AUSCHWITZ No. 157 £4.

25
NUMBER 157
© Copyright After the Battle 2012
Editor: Karel Margry
Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. Ramsey
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Telephone: 026-4462834. E-mail: si@sipublicaties.nl During the five years of its existence, an estimated 1.1 million people perished at
Auschwitz (see page 44). With the general public having grown used to the figure of
six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, it may be useful to point out that not all of
CONTENTS them died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Some 1.35 million Jews were shot by
the SS-Einsatzkommandos (SS mobile killing squads), first in Poland in 1939-40 and
AUSCHWITZ 2 then, on a much larger scale, in Russia in 1941-42 (‘Holocaust by bullets’) and 800,000
perished in the overcrowded ghettos set up by the Nazis in eastern Europe. Nearly
UNITED STATES two million were murdered by gas in other death camps: Chelmno (150,000-200,000),
The 70th Anniversary of Belzec (435,000-550,000), Sobibor (170,000-250,000), Treblinka (700,000-1,000,000) and
Stars and Stripes 48 Majdanek (50,000-60,000) in occupied Poland and Maly Trostenets (40,000-65,000) in
the Soviet Union. Another 250,000 died in numerous other concentration camps all
Front Cover: The gate building of over Europe, giving a final figure of between 4.9 and 5.4 million victims.
Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp —
the ‘Gate of Death’. Hundreds of thousands
of victims entered the death camp through
this gate. The railway line leading directly
into the camp was completed in May 1944.
(Karel Margry)
Back Cover: The International Monument to
the victims of all nations at Auschwitz-
Birkenau. Inaugurated in 1967, it stands at
the end of the railway siding, close to the
ruins of Krematoria II and III. (Karel Margry)
Acknowledgements: The text of the
Auschwitz story is reproduced from
‘Auschwitz — An Overview’ by Yisrael
Gutman, included in Anatomy of the
Auschwitz Death Camp, by Yisrael Gut-
man and Michael Berenbaum (Editors)
published by the Indiana University Press
(Bloomington and Indianapolis © 1994) in
association with the United States Holo-
caust Memorial Museum. Reprinted with
permission of Indiana University Press
and the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum. For assistance with the Ausch-
witz story, the Editor thanks Naama Shilo
of Yad Vashem; Nancy Hartman of the Auschwitz was the creation of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler (second from left)
US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and with camp commander Rudolf Höss (third from right) as his prime executive, pictured
Okko Luursema. here on July 17, 1942 during Himmler’s two-day inspection of Auschwitz and the
Photo Credits: USHMM — United States associated IG Farben plant. The man in civilian suit (centre) is Max Faust, IG Farben’s
Holocaust Memorial Museum. head engineer on site.

2
Auschwitz — the most infamous of all the Nazi concentration industries in the region, spawning dozens of satellite camps.
camps — has globally come to symbolise the atrocities committed ‘Arbeit macht frei’ (Work makes you free), the cynical slogan above
by the Third Reich. Begun as a detention camp, primarily for Polish the entrance gate of Auschwitz I — the Stammlager (main camp),
political prisoners, it grew to become the principal killing centre set pictured here by Stanislaw Luczko after liberation in 1945 — also
up for the mass murder of the European Jews. At the same time, it appeared at the gates of other concentration camps like Dachau
was one of the largest of the Nazi slave labour camps, distributing and Sachsenhausen (in both of which camp commander Rudolf
thousands of inmates to war factories, building projects and other Höss had served before he came to Auschwitz) and Flossenbürg.

By Yisrael Gutman
In the years since the Second World War,
the name Auschwitz has become virtually
synonymous with the unrestrained tyranny,
the power of terror, and the systematic mur-
der of millions of human beings during Ger-
man Nazi rule. In Der SS-Staat (The SS
State), a book on the structure of the concen-
tration camp system, Eugen Kogon, a former
prisoner of the Buchenwald camp, described
almost unlimited totalitarianism in which liv-
ing arrangements and behavioural norms
were imposed on persons deprived of any
AUSCHWITZ
right to participate in shaping their lives and
fate. It was under the unremitting oppression
of the concentration camps that the Nazi
concept of absolute power over a captive
population came closest to full implementa-
tion. Thus a survivor, Primo Levi, observed
that ‘never has there existed a state that was
really “totalitarian”. . . . Never has some

Right: The sign at Auschwitz had been

manufactured by prisoners from the
camp blacksmith under the supervision
of Jan Liwacz in July 1940. They deliber-
ately inverted the letter B as a covert
mark of disobedience. Early in the morn-
ing on December 18, 2009, the sign was
stolen in an overnight raid that made the
world headlines. The culprits, five local
petty criminals, were arrested within
two days near Turin in northern Poland
and the five-metre-long cast-iron sign —
ATB

which had been cut in three to fit into a

getaway car — was recovered and
returned to its original place. It later Our author, Yisrael Gutman, is one of the world’s leading historians on the Nazi
transpired the theft had been organised genocide of the Jews. A survivor of Auschwitz and other camps, he was professor of
by a former Swedish neo-Nazi, Anders Modern Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as well as chairman of
Högström, who had hired the Poles for the Academic Committee of Yad Vashem, the central museum and archives on the
the job. Holocaust in Israel, and deputy chairman of the International Auschwitz Council.

