I first met Captain Gunther in Paris in July 1940. The meeting took place at the Hôtel du Louvre, or possibly the HQ of the French Gestapo at 100 avenue Henri-Martin. Other officers present at this meeting included Herbert Hagen and Karl Bömelburg. Gunther had arrived in Paris as the special emissary of SS General Reinhard Heydrich and he was ordered to track down a number of French and German communists who were wanted by the Nazi government back in Berlin. Gunther struck me as typical of the type who found favor with Heydrich: cynical, ruthless, and not at all a gentlemen. He made clear his own detestation of the French and, in spite of my efforts to rein him in, he insisted on flying to the south of France and collecting a detachment of motorized SS to drive him to Gurs and Le Vernet, to search those two camps for Heydrich’s wanted men. It was my own feeling there was nothing to be lost by delaying matters until the end of summer, largely out of sensitivity to the defeated armies of France. But Gunther was most insistent. He was ill, I recall—I don’t remember why, later on there was talk of his involvement with a Swiss prostitute—but in spite of this, he still traveled south to carry out his mission, to which Heydrich had given top priority. In fairness to Captain Gunther, it may have been this illness that prompted his summary action in regard to the prisoners. He was accompanied by another German officer, Hauptsturmführer Paul Kestner, and it was him who informed me of what had happened on the road from Gurs to Lourdes.

Almost a dozen men were arrested in Gurs. Among these was the head of the French Communist Party in Le Havre, Lucien Roux. It seems terrible to think it, but apparently these men knew what Captain Gunther had in store for them. The SS drove a few kilometers out of Gurs and stopped in a forest clearing. There Gunther ordered everyone out of the trucks. The prisoners were lined up, offered a last cigarette, and then shot. Gunther delivered the coup de grâce to several men who showed signs of life and then they all went on their way, leaving the bodies where they fell.