Hello and welcome to the History Hour Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson.

The Past brought to life by those who were there and where this week we're marking 10 years

of our eyewitness stories from the past and for that we've selected some of the

highlights including a witness to the last days of Hitler. We were sitting in the

bunker and the Russians came closer and and we heard the firing and the gunfire and the bombs.

And Hitler was sitting and waiting for some rescue.

Also the CIA agent on hand for the death of Sheguevara.

To see a man who was so powerful at one point in Cuba, he looked like a beggar, a completely different image of what people perceive at him in the world.

Plus, the South African children at the heart of the Soweto uprising, and from more recent times the

U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Trust me in Iraq death is not the worst thing that could ever happen to you.

There are many far worse things that could happen.

It was it was really terrifying. That's all coming up later in the

podcast. So it's 10 years now since the launch of the remarkable strand on the

BBC World Service in which we bring youhand accounts of key moments from the past.

We call it Witness, and the producers of the show have, over the past decade, dug up more than 2,000

eyewitnesses, each one a gem of a story brought to life by the Witness Recollections and the BBC's

unrivaled archives.

And we're going to start in 1945, by which time Hitler's rule in Germany had cost the lives of millions of people,

exterminated in the Holocaust and killed on the battlefields of Europe.

The former BBC journalist Zina Rohan gave us this account of his last moments

using an archived interview that she'd recorded with a woman who worked with Hitler during his final days.

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