A rare encounter
An SS officer & Swedish diplomat.
A chance encounter on a train during the war would lead to an important report drafted days later by a diplomat posted to Nazi Germany during the war.
The events of WW2 have shaped the world that we have lived in for the past seventy plus years. Starting from country borders, international agreements and conventions and resolutions that have guided us up to today. Take for example the United Nations, for example, was shaped and evolved ever since its creation in 1943. The Holocaust, also known in Hebrew as the “Shoah” (שואה) has left its mark on mankind and is commemorated & taught around the world: schools and learning institutes teach to the young and old about the horrific atrocities that took place over 70 years ago back in Europe in the hope that future generations learn from past mistakes and not repeat them. I myself here in Israel try and contribute to this by talking to young students at schools and display memorabilia that I have collected for the past 20 plus years. By engaging the young with actual documents & items from the past I believe that they can apprehend more the events of the past that has touched nearly everyone family here in Israel.
The article here will bring out to light an odd event that took place for several hours only back in 1942, but, sadly, did not yield into the outcome we have hoped for when it happened.
SS-Obersturmführer Kurt Gerstein was onboard a train taking him back from occupied Poland when by chance he was sitting at the same compartment that Swedish Diplomat Göran von Otter was in. This chance event had it developed into the right traction, the lives of millions could have been saved.
Kurt Gerstein was head of technical disinfection services of the Hygiene-Institut der Waffen-SS and was able to witness firsthand the extermination of Jews at the death camps in occupied Poland, particularly at Belzec and Treblinka. These events deeply shocked him and though being a member of the SS, apparently, he was a man of conscious. As mentioned above, during his return back to Berlin on a train from Warsaw on August 22nd, 1942, he was by chance sitting in the same compartment with Swedish diplomat Göran von Otter. I presume that after he approached him and after a brief introduction, he began to pour out his heart, for hours, what he has seen and witnessed at the camps. Days later the diplomat reported to his superiors about what he was told. And here is where story sadly ends. NOTHING was done internationally with this important information. The allies were not aware of this as well. Though Gerstein tried several more times to contact and pass the information, it did not lead to anything.
Kurt Gerstein died mysteriously while being held at France after the war ended.
I have added images of a Hungarian passport holding inside a sampled visa signed by Göran von Otter.
Thank you for reading “Our Passports”.
