Tesch & Stabenow

Tesch & Stabenow (Testa) was a pest-control company headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, established in 1924. They used a broad variety of methods and techniques. One chemical used was Zyklon B with its active ingredient hydrogen cyanide. Bruno Tesch had been involved in the development of Zyklon B, but the DEGESCH (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung, German Association for Pest Control) held the patents to it. Tesch & Stabenow received the exclusive license to distribute Zyklon B to all clients east of the River Elbe. To the West, the Frankfurt company Heerd & Lingler (HeLi) had an exclusive license.

Between September and November 1945, the British conducted a major show trial in their zone of occupation about crimes presumably committed by former SS camp officials of the Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz camps. Most defendants were severely tortured during pre-trial detention, and former camp inmates were encouraged to let their rage and lust for revenge run free. The trial ended with the foregone conclusion of proving that mass murder with Zyklon B had been committed at Auschwitz. (See the entry on the Bergen-Belsen Trials.)

With Zyklon-B gassings proven in court, this claim could no longer be challenged by the defense in other trials. The British next turned against the responsible managers of Tesch & Stabenow for allegedly having delivered Zyklon B to Auschwitz and other camps while knowing that it was mainly used to kill inmates.

During the trial’s preparation, the British interrogator, the Jew Anton Freud — a grandson of Sigmund Freud — used threats and lies in his attempts to get company employees to confess to things they insisted were untrue. He grossly misrepresented Auschwitz as a small camp with no need for huge Zyklon-B deliveries for pest control. However, the exact opposite was true: Auschwitz was an order of magnitude larger, and its long-lasting typhus epidemic orders of magnitude worse, than any other German wartime camp. Therefore, Testa’s Zyklon-B supplies were perfectly justified and explicable with innocuous circumstances.

The judges sided with the torturing, threatening, lying and misrepresenting prosecution. They sentenced Dr. Tesch and his right-hand man Karl Weinbacher to death and had them both executed in what was a clear-cut case of judicial murder, mainly prepared and arranged by Anton Freud.

(For more details, see Mattogno/Jansson 2024, pp. 17-41; 147-202.)