Goran of Otter

Baron Göran Fredrik von Otter (born August 4, 1907 in Sörby , † December 4, 1988 in Stockholm ) was secretary of the Swedish embassy in Berlin during the Second World War . Göran von Otter is the father of the author Birgitta von Otter (* 1939) and the mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter (* 1955). The Swedish Prime Minister Baron Fredrik von Otter was his grandfather.

Kurt Gerstein

On August 20, 1942, von Otter's Legation Councilor met SS officer Kurt Gerstein , head of the "Health Technology " department of the Waffen-SS Hygiene Institute, on the express train from Warsaw to Berlin . This was on the way back from a business trip from the new Nazi extermination camp Treblinka in the northeast of the General Government . The day before, in the Belzec extermination camp , Gerstein had witnessed the murder of hundreds of deported Jews in the gas chambers there.

At the chance encounter on the train, von Otter received a detailed verbal report from Gerstein about the horrific events. Von Otter told about it after the war:

“I offered him a cigarette. He thanked him, lit the fire and asked in the same breath if he could tell me a bad story. 'Is it about the Jews?' 'Yes, about the Jews who are being killed in the east.' It was difficult to get Gerstein to speak softly. He sobbed and put his hands over his face. I thought he won't be able to endure this torment of conscience much longer. He will give himself away and they will then arrest him. "

Von Otter was asked by Gerstein to pass the information on to other countries. Von Otter actually reported to the head of the political department at the Stockholm Foreign Ministry, but the Swedish government did not forward the message to the Allies. Gerstein's statements were considered too explosive to be passed on to a belligerent power.

In the late autumn of 1944, von Otter, who had met Gerstein secretly again around six months after the first encounter, was transferred back to Stockholm. In May 1945, another transfer to the Finnish capital Helsinki followed . There von Otter began to investigate what had become of Gerstein in the meantime. On July 23, 1945, von Otter wrote to the Swedish ambassador in London urging him to assist a German named Gerstein if he were interned by the victorious Allied powers. But the search for Gerstein initiated by von Otter came too late; on July 25, 1945 he was found hanged in his cell in the Prison du Cherche-Midi military prison in Paris .

literature

• Birgitta von Otter: Navelsträngar och narrspeglar. Stockholm: Alba, 1991. ISBN 91-7458-247-X
• Peter Englund : Brev från nollpunkte , 1996 (German: Menschheit am Nullpunkt. From the abyss of the 20th century. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2001. ISBN 3-608-93547-9 )

Movie

• Carl Svensson : Not a word from Sweden. A diplomat and the Holocaust. Documentary, Sweden 2017

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See for this section the documentary by Carl Svensson.