Film Exposes Himmler’s Masseur as Self-Mythologiser, Not Holocaust Rescuer
Developing story first seen 4 hours ago
A new psychological thriller premiering at the Locarno Film Festival, "I Is Another," challenges the celebrated postwar reputation of Felix Kersten, Heinrich Himmler's personal masseur. Kersten was long credited with using his unusual access to Nazi leadership to save Jewish prisoners and concentration camp inmates from death, a narrative that made him a notable figure in accounts of wartime resistance and rescue.
Director Felix Randau's research-based investigation instead portrays Kersten as a narcissistic self-promoter whose rescue claims were largely fabricated or exaggerated for personal gain. The film argues his postwar image was driven not by moral courage but by a desire for validation and social standing, casting doubt on decades of historical accounts that treated him as a genuine Holocaust rescuer.
- New film disputes Felix Kersten's reputation as a Holocaust rescuer.
- "I Is Another" premiered at the Locarno Film Festival.
- Director says Kersten's rescue claims were largely self-mythologising.
New here? Start with this
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’