gestapo came for her, she thought she was done for.

"Someone split on me," she said. "I was picked up by the police and put into prison.

"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?’”

After being arrested she was thrown in a crowded prison cell in Stendal with six other suspects.

There were just two beds; the other prisoners had to sleep on mattresses on the floor.

To add to the squalid misery of the scene, they had to use a bucket as a toilet, which was emptied once a day.

“You had dinner, usually soup, which had maggots floating on it already," Waltraud said. "But we were all hungry so we ate it.”

'You had dinner - usually soup, that had maggots floating on it already...'

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.

The Ninth United States Army liberated the prison 75 years ago this month, in April 1945, and she was released.

There was no room on the busy train back to Berlin, so she and the other prisoners rode on the roof.

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.

After what Waltraud called "a little bit of fiddling" on the British side, she got a passport which allowed her to visit England for three weeks.

She arrived on July 1, 1948, and went to the register office with Benjamin, but had to wait a fortnight for a marriage licence, and a further week to get married.

On July 21, 1948, on the day she was supposed to travel to Germany as her passport was due to expire, Benjamin and Waltraud married.

The couple lived in Kent for the rest of their married life - with Waltraud still there to this day.

Benjamin passed away on April 1, 2007, aged 89.

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