Kurt Gerstein

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Kurt Gerstein
SS-Obersturmführer
UnitDeath's Head Units

Kurt Gerstein (11 August 1905 – 25 July 1945) was a German

Roman Catholic Church with contacts to Pope Pius XII, and to the Dutch government-in-exile, in an effort to inform the international community about the Holocaust as it was happening. In 1945, following his surrender, he wrote the Gerstein Report covering his experience of the Holocaust. He died of an alleged suicide
while in French custody.

Early life

Kurt Gerstein was born in Münster, Westphalia, on 11 August 1905, the sixth of seven children in a Prussian middle-class family that was described as strongly chauvinistic and "totally compliant to authority".[1] His father, Ludwig, a former Prussian officer, was a judge and an authoritarian figure who proudly proclaimed that in his family's genealogical tree there was only Aryan blood and exhorted generations to "preserve the purity of the race!"[2] As late as 1944, he wrote to Kurt: "You are a soldier and an official and you must obey the orders of your superiors. The person who bears the responsibility is the man who gives the orders, not the one who carries them out".[3]

Kurt Gerstein married Elfriede Bensch, a pastor's daughter, on 31 August 1937.[4] They had a daughter, Adelheid.

Education

Kurt was no more tolerant of discipline in secondary school than within the family. However, in spite of earning many bad reports, he managed to graduate at the age of 20. Going directly on to study at the University of Marburg for three semesters, he then transferred to the technical universities in Aachen and Berlin/Charlottenburg where he graduated in 1931 as a mining engineer.[5] While he was at Marburg, he joined, at his father's request, the Teutonia, "one of the most nationalistic student associations in Germany".[6] While he was uncomfortable with the frivolity of the fraternity students, he did not seem to mind their ultranationalism.[6]

In 1936, he moved to Tübingen where he started studying medicine at the University of Tübingen and lived with his wife, Elfriede.

Religious faith

Although his family was not particularly religious, Gerstein received

Protestants.[9] His religious faith caused conflict with the Nazis, and he spent time in prison and concentration camps in the late 1930s.[10]

Relations with Nazi Party and government

Like many others of his generation, Gerstein and his family were deeply affected by what they saw as the humiliation of Germany by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and so were attracted by the extreme nationalism of the Nazi Party. In July 1933, he enrolled in the SA, the original stormtroopers of the Nazi Party. Friedlander describes the contradictions in Gerstein's mind at the time: "Firm defense of religious concepts and of the honour of the Confessional youth movements, but weakness in the face of National Socialism, with acceptance of its terminology and shoddy rhetoric; acceptance, above all, of the existing political order, of its authoritarianism and its hysterical nationalism".[11]

However, in early 1935, he stood up in a theater during a performance of the play

anti-Christian message. In response, he was attacked and beaten by Nazi Party members in the audience.[12]

On 4 September 1936, Gerstein was arrested for distributing anti-Nazi material, held in protective custody for five weeks and ultimately expelled from the Nazi Party. The loss of membership meant he was unable to find employment as a mining engineer in the state sector. He was arrested a second time in July 1938 but was released six weeks later since no charges were filed against him. With the help of his father and some powerful party and SS officials, he continued to seek reinstatement in the Nazi Party until June 1939, when he obtained a provisional membership.[4]

World War II

Joins The SS

In early 1941, Gerstein enlisted in the

Action T4, directed at the mentally ill.[13][14] Other documents suggest he had already made his decision before she was murdered and that her death reinforced his desire to join the SS to "see things from the inside", try to change the direction of its policies and publicize the crimes that were being committed.[15] Browning describes him as "a covert anti-Nazi who infiltrated the SS",[16] and in a letter to his wife, Gerstein wrote: "I joined the SS... acting as an agent of the Confessing Church."[17]

German Extermination camps of Nazi Germany
marked with black-and-white skulls

Because of his technical education, Gerstein quickly rose to become head of technical disinfection services and worked with

Treblinka, which had similar facilities, and he observed huge mounds of clothing and underwear, which had been removed from the victims.[19]
At the time, motor exhaust gases were used for mass murder in both extermination camps.

