Sidney Excell

There he met his wife, Lisa, a Jewish Russian-Polish immigrant who had emigrated with her family to escape pogroms.

On 22 May 1945, the British Army were manning a checkpoint at the Bremervorde Bridge in West Germany when three men were brought in for questioning and their documents examined.

British soldier Arthur Britton soon identified "Hitzinger" as Heinrich Luitpold Himmler.

The next day, while in custody in Lüneburg, Himmler committed suicide by poison, biting into a capsule of potassium cyanide before he could be interrogated.

He died from heart failure in 1990 and is survived by two sons, four grandsons and three granddaughters, all of whom still carry his surname.