Hitler's last bodyguard gives up on fan mail

Rochus Misch, who worked as a courier, bodyguard and telephone operator for former German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, speaks during an interview with Reuters in Berlin August 8, 2007.

BERLIN (Reuters Life!) - More than 65 years after World War Two, Adolf Hitler's last surviving bodyguard says that he can no longer respond to the continuous deluge of fan mail he receives from around the world because of his advanced age.

Rochus Misch is 93 and uses a walking frame to move around his apartment. He told the Berliner Kurier tabloid that, with most of the letters he receives asking for autographs, it was "no longer possible" to reply because of his age.

"They (letters) come from Korea, from Knoxville, Tennessee, from Finland and Iceland -- and not one has a bad word to say," said Misch, who is believed to be the last man alive to have seen Hitler and other top-ranking Nazis in the flesh.

In the past Misch used to send fans autographed copies of wartime photos of himself in a neatly pressed SS uniform. Now the incoming fan mail, including letters and packages, piles up in his flat in south Berlin's leafy Rudow neighbourhood.

Misch also served as Hitler's telephone operator and courier. His memoirs, "The Last Witness", were published in 2008 in Germany and are in the works to become a feature film.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Paul Casciato