Inspecting the gas chambers

18th August 1942: A German eyewitness account of the final moments of thousands of men, women and children

Bełżec extermination camp SS staff, 1942. from right to left: Heinrich Barbl, Artur Dachsel, Lorenz Hackenholt, Ernst Zierke, Karl Gringers, (unknown), Reinhold Feiks, Karl Alfred Schluch, and Friedrich Tauscher

Kurt Gerstein had been imprisoned by the Nazis before the war because of his religious convictions and anti-Nazi activities.

But in 1941 he cha…