Massage with an Historic Difference

It is an old law school question: Would you be Hitler’s lawyer?

         

It is a tough one. All people regardless of their crimes are due a spirited defense, law students are taught. Yet what about the worst criminal in recent history? Would you be the one? Could you?

         

Here’s how the question could be posed to a massage therapist: Could you be Hitler’s massage therapist? Would you? Would it make Hitler more human? Or make him a more efficient Hitler?

Some thoughts to ponder. I have not found any evidence that Hitler ever got a massage, although the treatment was very popular in the late 19^th and early 20^th century for many ills.

 

But I did find some history about a “doctor” of massage in western Europe who was tapped to be the therapist for Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Nazi SS, the elite and brutal militia that perpetrated many atrocities against Jews and others on the hit list in the Nazi era.

         

Felix Kersten was a gifted therapist popular with the European elite who was “asked” to be Himmler’s personal masseur. He took the job, perhaps because it was an offer he could not refuse, and used his relationship with Himmler to spare some of the intended victims of the Third Reich.

         

The breadth of his exact contribution to saving lives is debatable. He got his client, who suffered from severe gastric problems relieved by massage, to sign documents sparing people from death. He also claimed to have softened the SS’s plans to kill subjugated civilians in Denmark and Finland.

Others disputed his claims to saving civilian populations, but his ability to entice Himmler spare some individuals is not in doubt.

If you would like to read more about Kersten and his times, I suggest:

The Kersten Memoirs, by Felix Kersten.

The Man with the Miraculous Hands, by Joseph Kessel.

Massages’Greatest Humanitarian, excerpt in Massage Magazine by Robert Noah Calvert, from The History of Massage.

The Devil’s Doctor, by John H. Waller.