Felix Kersten

He then left for Berlin, where he continued his studies and eventually became the pupil of a notable Chinese therapeutic masseur, Dr Ko,[1] whom he had met at a dinner party.

Kersten had a number of influential patients, among them Prince Hendrik of the Netherlands (after 1928) and Benito Mussolini's son-in-law, the Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano.

Towards the end of the war, Kersten arranged a meeting between Himmler and Norbert Masur, a member of the Swedish branch of the World Jewish Congress, in Hartzwalde, a few miles from Ravensbrück concentration camp.

As a result, Himmler agreed to spare the lives of the remaining 60,000 Jews left in Nazi concentration camps days before their liberation by the Allies.

[5] However, a later investigation by Dutch historian Louis de Jong concluded that the mass deportation plan had not existed, as well as that many of Kersten's documents had been fabricated.

[6] The Swedish archives testify that Kersten was an intermediary between Himmler and Count Folke Bernadotte in the negotiations that led to the rescue operation 'The White Buses', saving hundreds of Norwegians and Danes from certain death in the last days of the Third Reich.

Kersten's claims of being instrumental in saving Finland's Jews from German hands may be exaggerated, but the Finnish government used his services in the hope of influencing Himmler.

[11] Felix Kersten is parodied in the Woody Allen book Getting Even, in the chapter entitled "The Schmeed Memoirs", in which a fictional barber in wartime Germany describes his time as a hair stylist for Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi officers.