SOON TO BE A MAJOR HOLLYWOOD MOVIE
Steven Spielberg’s Oscar winning film Schindler’s List turned the hero Oscar Schindler into a household name, telling the story of the man who saved countless thousands from Nazi Germany’s concentration camps. Few, however, have heard of Felix Kersten, the rotund and avuncular Finn who was reluctantly pulled into the Third Reich’s corridors of power as Heinrich Himmler’s personal physician, seemingly the only person who could cure the chief architect of the Holocaust of his crippling stomach pains.
Kersten’s success with Himmler’s condition gave him extraordinary power over the second most important person in the Nazi regime. By playing on Himmler’s vanity and gratitude, Kersten was able to persuade him to free and pardon people who were destined for imprisonment, deportation and extermination. He was able to ultimately save thousands of lives from the concentration camps. As Himmler said himself: ‘With every one of his massages, Dr Kersten deprives me of a life.’
The Man with Miraculous Hands tells the story of a mild-mannered modern-day hero caught in the midst of the worst atrocities of the 20th century, whose actions restore our hope in mankind.
