In the dying days of the second world war, a secret meeting took place between the SS chief Heinrich Himmler and Norbert Masur, a German-born Swede and representative of the World Jewish Congress.
Ben Brown bases this tense drama on that encounter, brokered by a physiotherapist, Felix Kersten, who worked as Himmler’s masseur. Masur sought to persuade Himmler to free Jews from terror and incarceration in the concentration camps; Himmler was strategising on how to rehabilitate his global reputation in the face of a now inevitable Allied victory, while ostensibly staying loyal to Hitler.
