Greg Lewis

On June 8, 1942, with WW2 at its height, a Nazi officer in civilian uniform entered the Institute of Hygiene in Berlin and was shown into the office of Major Kurt Gerstein.

 The visitor brought an order from his superior, Adolf Eichmann: Gerstein was to collect a large quantity of a special gas from a secret factory and deliver it to a location in Poland.

The gas was Zyklon B, a variant of hydrocyanic or prussic acid, which released deadly fumes on contact with the air. Its use was not discussed.

But Gerstein already knew. Earlier that year he had received a briefing document about the creation of “necessary” buildings in occupied Poland “for the gassing of the Jews.”

Gerstein suspected that Zyklon B was the means by which the mass murder would be accelerated.

But despite his appearance, Gerstein was no ordinary Nazi. He had joined the Waffen SS to expose its crimes. Now, he would not only be a witness to the horror—he was being ordered to ensure the instrument of murder was delivered to its destination.

What happened next makes difficult reading. Moral quandaries surround Gerstein and everyone who chooses to write about him.

Kurt Gerstein was both a witness to, and participator in, the Holocaust.

When writing ‘Defying Hitler’, the work of Professor Deborah E. Lipstadt and her colleagues at the ‘Holocaust Denial on Trial’ website helped persuade me I had to find a way to do it.

Now the internet is alive with Holocaust denial – and the world appears to be moving ever closer to a new version of the 1930s – Gerstein has become a key target for those seeking to undermine the truth about the deaths of well over a million people during Operation Reinhard.

True, he got some details wrong, especially when relying on information given to him by others, but as Professor Lipstadt notes: “The testimony of German perpetrators and Jewish survivors corroborates Gerstein’s account on all the major points of the process and method of mass murder in the Operation Reinhard death camps of Treblinka and Belzec.”

Read, for instance, ‘Holocaust Journey’ by Martin Gilbert for further witness testimonies. The idea that there were not gas chambers at Treblinka and Belzec is simply a rewriting of history and an insult to the dead.

We all have a responsibility to stand up to it.

READ GERSTEIN’S STORY ON HISTORY.COM