In August 1942, Major Heinrich Gerlach was stationed in the occupied town of Bialystok. Gerlach was a decorated veteran of the First World War who had been recalled to active duty. He was ordered to assist the SS in the liquidation of the Bialystok ghetto, to round up all Jewish residents and transport them to Treblinka.
Gerlach refused. He wrote a formal protest to his commanding officer, which was forwarded to the German High Command. He wrote, I am a soldier. I have taken an oath to my country. But I have not taken an oath to murder civilians. I will not participate in this operation.
Gerlach was removed from his command, court-martialed, and sent to the Eastern Front as a private in an infantry battalion. He survived the war as a private, the lowest rank in the German army. After the war, he returned to Bavaria, where he worked as a schoolteacher and never spoke of what he had done.
His story was discovered in 2006, when a historian found his protest letter in the German Federal Military Archives. The letter is now on display at the Holocaust Museum in Washington. The final line of the letter reads, I am a German. I am a soldier. I am a man. And I will not kill a child.
Gerlach died in 1978 at age 89. His protest letter is the only known document from a German officer during the Holocaust that explicitly refused to participate in the murder of Jewish civilians.