3
Right: In order to isolate the Auschwitz WEICHSEL/VISTULA
camp from the Polish population living in
the vicinity, the SS in June 1940 deported
INTEREST AREA
some 2,000 people, with further evacua- OF AUSCHWITZ OW

TO
AK

KAT
tions following in July and November, KR
CONCENTRATION CAMP TO

OW
demolishing 123 houses and appropriating

ICE
all the land in a five-kilometre radius around
the camp. In October 1941, after a decision
had been taken to build an extension of the
Auschwitz camp at Birkenau (later desig-
nated Auschwitz II), further evictions and
demolitions took place around that site. In
all, seven villages were evacuated. In this BIRKENAU
VILLAGE
triangular area of 40 square kilometres at
the confluence of the Sola and the Vistula
— known as the Interessenbereich KL AUSCHWITZ
Auschwitz (Interest Area of Auschwitz Con- TOWN

ION
centration Camp) — the camp administra-

TAT
tion set up several satellite facilities, mostly

DS S
GOO
agricultural model farms, all of them
worked by prisoners housed in small sub-
camps. These included the plant-breeding
establishment at Raïsko (where there was
also a bacteriological research station of the
Hygiene-Institut der Waffen-SS), the poultry
farm and the fish-processing plant at Har-
mense, the agricultural estate at Babitz and
the cattle-breeding station and fishponds at
Budy. Also within the Area of Interest were
the armaments factories of the Deutsche
Ausrüstungswerke (DAW) and Krupp AG

A
IAL
(later Weichsel-Union-Metallwerke) and a

Z-B
LIT
quarry run by the Deutsche Erd- und Stein-

BIE
TO
werke GmbH (German Earth and Stone
Works Ltd — DEST). Thus the Auschwitz
SS created their own industrial zone around LEGEND
the two main camps. Railway
form of reaction, a corrective of the total Rivers/Lakes
tyranny, been lacking, not even in the Third Roads
Reich or Stalin’s Soviet Union: in both cases, Boundary of Camp Interest Area
public opinion, the magistrature, the foreign
press, the churches, the feeling for justice Outer guard perimeter
and humanity that ten or 20 years of tyranny Satellite camp
were not enough to eradicate, have to a Gas chambers and crematoria
greater or lesser extent acted as a brake. Provisional gas chambers
Only in the Lager was the restraint from (Bunkers 1 and 2)
below non-existent, and the power of these
OWITZ

small satraps absolute.’ ‘Kanada’ I and II (plundered goods depots)

In a similar vein, Hannah Arendt argued
TO JAWISCH

Rampe I-III (unloading platforms)

in The Origins of Totalitarianism that ‘the
concentration and extermination camps of Birkenau camp sections
totalitarian regimes serve as laboratories in
Holzhof (timber depot)
which the fundamental belief of totalitarian-
ism that everything is possible is being veri- Bauhof (building materials depot)
fied.’
Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi Workshops
concentration camps. In the period from Expansion of the main camp
May 1940, when German authorities laid the (Lager-Erweiterung)
groundwork for its establishment, to January Armaments factories Krupp AG,
1945, when most surviving Auschwitz prison- later Union-Werke
ers were marched off by their German Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke GmbH
captors and Soviet Army troops liberated the (German Earth and Stone Works Ltd)
camp, approximately 405,000 prisoners of

Right: Just inside the camp perimeter

near the gate was the venue of the
Lagerkapelle (camp orchestra). It played
as prisoners departed for their work
details and again on their return. The
Lagerkapelle was originally started by
Polish inmates who had received musi-
cal instruments from home, and they
first began rehearsing in a room in Block
24 on January 6, 1941. After getting offi-
cial permission from the SS, they began
playing at the gate and also giving con-
certs for prisoners and for the Comman-
dant near his villa. The SS approved of
their performing at the gate for it
ensured that the prisoners paraded by in
an orderly fashion and made them easier
to count. The ability to play a musical
instrument, and thus obtain a place in
the orchestra, was one way of enhancing
a prisoner’s chance of survival. The
wooden building behind the musicians is
the camp kitchen and the large empty
space seen on the left is the Appellplatz
(roll-call square).

