Widow of Nazi officer who tried to kill Adolf Hitler dies at 92

[KG_AGCent]

April 3, 2006 - 10:23
http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/ne...ntent=w040331A

Widow of Nazi officer who tried to kill Adolf Hitler dies at 92

BERLIN (AP) - Nina von Stauffenberg, widow of the aristocratic Nazi army officer who tried to kill Adolf Hitler with a briefcase bomb, has died, an official said Monday. She was 92.

Peter Kirchner, mayor of Kirchlauter in the southern state of Bavaria where von Stauffenberg lived, said the widow of Col. Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg died Sunday morning, but gave no further details.

Col. von Stauffenberg was one of the best known internal German resistance fighters during the Second World War, leading the failed attempt to kill Hitler with a briefcase bomb placed under a conference table on July 20, 1944.

Four people died in the bombing, but Hitler was only superficially wounded after an aide moved the briefcase before it exploded.

Von Stauffenberg, along with other members of the resistance, were shot and their families arrested by the Gestapo.

Nina von Stauffenberg, who was pregnant with their fifth child at the time, was held in a camp in Frankfurt an der Oder, while the four other children were kept in an orphanage in the state of Thuringia under false names. Only after the war were the children reunited with their mother and new sibling.

No immediate information on survivors was available.

A burial is to be held Saturday in Kirchlauter, Kirchner said.