Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941

by William L. Shirer

a long talk with Dodd this morning about the case. He told me he had appealed to Hitler himself to commute the sentence and read me the text of his moving letter. The Führer’s reply was a flat negative. When Dodd tried to get a personal interview with Hitler to plead the case in person, he was rebuffed. This afternoon I received from Hirsch’s lawyer in Prague a copy of the last letter the young man wrote. He wrote it in his death cell and it was addressed to his sister, for whom he obviously had a deep attachment. I have never read in all my life braver words. He had just been informed that his final appeal had been rejected and that there was no more hope. “I am to die, then,” he says. “Please do not be afraid. I do not feel afraid. I feel released, after the agony of not quite knowing.” He sketches his life and finds meaning in it despite all the mistakes and its brief duration—“less than twenty-one years.” I confess to tears before I had finished reading. He was a braver and more decent man than his killers.