Incredible story of how Himmler's masseur - who was nicknamed the Magic Buddha and went on to treat Greta Garbo - saved 100,000 prisoners from the Nazis

Kersten’s Lists: A Saviour In The Depths of Hell, by Francois Kersaudy (Headline £25, 416pp) 

On February 3, 1945, Heinrich Himmler’s enormous, bear-like masseur, Felix Kersten, sent his secretary Frau Wacker to Himmler’s headquarters north of Berlin with an urgent message: please could the SS chief Himmler be good enough to sign a stay of execution for the dissident Major Theodor Steltzer, who was due to be executed in prison the following morning?

Steltzer had been sentenced to death for his part in the July plot to kill Hitler, and Kersten had received an urgent appeal from a Lutheran bishop to do what he could to save him.

Expecting to be shot in handcuffs, Steltzer was astonished when the prison doctor appeared and removed them from his wrists. He had no idea to whom he owed his good fortune.

A month later, Kersten came to Germany in person to ask Himmler for Stelzer’s release from prison. Himmler agreed to his request, saying: ‘One life more or less makes no difference’.

Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the Holocaust, had crippling stomach cramps in 1939 - and was dazzled by the effectiveness of Felix Kersten’s Tibetan-style massage treatment

What a chilling remark from the architect of the Holocaust, who by then had the death of six million Jews on his conscience. In Kersaudy’s extraordinary and gripping account of the relationship between Himmler and his indispensable masseur, we’re given a close-up look at how the mind of a Nazi Holocaust-perpetrator worked.

The fanatical anti-Semite Himmler was in overall charge of mass murder on an industrial scale — as the chief organiser of the Final Solution after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, he inspected the facilities at Auschwitz on July 17, 1942, and witnessed the gassing of 449 Jews freshly arrived from Holland, just to check that the machinery of murder was properly up and running.

But he also fancied himself as a kind, considerate, noble humanitarian, amenable to signing release forms for individuals at the behest of his marvellous masseur Kersten, whom he nicknamed the Magic Buddha — magic for his ability to cure pain with the pressure of his deft fingers; Buddha for his enormous weight: Kersten ate marmalade directly from the bowl, devoured cakes, and crushed any small chair he sat down on.

Clearly, ‘one life more or less’ made no difference to Himmler; but to Theodor Steltzer, and each and every one of the countless other prisoners who were released from Nazi prisons and concentration camps between 1940 and 1945 thanks to Kersten’s extraordinarily persuasive influence over his puny patient, the saving of ‘one life’ was a miraculous deliverance from hell.

After the war, among masseuse Felix Kersten’s starry clientele was the actress Greta Garbo

And, like Steltzer, most of the released prisoners had no idea that they owed their freedom to the gentle persuasion of Himmler by his masseur.

Himmler first met the sought-after Estonian-born massage genius in 1939, when he urgently needed treatment for crippling stomach cramps.

He was dazzled by the effectiveness of Kersten’s Tibetan-style treatment and demanded his presence by his side from that moment on. Kersten wanted to get away, but Himmler blackmailed him, saying he had information about his in-laws which ‘could prove dangerous’. So, to protect his family, Kersten had no choice but to accept the role of Himmler’s masseur, even submitting to living on the SS leader’s special train near the Eastern Front while he was stationed there.

Physical therapist Felix Kersten used his influence with the Nazi high command to save 100,000 lives - manipulating the fact that when in pain, Himmler was putty in his hands

He developed a quietly brilliant scheme. While pummelling away at Himmler’s aching body, he would say things like: ‘I have a list of 12 Dutch prisoners, six Frenchmen and three French women . . . I appeal to your humanitarian compassion and your Germanic sense of equity . . . would you be kind enough to sign their release warrant?’

Amazingly, more often than not, Himmler agreed to do so. When Kersten was massaging him, he turned to putty in his hands, so grateful was he for being released from his agony. Kersten was brilliant at appealing to his kindness and humanity.

Heinrich Himmler (right) with his trusted masseur Felix Kersten (centre) in 1944

Kersaud emphasises that the prisoners Himmler agreed to release were political ones, not Jews. For Jews, Himmler (like Hitler) retained a fanatical disdain. To his warped mind, the Jews were the ‘dregs of mankind’.

As Kersten knew to the bottom of his heart, ‘one life more or less’ did make a difference. He worked tirelessly, subtly and selflessly through his tyrannical patient to ensure the release of as many prisoners as he could.

What he dreaded was Himmler feeling well, because when he wasn’t in agony, he didn’t need a massage, so Kersten’s hold over him was temporarily halted.

But, thankfully, Himmler’s stomach cramps kept returning.

Kersten sometimes blackmailed him in return, one day saying that if he returned without his Dutch friend the antiquarian and auctioneer Charles Bignell being freed from prison, ‘my morale would be so affected that my treatments would be ineffectual'. And Himmler meekly complied. 

Gradually, Kersten grew more daring in his requests. The jacket of this book says: ‘The story of Felix Kersten, Himmler’s doctor, who saved more than 100,000 lives’.

It could be even more. During one treatment, for example, Himmler mentioned that Germany was thinking of ordering Finland to surrender all of its Jews in return for being given enough grain by Germany. Kersten gently persuaded him against that course of action.

So the plan was dropped and thousands of lives were saved.

Later, when Germany was losing the war, Himmler mentioned to Kersten Hitler’s plan to blow up all the concentration camps when the Allies were within 8km of each one. Luckily, as that plan was being developed, Himmler went down with terrible flu, severe stomach cramps and a near-nervous breakdown. While massaging him, Kersten asked him not to pass on Hitler’s order for this dastardly plan which would have killed hundreds of thousands of concentration camp inmates.

Head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler (to the left of Hitler), in 1939

Pathetically cowardly Himmler was terrified of annoying Hitler, whom he both worshipped and feared. He said to Kersten that he didn’t want ‘the traitors to the great Germanic cause’ (as he called the Jews) ‘emerging victorious. They won’t live to see that day. They’ll croak with us’. But, thanks to Kersten having a few middle-of-the-night urgent conversations with key people in Himmler’s entourage, he was persuaded not to pass on Hitler’s order.

In conjunction with the Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadotte, Kersten organised the mass evacuation of 20,000 concentration camp prisoners to Sweden on buses in 1945 — an impressive rescue operation. After the war, Bernadotte wrote a memoir in which he took all the credit for that operation.

It wasn’t till Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote an article for the Atlantic Monthly in 1953, saying that Kersten should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, that Kersten’s life-saving deeds were noted.

Granted Swedish citizenship in 1953, Kersten grew his massage practice in Stockholm and Paris — where he treated Greta Garbo, among other celebrities.

By which time Himmler was long dead. Cowardly to the last, he took cyanide on the day he was captured by the Allies while trying to escape into hiding.