Here is the headline-making university doctoral dissertation that debunks the key "Holocaust" testimony of SS officer Kurt Gerstein – the enigmatic, twisted Third Reich functionary who claimed to have witnessed mass gassings of Jews in 1942. In this closely argued study a French scholar subjects Gerstein's accusations to critical examination, striking at the roots of the Holocaust extermination story. The stunning con­clusion: not only are Gerstein's allegations of mass killings of Jews groundless, but prominent Holocaust historians have deliberately manipulated and falsified key parts of Ger­stein's tortured testimony.

This powerful exposé and its author made world headlines in 1986 when, for the first time in the nearly eight-century history of French universities, a duly awarded doctorate was revoked by government order. Gerstein's bogus "confessions" were the basis of the anti-German and anti-Catholic hysteria stirred by Rolf Hochhuth's play "The Deputy." Roques' study thus shatters the myth of a Vatican cover-up of Holocaust genocide.

British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre) praised this study as "an entirely legitimate, scholarly and responsible work of Quellenkritik (source critique) on a limited but important subject." Michel de Bouard of the Institut de France declared: "Had I been a member of the jury, I would probably have given a grade of 'very good' to Mr. Roques' thesis."

Translated from the French by Ronald Percival, who also provides a foreword. Includes transcripts and translations of all six ver­sions of Gerstein's "testimonies," as well as facsimiles of the original texts and other previously unpublished documents and records.