On March 15, 1941—six months after he applied—Kurt Gerstein was accepted into the Waffen-SS.

On March 15, 1941—six months after he applied—Kurt Gerstein was accepted into the Waffen-SS.

Within months, his dedication to his work and his knowledge of engineering and medicine got him noticed by his superiors, and he was transferred to the Institute of Hygiene in Berlin, where chemists worked in strict secrecy on experiments for the Reich.

 When Gerstein developed methods of tackling an outbreak of typhus in the Wehrmacht, he quickly became the institute’s leading expert on disinfection and sanitation.

On June 8, 1942, with the Second World War 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, of the Reich Security Main Office: 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.

Gerstein already knew. Earlier that year he had received a briefing document about the creation of “necessary” buildings in an 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.

A tall, slim man with a serious face and dark, penetrating eyes, Kurt Gerstein was 35 when he applied to join the Waffen-SS in September 1940.

A quick glance at his record showed that he had the makings of a perfect recruit. He had been born into a deeply conservative household, and both his parents were enthusiastic Nazis.

Under closer scrutiny Kurt’s life suggested both the will and courage to rebel. At school he gained a reputation for truancy and insolence, behavior that brought him into conflict with his father.

 He found comfort in the Bible and, on leaving school to study to become a mining engineer, spent his weekends writing pamphlets for a national Bible circle.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Gerstein was angered by Hitler’s plans to create a Nazi-influenced German Protestant church. 

In February 1935, he stood up in a theater to protest at an “anti-Christian” play and was beaten up by members of the Hitler Youth.

Undeterred, he continued his public criticism of the Hitler regime. He was arrested twice but, after spending several weeks in a concentration camp, he suddenly appeared to be a changed man.

Getting a job in a potassium mine, he helped the local Hitler Youth and received a Nazi certificate of good citizenship.

But it was an act. Gerstein had realised that, as the Nazis would destroy anyone they perceived as an enemy, the only way to change the regime was from the inside.

His desire to expose the regime had been intensified by a new, sickening discovery. 

While inquiring about the death of a relative, Gerstein discovered the Nazis had started a secret program to euthanize the “mentally afflicted.

 Dismissed by his own family for believing British propaganda, Gerstein said: “I intend to know what’s going on!

In early August, 1942, Gerstein traveled with a convoy into a forested region of the former Czechoslovakia to pick up the gas containers from a potash plant, before heading into Poland.

Gerstein’s inner turmoil consumed him. At the next stop, he pretended to inspect the cargo and told the others that one of the containers was leaking. They helped him bury it at the side of the road.

The Zyklon B convoy arrived at the SS barracks in Lublin on August 17, 1942. 

It was from his base here that local SS police chief, Brigadier-General Odilo Globočnik, was creating a network of death camps at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka—with the aim, he boasted, of liquidating all Polish Jews. 

The mass-killing at Belzec had already begun, and the plan was to kill every Jew within a few hours of arrival.

Looking at Gerstein, the “sanitation” expert, Globočnik said: “We need you to improve the service of our gas chambers.”

After witnessing the gassing procedure first hand he returned to Germany on a night train. 

Aboard the same train, Gerstein met a Swedish diplomat named Baron Göran von Otter.

 In the poor light of the blacked-out train, Gerstein broke down in tears as he described what he had seen.

“If you tell the Allies, then they can drop millions of leaflets all over Germany,” Gerstein said, “so that the people will know what is happening, and they’ll rise up against Hitler.

The Swede made a full report to the neutral Swedish government which, afraid of aggravating its relationship with Hitler, shelved it until after the war ended.

Back in Berlin, Gerstein contacted the Swiss legation there, which was also concerned about antagonizing Hitler, and then the local papal nuncio, who—unknown to Gerstein—believed in “compromise and conciliation” with the Third Reich. The nuncio’s staff had Gerstein removed from the building.

At work, Gerstein was pushed further into the horror, trying where he could to divert or sabotage consignments of gas.

The machine has been set in motion, and I can’t stop it,” Gerstein told a friend. “It’s something to have seen it with my own eyes, so that someday I can testify to it.

In 1945, as Nazi Germany collapsed, Kurt Gerstein seized his opportunity to testify. Abandoning his post in Berlin, he drove west and surrendered to French forces.

 At first, accepted as a genuine anti-Nazi, he wrote a report on what he had seen at the death camps. 

But when French army intelligence took him to Paris, they told him that he was being investigated as a war criminal. On July 25, 1945, he hanged himself in his cell.

Meanwhile in Poland, investigators were coming to terms with the horror that had been perpetrated in Sobibor, Treblinka and Belzec, where an estimated 1.4 million of Europe’s Jews had been murdered.

In August 1950 Gerstein’s name was put before a de-Nazification court in Germany to assess his reputation.

 The court accepted that Gerstein diverted and destroyed quantities of Zyklon B in “acts of resistance,” but said his actions were “not sufficiently important or influential to stop this machine.” It ruled Gerstein was not “among the main criminals but has placed him among the ‘tainted.