Nazi masseur’s rescue claims dismantled by new film
Developed over time first seen 2 months ago
A psychological thriller titled "I Is Another," directed by Felix Randau and premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, re-examines the celebrated postwar reputation of Felix Kersten, Heinrich Himmler's personal masseur. Kersten had long been credited with using his unusual proximity to Nazi leadership to save Jewish prisoners and concentration camp inmates from death, a narrative that secured him a prominent place in accounts of wartime rescue and resistance. The film disputes this legacy, arguing it rests on questionable and largely self-generated claims rather than verified acts of courage.
Randau's research-based portrayal instead presents Kersten as a narcissistic self-promoter whose rescue stories were substantially fabricated or exaggerated for personal advantage. It suggests his postwar image was shaped by a desire for validation and social standing rather than genuine moral conviction, casting doubt on decades of historical accounts that had treated him as a bona fide Holocaust rescuer.
- Film challenges Felix Kersten's reputation as a wartime Holocaust rescuer
- Director Felix Randau portrays him as a self-mythologising narcissist
- "I Is Another" premiered at the Locarno Film Festival
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Kersten's postwar reputation rests on his own writings, in which he described using his access to Himmler to intervene on behalf of Jewish prisoners and others facing death in the camps. Those accounts helped shape how historians and the public came to view him, with some crediting him as a rescuer whose position within the Nazi hierarchy allowed him to save lives.
The new film 'I Is Another', directed by Felix Randau and premiering at the Locarno film festival, revisits that reputation. It draws on research suggesting Kersten's claims were largely self-constructed, presenting him instead as someone driven by a need for recognition rather than by moral conviction.
The film matters because it feeds into a wider, ongoing debate among historians about how reliable individual survivor and witness accounts from the Nazi era are, and about how reputations built after the war can shape collective memory of events that are otherwise difficult to verify.
Coverage
- The Hollywood Reporter — Inside ‘I Is Another’: The True(ish) Story of the Man Who Massaged a Nazi and Maybe Saved Lives
- The Guardian — Himmler’s ‘anti-Nazi’ masseur: exposing the lies and fantasies of the SS chief’s ‘magic Buddha’