The Confessions of Kurt Gerstein [Paperback]

Henri Roques (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

Product Details

• Paperback: 333 pages
• Publisher: Inst for Historical Review (June 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0939484277
• ISBN-13: 978-0939484270
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #739,971 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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29 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A thorough analysis of a key document of World War 2, March 31, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Confessions of Kurt Gerstein (Paperback)

This book was originally a doctoral thesis presented by the author to the University of Nantes in France in 1985. Although the thesis was accepted by the university and the doctoral degree granted, the French Government intervened and ordered withdrawal of the degree. The thesis was a work of textual criticism rather than historical analysis. The topic was the series of "confessions" written by the SS-officer Kurt Gerstein in April-May 1945 and given to officers of the French army. The confessions contain what is claimed to be an eye-witness account of the gassing of some 6700 Jews at the Belzec camp in August 1942; for this reason they are considered a key document in relation to the history of the destruction of European Jewry during the Second World War, and are quoted in almost all major works on that topic. The author identifies six different texts of the confessions, including one discovered by him in Church archives in Germany. The aim of his thesis is to determine the authenticity of each of the texts, and the degree of their veracity. He determines that three of the texts are authentic, having definitely been written by Gerstein, and the other three are inauthentic; of the inauthentic texts, two appear to have been composed by the French interrogators of Gerstein on the basis of his authentic confessions, and the source of the third is unknown. The author considers that this third "inauthentic" confession, which is quite widely quoted in historical works, was produced in order to reinforce the credibility of the confessions by omitting a number of incredible details contained in the authentic texts, for example the claim that the total number of people gassed by the Germans amounted to 25 million. The author analyses the use made of the confessions in major historical works. He finds that in many cases the inauthentic versions have been quoted, or that where an authentic version has been used, it is quoted incompletely or actually in a distorted form. In cases where an incomplete or distorted quotation was used, the effect was to remove fantastic elements in the confessions which cast doubt on their credibility. As an example, Gerstein stated in his description of the gassing that 750 people were crammed into a gas-chamber with a floor-area of 25 square metres, or 30 persons per square metre, a clearly impossible figure. The author shows that one historian using Gerstein's confessions arbitrarily incresed the floor area to 93 square metres (= 8 persons per square metre), while another historian arbitrarily reduced the number of victims to 175 (= 7 persons per square metre). The author considers these to be examples of misuse of the confessions in order to support a particular historical theory. With regard to the veracity of the confessions, the author identifies in the different texts a minimum of 29 features considered by him to be impossible or highly improbable. On the basis of this the author considers that the confessions do not merit the high historical value that has been placed on them by traditional historians. This is clearly a "revisionist" work in the sense that the author casts doubt on the veracity of a key historical document of the Second World War. Nevertheless, he states emphatically that his conclusions in relation to the Gerstein confessions cannot be interpreted as disproving the accepted accounts of the mass-gassing of Jews. It is up to the reader to make a judgement as to the validity of the author's arguments. In my view he has presented a well-argued and reasonable case.

23 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Academic writing, June 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Confessions of Kurt Gerstein (Paperback)

This book has nothing "anti-Semitic" or anti-Jewish! This book is not written to deny the Jewish holocaust in W.W.II! This book is written having at its core a doctoral thesis, a work of textual analysis of 6 different versions of "confession". These "confessions" or interrogations are extremely important because they are the SINGLE statements made by an SS officer who acknowledges the alleged organized mass-gassings of Jewish prisoners in German war-concentration camps! This "confessions" are widely quoted, but we are very surprised to see that Mr. Roques proves that most of quotations are wrong and distorted because the authors who made the quotations wanted to eliminate the fantasist and impossible facts told by Gerstein! Anyone who reads the real versions of the confessions is struck by their lack of consistency, they being very close to a science-fiction story! The work of Mr. Roques is excellent and very courageous, because of the fanatism of the defenders of these stories! Any reader who will finish the book, will find the facts so clear indicating that this "confessions" are pure fantasies, having no resemblance with the reality!

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and an Eye-Opener, February 8, 2009

By 

Kenneth A. Morgan "Playwright" (Milwaukee, WI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Confessions of Kurt Gerstein (Paperback)

"The Confessions of Kurt Gerstein" is something rare, an academic textual analysis published as a popular book. Roques chose this project for his doctoral thesis to establish the "common text of reference" for Gerstein's several testimonies, which have often been used by historians and writers without regard for their actual content.

Reading this will be a challenge for those unfamiliar with the textual analysis techniques of the French academy, but if you can get through it you'll have the surprise of your life. One of the most referenced Holocaust testimonies in history is nothing more than the product of a highly disturbed, possibly insane man who sought to use the catastrophe of World War II to re-create himself as a hero and validate his own mediocre life.

Roques' exhaustively documents his book with all known versions of Gerstein's "confessions", including an unknown sixth version discovered by Roques' himself, backed up by correspondance he conducted with Gerstein's widow, and proves that three of the versions are frauds created after Gerstein's death.

Here, for the first time, you can read exactly what Gerstein stated, and the lies and distortions of people like Martin Gilbert, Leon Poliakov, Saul Freidlander,Rolf Hochhuth and many others are ruthlessly exposed. Gerstein's ridiculous fables defy common sense and the laws of physics, and so have been "modified" by many commentators in order to conform with reality. Other parts of Gerstein's statements, like Jews being forced to march up long staircases to jump into the blast furnaces of steel mills, are completely omitted by them. Roques insightful analysis of the texts is a remarkable accomplishment.

On the other hand, the the foreward and afterward bookended into the text by "Ronald V. Percival", aka Robert Faurisson, has to be scrutinized with great skepticism, especially in technical discussions where he clearly has no expertise. Percival/Faurisson does squarely hit the target with his analysis of Gerstein's little known interrogation at the hands of Commandant Mathieu Mattei, the French miltary justice who didn't buy Gerstein's story for a minute. Mattei undoubtedly concluded that Gerstein, the SS nobody in a menial position, was just one more of an army of self-proclaimed "Nazi resisters" who popped out of the woodwork and tried to make themselves out as heroes, and Gerstein got the surprise of his life when Mattei filed criminal charges against him.

The account of Roques' disgraceful treatment at the hands of the French Government, and the cowardly collapse of the French academy under government pressure is stomach-turning, especially when you note that the book never denies that the Holocaust happened. It becomes understandable when you consider how many interests, financial and political, have vested themselves in presenting Gerstein's accounts as factual, and how many academic and journalistic reputations would be ruined if Roques' did establish a "common text of reference" for Gerstein's statements.

The book is difficult reading, resembling a textbook in that you have to perform some exercises to understand the text comparison tables, but if you have what it takes, I highly recommend it.