RESCUER                                                                        Kurt Gerstein
Although the previous photograph shows him in his SS uniform, Kurt Gerstein was not a Nazi. Gerstein joined the SS in 1941 to find out if rumours about the murder of patients with physical and mental disabilities were true.

In the summer of 1942 he visited two Nazi death camps and witnessed the murder of 1000s of Jews each day in the gas chambers of Belzec and Treblinka. Overcome by the horror of what he had seen, Gerstein was determined to let the world know about the Nazis' crimes, believing that the resulting outcry would force them to stop the killings.

However, although he managed to get detailed information about the death camps to neutral Sweden, the Swedish government kept his report secret as they feared being drawn into the war if they angered Nazi Germany.

Gerstein then managed to get the Dutch resistance to broadcast his report to Britain by radio, but British officials dismissed the information as exaggerated and untrue, even though the British Foreign Office knew it was correct.
Finally, Gerstein contacted both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant Churches in Berlin, but both failed to condemn publicly the murder of the Jews.

Despite all his efforts to expose the Nazis' crimes, the world chose not to listen. In 1945- in despair at his failure to prevent such terrible crimes- Kurt Gerstein committed suicide.