Political Activities
He joined the Nazi Party in May 1933. But as a committed Christian activist he resisted attempts by the Nazi state to control the Christian youth movements 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. Outraged by the euthanasia program, 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.
Read more about this topic: Gerstein Report
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