The Gerstein Report was written in 1945 by Kurt Gerstein, Obersturmführer of the SS-TV, who served as Head of Technical Disinfection Services of the SS during the Second World War and in that capacity supplied a pesticide, based on hydrogen cyanide, Zyklon B, from Degesch (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung) to Rudolf Höss in Auschwitz and conducted the negotiations with the owners.
On 18 August 1942, along with Rolf Günther and Wilhelm Pfannenstiel, Gerstein witnessed the gassing of some 3,000 Jews in the extermination camp of Belzec in occupied Poland. The report features his eyewitness testimony and was used as evidence at the Nuremberg Trials.
When Gerstein surrendered to the French Commandant in the occupied town of Reutlingen on 22 April 1945, he was sent to the town of Rottweil, where he was placed under "honourable captivity" and was given accommodation in the Hotel Mohren. There, he composed his report first in French and then in German.
Personal details
Gerstein was born on 11 August 1905 in Münster, where he lived until 1910 and then to Saarbrücken; Halberstadt; and Neuruppin, near Berlin, where he finished his secondary school in 1925. He attended universities in Marburg, Aachen and Berlin and received an engineering degree in 1931. During his studies, he was active in the Protestant youth movements.
He joined the Nazi Party in May 1933. As a committed Christian, Gerstein resisted attempts by the Nazis to control the Christian youth movement and ran afoul of state authorities. He was expelled from the party in October 1936 after his arrest in September for circulating anti-Nazi pamphlets. Released, he was arrested a second time in July 1938 and spent two months in a concentration camp. Reportedly outraged by the euthanasia programme, Aktion T4, he decided to join the Waffen SS "to look into the matter of these ovens and chambers in order to learn what happened there".
Because of his technical education, Gerstein was placed in the Waffen-SS technical disinfection services where he rose quickly to become its head. It was in that capacity that he travelled to the extermination camps of Belzec and Treblinka to offer the supply of hydrogen cyanide (Zyklon B).
Testimony regarding gas chambers
Gerstein stated that on 18 August 1942, he travelled to the Belzec extermination camp, where he witnessed the arrival of "45 wagons with 6,700 people of whom 1,450 were already dead on arrival". He described the gassing operation as it happened directly in front of him:
Reporting
The final part of the report describes Gerstein's attempts to circulate his eyewitness testimony. He reports on his chance encounter with the secretary of the Swedish legation in Berlin, Baron Göran von Otter, on the Warsaw-Berlin train: "Still under the immediate impression of the terrible events, I told him everything with the entreaty to inform his government and the Allies of all of this immediately because each day's delay must cost the lives of further thousands and tens of thousands". Von Otter talked with high-ranking officials at the Swedish Foreign Ministry. However, the information was not passed on to the Allies or to any other party. He also reports on his unsuccessful attempts to see the Papal Nuncio Cesare Orsenigo in Berlin. Gerstein wished to notify the Vatican. Informed of the purpose of Gerstein's visit, Orsenigo refused to meet with him. Gerstein's message was eventually sent to the Vatican not by the nuncio's office but by the auxiliary bishop of Berlin, where the information reached a "dead end". In addition to those attempts, Gerstein also stated he reported these eyewitness accounts to "hundreds of personages." Although not explicitly mentioned in the 1945 report, one of the attempts was by a Dutch industrialist, J.H. Ubbink, who in February 1943 visited Gerstein in Berlin: