Plot

During WWII SS officer Kurt Gerstein tries to inform Pope Pius XII about Jews being sent to extermination camps. Young Jesuit priest Riccardo Fontana helps him in the difficult mission to inform the world.

In World War II, the sanitation engineer and family man Kurt Gerstein is assigned by SS to be the Head of the Institute for Hygiene to purify the water for the German Army in the front. Later, he is invited to participate in termination of plagues in the concentration camps and he develops the lethal gas Zyklon-B. When he witnesses that the SS is killing Jews instead, he decides to denounce the genocide to the Pope to expose to the world and save the Jewish families. The idealist Jesuit priest Riccardo Fontana from an influent Italian family gives his best efforts being the liaison of Gerstein and the leaders of the Vatican.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Two systems: the Nazi machine versus the Vatican and Allied diplomacy. Two men struggling from the inside. On one side, Kurt Gerstein, a real-life chemist and SS officer, supplied the death camps with Zyklon B while he tirelessly denounced the crimes and alerted the Allies, the Pope, the Germans and their churches at his family's and his own risk. On the other, Ricardo Fontana, a young Jesuit, a fictitious character who represents all the priests who had the heart to struggle against savagery, often paying for their courage with their lives. Countless priests, some known, others anonymous, who simply were not content to live with the silence of their church's hierarchy.—Sujit R. Varma

Kurt Gerstein, a brilliant German scientist, is recruited into the SS during the opening years of the Second World War. Assigned as a sanitation engineer, Gerstein is sent to the Eastern Front to supervise water purification for the German Army. Soon after, however, he is asked to help with a "special project" involving fumigation of "vermin infested" areas behind the front lines. Gerstein develops Zyklon-B, a deadly chemical gas which Gerstein believes will be put to use killing rats, lice, and other disease carrying creatures. However, when Gerstein realizes that his invention will be used to kill not animals but people, he begins an emotional search of his Christian values and ultimately decides to betray the SS by attempting to expose the Holocaust by way of informing the Catholic Church.—Anthony Hughes {husnock31@hotmail.com}