Kurt+Gerstein

For showing his bravery and faith towards his country and church, Kurt Gerstein was correctly named one of the Heroes of the Holocaust.

As a child, Kurt Gerstein was the sixth out of seven of his siblings. He was born in Muenster on August, 11th, 1905 into a Lutheran family. Though his family was not particularly religious, throughout his teen years he had been an active member of the Confessing Church. At one time he was attending a play. The only problem with the play was that it was speaking against God. Being the religious person he was, he spoke out against it (Jennifer Rosenberg). Sadly, he was brought outside and was beaten, but was not deterred. Although he had a great record religiously, his scholastic record was flawed. Scholastically speaking he was a bright student, but he was a less than ideal student as well. This is because he often ignored his schoolwork and skipped classes.

On May 1st, 1933, Kurt Gerstein joined the Nazi party, five months after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor (Holocaust Encyclopedia). After Gerstein’s incident at the play, “he was arrested for preparing to mail several thousand anti-Nazi pamphlets in favor of preserving church anatomy” (Holocaust Encyclopedia). Which I think is odd since he joined the Nazi Party. After prison, Gerstein went back to school and studied medicine. Of course that did not stop him from speaking out against the Nazis. Eventually he was arrested for treason on July 1938 for six weeks, which the Nazi Party then expelled him from the group. After six weeks he was released, and on June 10, 1939 he was readmitted back to the Nazi Party with a provisional membership (Holocaust Encyclopedia).

Once Gerstein had applied to join the SS, and after two months of training in a sanitation battalion, on June 1st, 1941, he was assigned to the Hygiene Institute of the Waffen SS in Berlin. His best contribution of course had to be the development of techniques for vermin control and maintaining quality drinking water for troops (The Standard International Encyclopedia).Then Kurt Gerstein was told to assist in the “Final Solution”, because of his expert knowledge of decontamination techniques. His Job was to take large amounts of Zyklon B to camps. As well as having to deliver the Zyklon B, he was invited to inspect the killing center at Belzec. Sadly on August 1942, he saw a mass killing of Jews, which was caused by the carbon monoxide gas in the gas chambers.

Gerstein then recorded what he saw in at Belzec. This includes the trainloads of Jews entering into the camp, taking their possessions, cutting their hair, undressing the crowd, and forcing them to crowd into the chamber (which looked like a shower room) (Holocaust Encyclopedia). Gerstein told the Swedish Diplomat Baron von Otter, the papal nuncio in Berlin aka Father Cesare Orsenigo, numerous members of the Confessing and Lutheran churches, and enemies of the Nazi regime. He hoped that the Allies would drop pamphlets across Germany, which would tell them what is happening and make a public demand that the murders would stop. However, these dreams did not come true. Ironically he was not treated as a witness, but as a suspect.

He was then moved from a hotel into a semi-house arrest to the jail in Konstanz and later to Cherche-Midi Prison in Paris. “In Paris he had drafted his final statement, aka "Gerstein Report", which recounted all he had seen during his service with the SS” (Holocaust Encyclopedia).This report was supposed to deflect suspicion from himself as a Nazi offender. Sadly, whether it was the stress of failing to slow the “Final Solution”, being convicted, or the accusations got to him, he had hanged himself in July of 1945.

This person is a hero because he told anyone about what he experienced. This lead to the authorities eventually finding out about the plans and stopping them. I have learned that if your are persistent enough and do not lose hope, then you can do anything and everything. As you can see, this got him to stop Germany, and stop Germany's plans to kill so many Jews.

“Kurt Gerstein.” The Holocaust Encyclopedia. ushmm.org, n.d. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.

“Kurt Gerstein.” About Education. Abouteducation.com, n.d. 8 Dec. 2014

“Holocaust.” The International Encyclopedia. Vol. 9. New York: International Encyclopedia, 1955. Print.

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