Reporting

Main article: Gerstein Report

Several days later, he had a chance encounter on the

Swedish Foreign Ministry, but Gerstein's revelations were never passed on to the Allies or to any other government.[citation needed] In the meantime, Gerstein tried to make contact with representatives of the Vatican, the press attaché at the Swiss legation in Berlin and a number of people linked to the Confessing Church.[21]

One of his contacts was the Dutch citizen J.H. Ubbink, whom he asked to pass on his testimony to the Dutch resistance. A little later, an unnamed member of the Dutch government-in-exile, in London, noted in his diary a testimony that is very similar to Gerstein's report. Gerstein's statements to diplomats and religious officials over from 1942 to 1945 had little effect.

After his surrender in April 1945, Gerstein was ordered to report about his experiences with gassing and the extermination camps in French, followed by two German versions in May 1945.

The historian

Lwow, his testimony is fully corroborated.... It is also corroborated by other categories of witnesses from Belzec".[16]

The distinguished French historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet, in Assassins of Memory, discusses such criticism.[22]

Arrest and death

On 22 April 1945, two weeks before

Nazi war criminal. On 25 July 1945, he was found dead in his cell in an alleged suicide.[23][24]

Depictions

A biography by Pierre Joffroy, A Spy for God, was published in English in paperback in 1971.

His search for Christian values and ultimate decision to betray the SS by attempting to expose the Holocaust and informing the Catholic Church is portrayed in the narrative film Amen., released in 2002, starring Ulrich Tukur as Gerstein and directed by Costa-Gavras. Amen. was largely adapted from Rolf Hochhuth's play The Deputy.[25]

William T. Vollmann's Europe Central, the National Book Award fiction winner for 2005, has a 55-page segment, Clean Hands, which relates Gerstein's story.

Washington, DC
, in May 2007.

In 2010, a group of film students from Emory University produced a short film, "The Gerstein Report", which chronicled the events leading up to Gerstein's death. The film won Best Drama at the 2010 Campus MovieFest International Grande Finale in Las Vegas, Nevada.[26][27]

The Swedish musician Stefan Andersson wrote the song "Flygblad över Berlin" ("Flyers over Berlin") on his 2018 album with the same name about Gerstein and his meeting with the Swedish diplomat.

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^ Friedländer 1969, p. 4.
  2. ^ Friedländer, p. 10.
  3. ^ quoted in Friedländer 1969, p. 4
  4. ^ a b "Holocaust Encyclopedia: Kurt Gerstein". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  5. ^ Friedländer 1969, p. 11
  6. ^ a b Friedländer 1969, p. 8
  7. ^ quoted in Friedländer 1969, p. 13
  8. ^ Friedländer 1969, p. 19
  9. ^ Friedländer 1969, p. 35
  10. ISBN 978-0-19-504523-9
    . Retrieved 2009-08-10.
  11. ^ Friedländer 1969, p. 32
  12. ^ Friedländer 1969, p. 37.
  13. ^ In memoriam Kurt Gerstein by Hans-Georg Hollweg, 2010, repeats that it was his aunt."Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-01-08. Retrieved 2014-01-08.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  14. ^ quoted in Friedländer, p. 80 where she is referred to as "aunt [sic]" although page 73 claims it was his sister-in-law
  15. ^ Pierre Joffroy, L'Espion de Dieu, Paris, Laffont, 2002, p. 133 (taken from French edition of Wikipedia)
  16. ^ a b "Evidence for the Implementation of the Final Solution: Electronic Edition, Browning, Christopher R." Archived from the original on 2013-12-19. Retrieved 2013-12-19.
  17. ^ quoted in Friedländer 1969, p. 215
  18. ^ Yahil 1991, pp. 356-357.
  19. ^ Friedländer 1969, p. 112.
  20. ^ Friedländer 1969, pp. 123-125
  21. ^ Friedländer 1969, pp. 128-129
  22. ^ Assassins of Memory Pierre Vidal-Naquet, 1987. Ressources documentaires sur le génocide nazi / Documentary Resources on the Nazi Genocide © Michel Fingerhut, auteurs et éditeurs, 1996-98
  23. ^ Friedländer, 1969, pp. 218–222
  24. ISBN 978-0-19-504523-9
    , retrieved 2009-08-10
  25. ISBN 0-394-17125-X
  26. ^ "2010 International Grand Finale". Archived from the original on 2010-06-10. Retrieved 2010-06-28.
  27. YouTube
    about the Gerstein Report

Sources

A more detailed article appears in the French edition of Wikipedia. It has been closely consulted for this article.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kurt_Gerstein&oldid=1213661156"