1. Kurt Gerstein was a German SS officer and head of technical disinfection services of the Hygiene-Institut der Waffen-SS.
15 Facts About Kurt Gerstein
1. 2.
In 1942, after witnessing mass murders in the Belzec and Treblinka Nazi extermination camps, Gerstein gave a detailed report to Swedish diplomat Goran von Otter, as well as to Swiss diplomats, members of the 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.
3.
In 1945, following his surrender, he wrote the Kurt Gerstein Report covering his experience of the Holocaust.
4.
Kurt Gerstein died of an alleged suicide while in French custody.
5.
Kurt Gerstein was born in Munster, 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".
6.
Kurt Gerstein married Elfriede Bensch, a pastor's daughter, on 31 August 1937.
7.
Kurt Gerstein was no more tolerant of discipline in secondary school than within the family.
8.
Kurt Gerstein provoked the ire of Baldur von Schirach, and consequently, he spent time in prison and concentration camps in the late 1930s.
9.
On 4 September 1936, Kurt Gerstein was arrested for distributing anti-Nazi material, held in protective custody for five weeks and ultimately expelled from the Nazi Party.
10.
Kurt Gerstein was arrested a second time in July 1938 but was released six weeks later since no charges were filed against him.
11.
Kurt Gerstein supplied hydrogen cyanide to Rudolf Hoss in Auschwitz from the Degesch company and conducted the negotiations with the owners.
12.
On 17 August 1942, together with Rolf Gunther and Wilhelm Pfannenstiel, Kurt Gerstein witnessed at Belzec the gassing of some 3,000 Jews who had arrived by train from Lwow.
13.
Von Otter talked with high-ranking officials at the Swedish Foreign Ministry, but Kurt Gerstein's revelations were never passed on to the Allies or to any other government.
14.
On 22 April 1945, two weeks before Nazi Germany's surrender, Kurt Gerstein voluntarily gave himself up to the French commandant of the occupied town of Reutlingen.
15.
Kurt Gerstein received a sympathetic reception and was transferred to a residence in a hotel in Rottweil, where he was able to write his reports.