The Man With The Miraculous Hands

By Joseph Kessel

Felix Kersten, physician to the high-demon of the Third Reich, Heinrich Himmler could alleviate Himmler’s severe stomach pains with his hands using massage and manipulation. In return, Kersten bargained with Himmler to order the release of innocent prisoners condemned to die.

It is an amazing story of the good-natured little fat man who looked like a “cross between a Flemish burgomaster and a Buddha of the West,” studied the higher curative powers of massage under a lama-doctor Ko, and applied them to Himmler whose excruciating stomach aches were only relieved by Kersten’s therapy. During the five years to come, Kersten attended Himmler but was an alien by birth and sympathies among his entourage, with the one exception of Himmler’s private secretary who collaborated with him in drawing up the lists of doomed men—Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, concentration camp victims of all nationalities. At the close, Kersten was jockeying with Himmler (and when persuasion failed, withholding treatment) to try and secure mass scale liberation of victims first through Sweden, then Switzerland.... Kersten is fascinating to follow-through his circumspect, ambivalent career—even though there may be points in question at its close.—KIRKUS Review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lucknow Books
• Release date: Nov 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781786256973

Joseph Kessel

Born in Argentina in 1898, Joseph Kessel's family moved to France in 1908. He studied in Nice and Paris and flew for the French air force in World War One. Kessel published his first novel in 1922, and went on to win the Grand Prix de l'Academie Francaise for Les captifs (1926). He flew again, for the Free French air force, during World War Two, after which he continued to write, to great acclaim, becoming a member of the AcadŽmie Francaise in 1962. He died in 1979.

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Text originally published in 1961 under the same title.

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Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

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THE MAN WITH THE MIRACULOUS HANDS

BY

JOSEPH KESSEL

Introduction by H. R. Trevor-Roper

Translated from the French by

Helen Weaver and Leo Raditsa

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

INTRODUCTION 5

CHRONOLOGY 9

PROLOGUE 10

DR. KO’S PUPIL 13

1 13

2 13

3 14

4 15

5 16

6 18

7 19

8 21

A HAPPY MAN 24

1 24

2 26

3 27

4 29

THE BEAST IN HIS DEN 31

1 31

2 32

3 33

4 34

5 36

6 36

7 40

8 43

9 44

10 46

11 47

12 49

THE BATTLE BEGINS 53

1 53

2 57

3 59

4 61

GESTAPO 68

1 68

2 70

3 70

4 74

A NATION TO SAVE 78

1 78

2 80

3 80

4 82

5 84

6 88

7 89

8 93

GENOCIDE 94

1 94

2 94

3 97

4 97

5 99

THE JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES 102

1 102

2 102

3 104

4 104

HITLER’S DISEASE 109

1 109

2 111

3 112

4 113

5 114

6 116

7 117

8 118

THE GREAT PLAN 120

1 120

2 122

3 124

4 126

5 126

6 127

7 130

8 130

9 132

10 137

11 137

12 139

THE AMBUSH 143

1 143

2 143

3 145

4 145

5 147

6 148

7 149

IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY 151

1 151

2 151

3 152

4 153

5 154

6 156

7 157

8 159

9 161

10 164

11 164

12 166

13 167

14 168

15 170

MAZUR, THE JEW 173

1 173

2 175

3 177

4 180

5 181

APPENDIX 183

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 187

INTRODUCTION

The late Felix Kersten, whose story my friend Joseph Kessel has written, was a man of unusual gifts and a strange history. By profession he was a doctor, but he did not possess, or require, any ordinary medical degree. Sometimes he has been described as a masseur, but he himself always strongly repudiated that term. He was, he explained, Arzt für manuelle Therapie, and he had special theories on this subject, which he published in a booklet and applied for many years, with enormous practical success. This success made him prosperous and famous. His patients included the rich and great of all Europe. They also included the most terrible ogre of modern times, the Grand Inquisitor of Hitler’s Europe, Heinrich Himmler.