4
 N

both sexes from nearly every European war effort, as well as for work in mines, con- conclude that at that time Auschwitz did not
country were registered, assigned serial num- struction and agriculture. differ significantly from other concentration
bers, and incarcerated there. Of this number But the uniqueness and historical signifi- camps.
an estimated 200,000 perished. (This figure cance of Auschwitz do not derive from those From May 1940 to January 1942, 36,285
does not include prisoners who were mur- features. In January 1941, the head of the prisoners (26,288 civilians and 9,997 Soviet
dered without being registered.) The propor- Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main prisoners of war) were incarcerated in the
tion of deaths among Auschwitz prisoners Security Office — RSHA), SS-Gruppen- camp. But not even the mass scale of the
was much higher than in other concentration führer Reinhard Heydrich, second in the SS camp and the savagery of its regime were
camps, such as Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald hierarchy to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich fated to become its hallmark.
and Mauthausen. Himmler, classified various concentration The gruesome history and enduring horror
With the expansion and development of camps in accordance with the severity of the of Auschwitz can be attributed primarily to
the camp complex, Auschwitz and its satel- offences committed by their prisoners. the machinery for mass extermination of
lites encompassed more than 40 camps Auschwitz was placed in the same category human beings created by the Nazis at the
spread over a vast industrial area rich with as Dachau and Sachsenhausen as a camp for nearby Birkenau camp, a unit of Auschwitz.
natural resources. These camps served as a prisoners whose offences were ‘relatively The location was designated by Himmler as
huge pool of prisoner labour for the German light and definitely correctable’. One might the centrepiece for ‘the final solution of the
Jewish question in Europe’. From spring
1942 until autumn 1944, the operation
designed to annihilate European Jews func-
tioned almost without let-up as transport
trains delivered Jews from Nazi-occupied
countries and European satellites of the
Third Reich.
The overwhelming majority of those
victims, designated as ‘RSHA transports’
earmarked for ‘Sonderbehandlung’ (‘special
treatment’), were ignorant of their destina-
tion and their fate. They were moved like
cattle and arrived in a state of total exhaus-
tion. It has been said that ‘there will never be
people as innocent as the victims on the
threshold of the gas chambers’.
‘Selections’ took place on the railway sid-
ing ramp at the gates of Birkenau. Children,
the elderly, the sick, and large numbers of
men and women were selected for death and
marched immediately to the gas chambers.

Left: The camp kitchen was later enlarged

with two wings to its front that swallowed
up most of the Appellplatz. Today, this side
of the building has lost its wooden cladding
ATB

but otherwise it survives unaltered.

5
 YAD VASHEM FA157-26
When the SS took over the former Polish military barracks two-storey blocks to fill up the centre area and to add an extra
from the Wehrmacht to turn it into a concentration camp, floor to all the single-storey buildings, using the prisoners as
there were just 20 brick-built barrack blocks — nine on one the labour force. The work was completed in the first quarter
side of the terrain and 11 on the other, with a large open of 1942, after which all blocks were assigned new numbers
parade ground in between. Fourteen of the buildings had only (the eight new ones became Nos. 4 to 7 and 15 to 18). This pic-
one floor and six were two-storeyed. In 1941, having received ture was taken in December 1944 from in front of Block 24
orders from Himmler to enlarge the camp’s capacity from (formerly No. 9), the prisoner’s office near the camp gate, and
10,000 to 30,000 prisoners, camp commander SS-Sturmbann- shows two of the new blocks, Nos. 15 on the left and 16 on
führer Rudolf Höss instigated the construction of eight more the right. Note the Christmas tree.
Other transport arrivals, classified as able- The initiative to establish a concentration tion of distant Auschwitz in the Katowice
bodied, were selected for work and were reg- camp in Auschwitz in the spring of 1940 district, part of the annexed new Eastern
istered in the camp as prisoners. According came from the SS and the police district com- Territories (about 30 kilometres east of
to the best estimates now obtainable, more mand, which argued that the jails and prisons Katowice, on the juncture of Eastern Upper
than one million Jews were murdered in the could no longer meet its needs due to the Silesia, the General Government, and
gas chambers on arrival and their bodies intensification of Polish resistance activities. Warthegau), as its site was due above all,
incinerated in the camp’s crematoria without Martin Broszat, a German historian of though not exclusively, to the large number
the victims ever being registered. National Socialism and Nazi power, writes in of Polish prisoners captured by the security
Of those murdered upon arrival, no trace Anatomie des SS-Staats, his study of the police in these areas. They were incarcerated
remained: no name, no record, no precise concentration camps: in congested prisons without any intention of
information. In The Nazi Doctors, Robert ‘Establishment of the camp and the selec- putting them on trial.’
Jay Lifton writes:
‘When we think of the crimes of Nazi doc-
tors, what comes to mind are their cruel and
sometimes fatal experiments. . . . Yet when
we turn to the Nazi doctor’s role in
Auschwitz, it was not the experiments that
were most significant. Rather, it was his par-
ticipation in the killing process — indeed his
supervision of Auschwitz mass murder from
beginning to end.’
The place that gave its name to the camp
was the small Polish district town of
Oswiecim, located 50 kilometres south-west
of Krakow and 286 kilometres from Warsaw.
From the partition and subjugation of
Poland in 1772 until the establishment of the
independent Polish republic in 1918,
Oswiecim, virtually unknown outside
Poland, lay within the territory of the Haps-
burg Empire. Following the occupation of
Poland in September 1939 by the Third
Reich, Oswiecim was incorporated into Ger-
many together with Upper Silesia, hitherto
ATB

