Gerstein Report

The Gerstein Report was written in 1945 by Kurt Gerstein, an Obersturmführer (First Lieutenant) of the Waffen-SS who rose to become the Head of Technical Disinfection Services of the SS, and in that capacity supplied hydrogen cyanide (Zyklon B) from Degesch (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung) to Rudolf Höss in Auschwitz and conducted the negotiations with the owners. On 17 August 1942, together 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. It was used as evidence in 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 “honorable captivity” and given accommodation in the Hotel Mohren. There he composed his report, first in French and then in German.

Gerstein was born on 11 August 1905 in Münster where he lived until 1910, moving to Saarbrücken, Halberstadt, and Neuruppin near Berlin where he received his secondary school diploma in 1925. He attended universities in Marburg, Aachen and Berlin, receiving 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 Nazi state 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 1936 for circulating anti-Nazi pamphlets. Released, he was arrested a second time in July 1938, spending two months in a concentration camp. Reportedly outraged by the euthanasia or Aktion T4 programme, 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 traveled to the extermination camps of Belzec and Treblinka offering the supply of hydrogen cyanide (Zyklon B).

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