There was a time when I would have thought it impossible for me to meet and be friendly with any man who had ever been intimate with Himmler. How could one ever, even indirectly, through a common friend, be in touch with that dreadful monster? But human experience is far more complex than we suppose and in the presence of Dr. Kersten I found that even impossibilities could resolve themselves. In his person I achieved this strange destiny; and I found not that Himmler was any less repellent—every new revelation of him only makes him more horrible and macabre—but that there were people who served him in order to serve humanity. But before saying more about Kersten’s work, I think I should explain how I came to know of it. In this way I may be able to anticipate controversy.

I first heard the name of Kersten in the last months of the war of 1939-1945. At that time I was an officer in the British Intelligence Service. I was concerned particularly with certain of Himmler’s organizations—S.S., Gestapo, etc. In the course of my work I had often heard of Kersten, but always somewhat mysteriously. That is, his name had seldom occurred in the documents, but often in the commentaries. He did not belong to any German organization. How could he? He was not even German. By nationality he was a Finn. But captured members of Himmler’s staff often referred to him. He was, it seemed, a mysterious éminence grise, a power behind Himmler’s bloodstained throne. Then, when the war was over, the mystery was reduced by the capture of one of the most important of Himmler’s collaborators: Walter Schellenberg.

Walter Schellenberg was Himmler’s political adviser and the head of his intelligence service. After the collapse of Germany he had fled to Sweden where he looked for powerful protection, for he had made friends with the mammon of neutrality. In fact, however, he was disappointed. At the request of the Western Allies, he was extradited from Sweden and brought to England for interrogation. Under interrogation he incidentally revealed a great deal about Kersten. It was from Schellenberg that I first discovered the true nature of Kersten’s position with, and power over, their common master, Himmler.

For Himmler, it seemed, suffered terribly from his work in the cause of the Führer. Not mentally of course: never did a qualm of doubt cross that dull, infatuated mind as he sent millions after millions to the firing squad and the gas chamber; but physically. He suffered from stomach pains of great, indeed crippling intensity. And then, before the war, his good friend Dr. Diehm, the head of the German Potassium Syndicate, had recommended him to try his own doctor, an unorthodox but marvelously effective practitioner from Finland, Dr. Kersten. From that time onward Himmler had resorted regularly to Dr. Kersten. Kersten was, to him, the magic Buddha who cures everything by massage. Certainly he cured Himmler’s stomach pains. At first, Kersten had visited Himmler from Holland, where his greatest patient was the Prince Consort, the husband of Queen Wilhelmina, Prince Hendrik. But in 1940, with the conquest of Holland, he was, in effect, carried off into captivity and became Himmler’s court doctor. And by 1943 Himmler was absolutely dependent on him: so dependent that he was obliged to pay Kersten an ever heavier price. He was obliged to allow him prolonged absence in Sweden, where Kersten was building up a new pied-à-terre against Germany’s defeat; and he was obliged to submit, little by little, to ever greater forms of pressure.

Here I cannot help digressing to a general topic. Afterwards, when I was investigating the last days of Hitler, I was surprised to discover that the court of Hitler was also, like the court of Himmler, dependent on doctors and that politics and medicine, there too, were inseparably intertwined. In my book The Last Days of Hitler I have described the great inter-medical battle which convulsed Hitler’s court in 1944, leading to the ruin of Dr. Brandt and Dr. Hasselbach and the triumph of Martin Bormann’s ally, Dr. Morell. It seems that, in our modern, streamlined dictatorships, with their crowded timetables and the pressure and clatter of their bureaucratic machinery, doctors have replaced the more traditional confidants—the court fools and confessors and mistresses—in whom older, more leisurely, less valetudinarian despots used to trust. Certainly this was so in Nazi Germany. Hitler’s dependence on him gave great power and wealth to Dr. Morell. Himmler’s dependence on him gave great opportunities to Dr. Kersten. There were opportunities of indulging in the vertiginous political intrigues which surround any dictator’s power. There were also opportunities of quiet, persistent, effective blackmail.