under Polish rule, and renamed Auschwitz.

On the eve of the war, the town’s population
stood at 12,000, including nearly 5,000 Jewish Unlike the wooden huts of most other Nazi concentration camps, all the buildings of
residents. The Sola river, a tributary of the Auschwitz main camp have survived and remain exactly as they were during the war.
Vistula, flows near Oswiecim; yet at this A State Museum since 1947, the site has been carefully preserved as a place of
latitude it is little more than a creek. remembrance and warning to later generations. Since 1960 several of the blocks
Although Oswiecim is not far from the Tatra house so-called ‘national exhibitions’, each produced by one of the countries from
Mountains, whose peaks remain snow-clad where the prisoners came and detailing the history of that particular nation under
all year round, it lies in a humid and foggy Nazi rule and the fate of its nationals at Auschwitz. Most of them have been renewed
valley with swampy soil, an unpleasant from time to time. Block 15 currently houses the exhibition for Poland and Block 16
climate conducive to disease. that of Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

6
 YAD VASHEM FA157-23
Above: Around the corner from the pre-
vious shot, in the main Lagerstrasse
(camp street), this is the enlarged camp
kitchen block completed in 1943. An
oblong building built around an inner
courtyard, its single entrance is visible
between the two wings fronting the
Lagerstrasse. This picture was taken by
the SS in the winter of 1943-44.
The concentration camps, which existed
from the time of the Nazi takeover until the
collapse of the Third Reich, were conceived
as an ‘iron fist’ to circumvent the law as
dictated by the regime’s changing needs.
Initially the camps served as instruments of
terror and ‘re-education’ to frighten, deter,
and paralyse the Nazis’ opposition, primarily
members of left-wing political parties and
others with liberal views. As the regime
consolidated its grip on power, some of its

ATB
highly placed functionaries concluded that
the camps had fulfilled their purpose and
should be abolished. During 1936, some The contrast today could not be greater. Tourists now stroll where inmates, wearing
7,500 prisoners on average were incarcerated striped prisoner garments, once toiled through the mud and snow.

ATB

Left: Public hangings of prisoners were an integral part of the law Ohrt (No. 367), Leon Rajzer (No. 399) and Tadeusz Rapacz (No.
terror campaign carried out by the SS, the first such execution 36043). All members of the Vermessungs-Kommando (Surveying
occurring on July 8, 1942, when two Polish inmates were hung. Squad), they had been sentenced to death for illegal contacts with
On July 19, 1943, the SS used a specially constructed gallows to the local population and for assisting in the escape of three fellow
execute 12 Polish inmates in front of all the other prisoners during prisoners. After the war the joint gallows was reconstructed by
roll-call. They were Stanislaw Stawinski (Prisoner No. 6569), Czes- the Museum, this picture being taken by Tadeusz Kinowski in
law Marcisz (No. 26891), Janusz Skrzetuski-Pogonowski (No. 253), 1954. Right: Although reconstructions in former concentration
Edmund Sikorski (No. 25419), Jerzy Wozniak (No. 35650), Jozef camps always run the risk of providing fuel for holocaust deniers,
Wojtyga (No. 24740), Zbigniew Foltanski (No. 41664), Jozef the gallows have been retained. Today, information panels
Gancarz (No. 24538), Mieczyslaw Kulikowski (No. 25404), Bogus- provide visitors with ample background knowledge.

