The naked corpse of Helga Goebbels (1932 – 1945), oldest child of German Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, lies on a blanket in a field after Russian troops moved her and her siblings’ bodies from the beds in the bunker where their parents poisoned them, Berlin, May 1945. The Russians buried the bodies but disinterred them 15 years later, burned them, and scattered the ashes in a river. (Photo by Express Newspapers/Getty Images)
Helga Goebbels was the eldest daughter of Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany, and his wife Magda. She was born in 1932 and tragically died in 1945 at the age of 12.
In the final days of World War II, as Soviet forces approached Berlin, Magda Goebbels made the devastating decision to poison her six children, including Helga, to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. This horrific event occurred on May 1, 1945, in the Vorbunker, a subterranean bunker near the Reich Chancellery.
After the discovery of the bodies, the Soviet authorities took photographs of the children, including Helga, as part of their documentation of the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. These images have been historically significant but are also deeply disturbing and tragic.
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The naked corpse of Helga Goebbels (1932 – 1945), oldest child of German Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, lies on a blanket in a field after Russian troops moved her and her siblings’ bodies from the beds in the bunker where their parents poisoned them, Berlin, May 1945. The Russians buried the bodies but disinterred them 15 years later, burned them, and scattered the ashes in a river. (Photo by Express Newspapers/Getty Images)
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