What were these opportunities, this blackmail? Little by little, as he was interrogated, Schellenberg revealed them. Casually, as one question followed another, we learned how Himmler had consented to spare seven Swedish businessmen, condemned to death for espionage in Warsaw; how he had allowed the Bibelforscher, the German Jehovah’s Witnesses, imprisoned as conscientious objectors, to leave their concentration camps; how, at the very end, the arch-persecutor, the annihilator of the Jews had even agreed to meet a representative of the World Jewish Organization and to let the last remnant of his persecuted people go. And all these concessions, we learned, had been wrung out of Himmler by the same means: by Felix Kersten. As Schellenberg’s secretary (who was also taken in Sweden and independently interrogated) once heard Himmler say, With every one of his massages, Dr. Kersten deprives me of a life. It is hardly surprising that, in those circumstances, Kersten began to cast his eyes to even wider horizons: that at one time, in 1944, he saw himself as the intermediary who might help to make peace in the world; that at another time he imagined that he might score a great double and, by becoming medical adviser to Stalin, solve the problems of the East.

Schellenberg’s evidence on this subject is doubly important. It is important, first, because it is independent. It has sometimes been said that Kersten’s claims to have saved lives rest only on his own testimony. They do not. I was convinced of their truth by Schellenberg long before I met Kersten. And, secondly, Schellenberg is a particularly effective witness because he was a reluctant one. At this time—and even more so later—Schellenberg was unwilling to admit that it was Kersten who had saved all those lives.{1} He was unwilling for sound, selfish reasons. Kersten was safe in Sweden: he himself was not. He was threatened with trial at Nuremberg, for war crimes, of which he knew well he was guilty. He therefore wished to plead extenuation. He wished to argue that however guilty he might have been, he had at least atoned for that guilt by using his influence with Himmler to save the lives of those seven Swedish businessmen, and indeed other lives. He therefore did not readily agree that it was Kersten who had really saved them. Nevertheless he could not effectively conceal the fact. At his trial, in 1948, Schellenberg did plead these services in extenuation; but the judge, after hearing the evidence, dismissed the plea. It was clear, he said, that the lives in question had really been saved not by Schellenberg but by a then unknown person who was not in court: Dr. Kersten.

Yes, then unknown. For after the war Kersten had lived quietly in Sweden. He was not physician to Stalin, or to any of the great of the world. He was even, unavoidably, under some shadow, as having been doctor to the most infamous of all the Nazi murderers. However, he still flourished: his therapeutic gifts always guaranteed him a prosperous clientèle; and gradually his reputation began to revive. For if his somewhat naive vanity raised up occasional enemies, the memory of his past services was not entirely forgotten by those who had benefited by them. The admissions of Schellenberg, the evidence at the trial of Schellenberg, might still be locked up in the archives; but in the same year in which Schellenberg, as Himmler’s agent, was tried and sentenced in conquered Germany, Himmler’s victims, who owed their lives to Kersten, were speaking up for him, and speaking openly, in liberated Holland.

For Holland, in the 1930’s, had been Kersten’s home, and in the 1940’s, when he had been virtually a prisoner in Germany, he had not forgotten it. He had used his influence with Himmler to save many Dutchmen from death or transportation. Now, in 1948, some of these Dutchmen, learning of the shadow that hung over Kersten in Sweden, sought to vindicate their benefactor. And they did. On the instance of a distinguished Dutch historian, Professor N. W. Posthumus, then Director of the Netherlands Institute of War Documentation, a special commission was set up to inquire into Kersten’s work. The commissioners saw, tested and examined dozens of witnesses, hundreds of documents. In 1949 they issued their report. They showed that many calumnies about Kersten were untrue and that in fact he had saved thousands of lives, of all nationalities, on numerous occasions, and at great personal risk and cost, besides intervening to save Dutch interests, Dutch property, Dutch treasures. It was as a result of this report that Kersten was, in 1950, made a Grand Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau, receiving the insignia from Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.

After 1950 I myself again came into contact with Kersten. Even after publishing my account of Hitler’s last days I had remained interested in the fall of the Third Reich, and in 1952 I was led to reconsider the history of the Swedish Relief Expedition which, in the spring of 1945, saved many thousands of Scandinavians and Jews from death in the concentration camps and enabled its leader, Folke Bernadotte, to hold his famous conversations with Himmler. I need not here enter into the historical controversies in which this study involved me. Let it suffice to say that the discussion of these facts in Sweden and abroad in 1953 led to the rediscovery and vindication of Kersten’s part in that affair. By the end of 1953 he was, at last, granted the Swedish citizenship which he had long sought. By 1956 the Swedish Foreign Office, in an official White Book, admitted that the way for the relief expedition of 1945 had been prepared, and its success ensured, by the indispensable secret work, in Germany, at Himmler’s court, of Felix Kersten.

