On May 26, 1945, Gerstein was soon transferred to Constance, Germany and then to Paris, France in early June. In Paris, the French did not treat Gerstein differently than the other war prisoners. He was taken to the Cherche-Midi military prison on July 5, 1945. The conditions there were terrible.
On the afternoon of July 25, 1945, Kurt Gerstein was found dead in his cell, hung with part of his blanket. Though it was apparently a suicide, there is still some question if it was perhaps murder, possibly committed by other German prisoners who did not want Gerstein to talk.
Gerstein was buried in the Thiais cemetery under the name "Gastein." But even that was temporary, for his grave was within a section of the cemetery that was razed in 1956.
In 1950, a final blow was given to Gerstein - a denazification court posthumously condemned him.
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After his experiences in the Belzec camp, he might have been expected to resist, with all the strength at his command, being made the tool of an organized mass murder. The court is of the opinion that the accused did not exhaust all the possibilities open to him and that he could have found other ways and means of holding aloof from the operation. . . .
Accordingly, taking into account the extenuating circumstances noted . . . the court has not included the accused among the main criminals but has placed him among the "tainted."16
It was not until January 20, 1965 that Kurt Gerstein was cleared of all charges, by the Premier of Baden-Württemberg.
End Notes
1. Saul Friedländer, Kurt Gerstein: The Ambiguity of Good (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969) 37.
2. Friedländer, Gerstein 37.
3. Friedländer, Gerstein 43.
4. Friedländer, Gerstein 44.
5. Letter by Kurt Gerstein to relatives in the United States as quoted in Friedländer, Gerstein 61.
6. Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987) 101.
7. Report by Kurt Gerstein as quoted in Arad, Belzec 102.
8. Report by Kurt Gerstein as quoted in Arad, Belzec 102.
9. Friedländer, Gerstein 109.
10. Friedländer, Gerstein 124.
11. Report by Kurt Gerstein as quoted in Friedländer, Gerstein 128.
12. Report by Kurt Gerstein as quoted in Friedländer, Gerstein 128-129.
13. Martin Niemöller as quoted in Friedländer, Gerstein 179.
14. Friedländer, Gerstein 211-212.
15. Letter by Kurt Gerstein as quoted in Friedländer, Gerstein 215-216.
16. Verdict of the Tübingen Denazification Court, August 17, 1950 as quoted in Friedländer, Gerstein 225-226.
Bibliography
Arad, Yitzhak. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987.
Friedländer, Saul. Kurt Gerstein: The Ambiguity of Good. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1969.
Kochan, Lionel. "Kurt Gerstein." Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Ed. Israel Gutman. New York: Macmillan Library Reference USA, 1990.
