SS-Oberscharführer
Rochus Misch was born in Alt Schalkowitz in Oberschlesien on July 29 1917, the now Polish Stare Siołkowice. The young painter Misch joined the
SS-Verfügungstruppe in 1937. Along with 11 others, he was selected for the Leibstandarte SS. After being severely wounded by shots in lung and arms during the
Polish campaign in 1939, Misch was transferred to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's escort command, the Führerbegleitkommando originally known as the
SS-Begleitkommando des Führers. The FBK provided close, personal security for Hitler. Misch served as a bodyguard, courier and telephone operator for Hitler from 1940 to 1945. He fled the Führerbunker in Berlin on May 2 1945 only hours before the Soviets seized it. He was captured shortly thereafter by the communists. Misch was then tortured in an attempt to extract information regarding Hitler's exact fate. He had been with him every step of the way. Misch spent nine years in Soviet labor camps. He returned to his wife and daughter in Berlin after Christmas 1953. Being the last living witness of Hitler's last days, Misch published his remarkable biography
Der letzte Zeuge (The last witness) in 2008. His memoirs offer an intimate view of life in close attendance to Hitler. As of 2013, aged 95, he is the last living survivor of the occupants of the Führerbunker in the final days of the war in Europe and the last known person alive to have known Hitler personally. Misch, who never held party membership, regularly receives visitors from the public who wish to speak to or interview him. Top image: Rochus Misch as SS-Unterscharführer in the dining car of Hitler's train Amerika, renamed
Brandenburg in 1943. Credit: Benoit Vienne. Priv.coll. Bottom image: Hitler in front of the Altes Museum after his speech to the Legion Condor in the Lustgarten on June 6 1939. The Legion had just returned to Berlin after bolstering fascist dictator Gen. Francisco Franco's troops in Spain. The driver is Hitler's primary chauffeur SS-Stubaf.
Erich Kempka, one of the original members of the eight-man squad known as the SS-BKdF, which later became known as the FBK. Photo by Hitler's personal photographer Hugo Jäger. LIFE photo archive. FU.
Rochus Misch, who was the last remaining witness to the Nazi leader's final hours in his Berlin bunker, has died Thursday, Sept. 5, 2013. He was 96. Misch said he decided at 20 to join the SS — an organization he saw as a counterweight to the threat from the left. Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler was anti-communist, against Stalin — to protect Europe, Misch said, noting that thousands of other Western Europeans served in the Waffen-SS. I signed up in the war against Bolshevism, not for Adolf Hitler.
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