Such was Kersten’s public life, as it is known to me from my own intelligence work in wartime and my own historical researches in peacetime. It entitles him to a small place in the history of the war, a small niche in the temple of fame; and I am glad to add such authority as I can to support the often challenged truth. M. Kessel will spread the story both more fully and more widely than I can do. But meanwhile what of Kersten’s private life? It continued, as before, unorthodox, cosmopolitan, successful. Before the war Kersten had operated in Germany and Holland, curing plutocrats and princes. After 1945, from his base in Stockholm, he continued to operate in Germany and Sweden, Holland and France, curing plutocrats and princes still. It was in France that his fabulous success excited the attention of M. Kessel (himself an immigrant from the same Eastern Baltic home). It was in Germany that he died of a heart attack on the 16th of April, 1960, just as M. Kessel’s book appeared in France. In a sense he was fèlix opportunitate mortis. He had lived to see his humanitarian work generally admired, his ambiguous position as Himmler’s doctor generally condoned, and to find, in M. Kessel, a sympathetic interpreter.

—H. R. Trevor-Roper

CHRONOLOGY

JANUARY 30, 1933:  Hitler comes to power

JUNE 30, 1934:  Hitler has Röhm, commander in chief of the S.A., assassinated by Himmler and the S.S. The annexation of Austria

MARCH 13, 1938:  The annexation of Austria

SEPTEMBER 29, 1938:  At Munich, the heads of the English and French governments, Chamberlain and Daladier, surrender part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler

MARCH 15, 1939:  Complete annexation of Czechoslovakia

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939:  Hitler attacks Poland

SEPTEMBER 3, 1939:  England and France declare war on Germany

MAY 10, 1940:  Invasion of Belgium and Holland

JUNE 22, 1940:  Defeat of France. Marshal Petain signs the armistice

APRIL 6, 1941:  Invasion of Yugoslavia

JUNE 22, 1941:  Hitler attacks Russia

DECEMBER 11, 1941:  U.S. declares war on Germany

AUGUST, 1942:  The German Army reaches Stalingrad

NOVEMBER 8, 1942:  Allied troops land in North Africa

JANUARY 31, Allies land in Normandy

JULY 10, 1943:  Germans surrender at Stalingrad

JUNE 6, 1944:  Allies land in Normandy

APRIL 29, 1945:  Hitler commits suicide

MAY 23, 1945:  1943:  Himmler commits suicide

PROLOGUE

Himmler committed suicide near Bremen in May, 1945, during that spring when a ravaged, tormented Europe at last found deliverance.

If one only counts years, that time is still not so distant from us. But so many and such momentous things have happened since, that already it seems very far away. Already an entire generation has sprung up, a generation for whom those miserable days are nothing but vague and confused memories. And to tell the truth, it is even becoming difficult for those who underwent the full experience of the war and the occupation to recall, without considerable mental effort, quite the extent of the terrible power which Himmler once had at his disposal.

Let us make that effort....

The German Army occupied France, Belgium, and Holland, Norway and Denmark, Yugoslavia, Poland, and half of European Russia. And in these countries (not counting Germany itself, Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia) Himmler had absolute authority over the Gestapo, the S.S., the concentration camps, and even the diet of the captured peoples.

He had his police force and his personal army, his spy and counterspy services, his tentacle-like prison system, his organizations devoted to starvation, his immense private hunting and burial grounds. It was his job to watch over, round up, silence, arrest, torture, and put to death millions and millions of human beings. From the Arctic Ocean to the Mediterranean, from the Atlantic to the Volga and the Caucasus, all were at his mercy.

Himmler was a state within a state: a state of informing, inquisition, Gehenna, of death endlessly multiplied.

Only one man was higher than he: Adolf Hitler. From him Himmler accepted the lowest, most loathsome, most perverse tasks with a sort of blind, joyous devotion. For he worshiped, adored Hitler beyond all measure. It was his only passion.

Beyond this, there scarcely existed in the dull, mean, dogmatic, and incredibly methodical schoolmaster a lively feeling, a burning passion, a human weakness. For him it was enough to be the unchallenged expert in mass extermination, the greatest manufacturer of tortures and multiple deaths that history has ever known.

