SOURCE: "A Question of Conscience," in Commentary, Vol. 48, No. 1, July, 1969, pp. 71-2, 74.

In the following review, Lewy discusses the ethical dilemmas Friedländer explores in Kurt Gerstein: The Ambiguity of Good, examining at length the moral untenability of both blind obedience to the law and complete reliance on conscience.

The story of Kurt Gerstein involves one of the most bizarre episodes of the Nazi era, a period of human history not lacking in the fantastic. Gerstein was an SS Obersturmführer, in charge of supplying the deadly Zyklon B gas to Hitler's murder factories. At the same time, he was a member of the Confessing Church, an opponent of Nazism, and a man who repeatedly risked his life in attempts to alert the Western world and the Vatican to what was happening in the Nazi death camps. At the end of the war Gerstein surrendered to the French...