A campaign for a pension for the widow and three children of Kurt Gerstein, who joined the Nazi party to fight it from within, was pushed here today by Rolf Hochhut, author of “The Deputy,” aided by clergymen, Jewish leaders and groups of Nazi victims.
Gerstein, who was a Nazi party member until 1936 and an active anti-Nazi thereafter, died in 1945 in a Paris prison under unknown circumstances. He had a major role in informing the world of Nazi atrocities against Jews in Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps in occupied Poland. He conveyed the information to Baron Von Otter of the Swedish Embassy in Berlin.
Gerstein is one of the principal characters in the Hochhut play in which he is recorded as trying to inform the Papal Nuncio in Berlin about the Auschwitz horrors but denied an audience because he was in uniform. Mrs. Gerstein’s petition for a pension was rejected several years ago.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