But a man came along who, during those awful years between 1940 and 1945, week by week, month by month, found a way of snatching his victims from the unfeeling and fanatical butcher. This man so worked on Himmler the all-powerful, Himmler the pitiless, that entire populations escaped the terror of deportation. He prevented the crematory ovens from receiving their full quota of corpses. And alone, unarmed, half prisoner, this man forced Himmler to deceive Adolf Hitler, to dupe his master, to betray his god.

I knew nothing of this story until a few months ago. It was Henri Torres who first sketched the main lines for me. He added that a friend of his, Mr. Jean Louviche, knew Kersten well, and suggested that we meet with him. Of course I agreed.

But I will confess that despite the assurances of the greatest lawyer of the day and of a distinguished, internationally known jurist, the story still left me more than skeptical. It was downright incredible.

It seemed even more so when I found myself in the presence of a man who was very stout, mild-mannered, with kind eyes and the sensual mouth of one who loves the good things of life: in short, Dr. Felix Kersten.

Come now! I said to myself. This man against Himmler? And yet, little by little, I don’t know how or why, I sensed that from this calm mass of flesh, from this heavy good nature, there emanated a hidden and profound power which was steadying, reassuring. I noted that his glance, though kindly, was also extraordinarily level and shrewd. And the mouth, however sensual, also had sensitivity and vigor.

Yes, this man possessed a strange inner density. But even so, to have molded Himmler like a lump of soft clay? I looked at Kersten’s hands. I had been told that it was their skill which explained the miracle. The doctor usually let them rest, the fingers interlaced, upon the curve of his stomach. They were large, short, plump, and heavy. Even in repose they seemed to have a life of their own, an assurance, a direction.

My doubts were still there but they were weaker. Jean Louviche then took me to another room in his apartment where there were tables and chairs loaded with documents, newspaper clippings, reports, and photostats.

Here are the records, he said. In German, Swedish, Dutch, and English.

I recoiled from this mass of paper.

To be sure, I have selected the shortest and most critical ones, said Louviche, pointing to a separate pile.

In it, there was a statement by Prince Bernhardt of the Netherlands, every word of which was glowing, almost immoderate praise, listing the reasons why the Grand Cross of the Order of Orange Nassau, the highest decoration of the Netherlands, had been bestowed on Dr. Kersten.

There were photographic copies of letters addressed to Kersten by Himmler, granting him the human lives which the doctor had requested.

There was the preface to Kersten’s Memoirs, written in English by H. R. Trevor-Roper, professor of contemporary history at Oxford and one of the greatest authorities of the British Secret Service on German affairs during the war. Mr. Trevor-Roper said, in part:

There is no man whose story seems at first glance as unbelievable as his. But on the other hand, there is no man whose story has been subjected to such minute investigation. It has been weighed by scholars, jurists, and even by political opponents, and has triumphed over all these tests.

When I returned to the living room, I felt a little dizzy. The thing was true, then, it had been proved, undeniably: this fat man, this good-natured doctor who looked like a cross between a Flemish burgomaster and a Buddha of the West, had dominated Himmler to the extent of saving hundreds of thousands of human lives. But why? And how? By what incredible miracle? Now a boundless curiosity had replaced my disbelief.

Little by little, detail by detail, memory after memory, I managed to satisfy my curiosity. I spent hours with Kersten, asking questions and listening to his answers.

In spite of the incontestable proofs which I had seen with my own eyes, there were certain parts of the story which I still refused to accept. Such and such an incident could not be true; it was simply impossible. My doubts neither surprised nor upset Kersten; he must have been used to them. He would simply pull out, with a half-smile, a letter, a paper, a testimonial, a photostat. And I would have to swallow that incident along with the rest.

DR. KO’S PUPIL

1

The great flood which ravaged Holland around the year 1400 swept away the workshops and factories where the Kerstens, a rich bourgeois family, had been making fine Flemish linen since the Middle Ages.

After this catastrophe, they established themselves at Gottingen, in western Germany, and taking up their métier once more, regained their fortune. When Charles V visited the city in 1544, Andreas Kersten was a member of the municipal