But the collection never left Germany and, after confiscation by the SS, it somehow became the property of SS officer Kurt Gerstein.
Pfannenstiel was with Kurt Gerstein in Belzec concentration camp in August 1942 during which he witnessed the botched gassing of Jews from Lwów, an episode which Gerstein included in the subsequently named Gerstein Report and which is partly corroborated in the report of Wehrmacht NCO Wilhelm Cornides.
Kurt Vonnegut | Kurt Weill | Kurt Russell | Kurt Masur | Kurt Angle | Kurt Koffka | Kurt Gödel | Kurt Elling | Kurt Schwitters | Kurt Rosenwinkel | Kurt Hahn | Kurt Wallander | Kurt Tucholsky | Kurt Sanderling | Kurt Kren | Kurt Busiek | Kurt Lewin | Kurt Jooss | Kurt Andersen | Kurt Warner | Kurt Squire | Kurt Schmoke | Kurt Gerstein | Kurt Busch | Kurt Browning | Kurt Wiese | Kurt Waldheim | Kurt Vile | Kurt Thomas | Kurt St. Thomas |
The central character is Kurt Gerstein (Ulrich Tukur), a Waffen-SS officer employed in the SS Hygiene Institute, designing programs for the purification of water and the destruction of vermin.
Vollmann makes use of many historical figures as characters including composer Dmitri Shostakovich, artist Käthe Kollwitz, film director Roman Karmen, poet Anna Akhmatova, SS officer Kurt Gerstein, as well as German general Friedrich Paulus and Soviet general Andrey Vlasov.