Kurt Gerstein

Kurt Gerstein (11 August 1905, Münster, German Empire – 25 July 1945, Paris, France) was a German mining engineer, a member of the Nazi Party from 1933, of the SA in 1934, and later of the SS Hygiene Institute (Hygiene-Institut der Waffen-SS) from 1941 in Berlin.

In 1942, after witnessing mass murders in the Belzec and Treblinka Nazi extermination camps, Gerstein gave a detailed report to Swedish diplomat Göran 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. In 1945, following his surrender, he wrote the Gerstein Report covering his experience of the Holocaust. During his imprisonment in France later that year, he was found hanged in his cell under circumstances that were never fully clarified.

Gerstein’s legacy endures primarily through his writings, which notably inspired the 1963 play The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth and the 2002 film Amen. by Costa-Gavras.