Germany's federal intelligence service, the BND, acknowledged on Friday that it had employed the daughter of top Nazi Heinrich Himmler in the 1960s, even though she never renounced her father or Nazism and remained active in far-right extremism.
The intelligence service told the Bild newspaper Friday that Gudrun Burwitz, a notorious post-war supporter of the extreme Right, worked as a secretary for the BND from 1961 to 1963.
The agency said it ordinarily did not comment on personnel issues, but, as part of its effort to be transparent about Nazi links in its past, confirmed that Burwitz had worked there.
Burwitz worked at the BND when it was led by Reinhard Gehlen, a former Nazi military intelligence commander who went on to run West Germany's spy agency until 1968. He also worked for U.S. intelligence after the war and employed many former military officers and Nazis as spies.
Burwitz died in Munich last month at age 88.
She was reported to be a prominent member of Stille Hilfe ("Silent Help"), a secretive group known to provide legal and financial support to former SS members. She was also known to attend other neo-Nazi events and rallies before her death.
The revelation that she had worked for the BND spy agency could add to public introspection over the tolerance of some Nazis after World War II.
Himmler, who, as commander of the SS was one of the most powerful Nazis during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the systematic extermination of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, killed himself in British custody in 1945.
"The BND confirms that Ms. Burwitz was a member of the BND for a few years, until 1963, under an assumed name," said Bodo Hechelhammer, the head of the BND's history department.
"The timing of her departure coincided with the onset of a change in the understanding and the handling of employees who were involved with the Nazis."
Germany's intelligence services have come under criticism in recent years for failing to root out right-wing extremists in the post-war era. Critical historians say former Nazis and far-right sympathizers working inside the security agencies of what was then West Germany may have protected others.
Hechelhammer said that because Burwitz was no longer alive, the BND was able to make an exception to its policy of not commenting on active or former employees. The disclosure was part of an ongoing process of critically reassessing the agency's own history.
The struggle to bring people with Nazi-tainted pasts to justice has been a perennial theme of Germany's post-war history, as has been the suggestion that supporters of the far Right retained positions of influence and power in security agencies.
The issue came to the fore in recent years in a trial of members of the far-right group the National Socialist Underground, which killed eight Turks, a Greek and a German policewoman between 2000 and 2007.
The trial, which began in 2013 and is considered one of the most significant in post-war Germany, uncovered lingering racist attitudes within the country's domestic spy agency.