7
Right: The north-eastern corner of the
camp, photographed by Stanislaw
Mucha of the Polish Red Cross after the
liberation of the camp in January 1945.
It gives a good view of the double
barbed-wired and high-voltage electri-
fied fence surrounding the prisoners’
compound. The three blocks closest to
the camera are Nos. 1 to 3. From Octo-
ber 7, 1941 to March 1, 1942, they —
together with Blocks 12-14 and 22-24 —
formed the so-called Russenlager (Rus-
sians Camp), a special enclosure within
Auschwitz main camp housing 10,000
Russian POWs sent here from Stalag
VIII E (308) in Neuhammer-am-Quais in
Upper Silesia. They were to serve as
work force to build the new camp at
Birkenau which, in Himmler’s original
scheme, was planned as a POW camp
for captured Russian soldiers. Already
in poor health on arrival, and further
ravaged by starvation, typhus and ill
treatment by the SS, in just five
months the majority of these Russians
had perished so that when the order
came to transfer the rest to Birkenau,
only 945 were still alive. Then, from
March 26, 1942, the blocks seen in this
shot — Nos. 1 to 10 (not counting
No. 11, the one at the very end) — were
closed off from the rest of the camp by
a wall and used as the Frauenlager
(Women’s Camp), to house several
thousand female prisoners, both Jew-
ish and non-Jewish. This situation
lasted for five months, until August 16,
when all the women were transferred
to the B I section of Birkenau (see page
19) after which the Frauenlager in
Auschwitz I was dissolved.
in concentration camps in Germany. Even-
tually the Chancellor and Nazi Führer Adolf
Hitler decided to continue the camps under
Himmler and the SS and consolidated their
power.
In the second stage of the camps’ history,

ATB
from 1936-37 to the first years of the war,
they served as dumping grounds for ‘work
shirkers’, ‘a-social elements’, criminals and Even without the snow of January 1945, and with trees in full summer bloom, the
Jews (especially in the aftermath of the gruesome character of the camp still cannot be softened.
Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) anti-Jewish vio-
lence that erupted on November 9, 1938). The war brought in its wake ‘a great pects. Conditions in the camps deteriorated
Many such prisoners worked as forced change in the life of concentration camps’, steadily. As Martin Broszat points out, the
labourers, described by the historian Karl according to the commander and architect of tendency of the SS to turn concentration
Dietrich Bracher as slave labourers the Auschwitz camp, SS-Obersturmbann- camps into the pool of manpower for forced
impressed for work in Hitler’s ‘megalo- führer Rudolf Ferdinand Höss, who wrote labour at its disposal can be detected as early
maniac’ construction projects. SS-owned his memoirs in a Polish jail after the war. The as the winter of 1941-42. Paradoxically, this
plants and other enterprises were created growing network of concentration camps tendency ran counter to the desire, which
next to existing camps, and two new camps began absorbing ever-increasing numbers of had also gained momentum since the out-
were established at Flossenbürg (see After nationals of Nazi-occupied countries, mainly break of the war, to eradicate and drive out
the Battle No. 131) and Mauthausen. On the underground political activists and other sus- certain groups of undesirables.
eve of the war, the prisoner population of
Nazi concentration camps had reached
25,000.

Right: Continuing his photographic

documentation of the camp perimeter,
Mucha pictured Guard Tower B which
stood halfway along the length of the
eastern (rear) side of the camp. Nine
towers surrounded the prisoners com-
pound, designated (clockwise from the
north-eastern comer) A to J. Built in the
winter of 1943-44 to replace the earlier
provisional guard towers put up in
1940-41, they were of two models:
large (Grosser Turm) and small (Kleiner
Turm). Tower B was one of four of the
latter type. Also note the fence con-
structed of concrete panels behind the
tower. This was erected in 1942 to hide
the camp from the street and it lined
the entire eastern and southern sides.
Far right: The same tower today. Note
that the sign in the foreground is of a
different design as the one from 1945 —
most probably a replica produced by
ATB

the museum staff.

8
 In practice, this meant that along with
planning and promoting productive labour,
methods known collectively as ‘Vernichtung
durch Arbeit’ (‘destruction through work’)
were introduced. Destruction through work
assumed two main forms: (1) work as punish-
ment in the comprehensive terror system,
involving humiliation, brutal treatment and
physical abuse, and (2) back-breaking labour
without even the simplest work tools, per-
formed by prisoners living in conditions
below subsistence level.
The growing number of prisoners classi-
fied by the Nazis as ‘racial’ inferiors coin-
cided with the attitude that such persons con-
stituted a hostile and expendable element
that should be eliminated. Their taskmasters
acted as if the supply of prisoner manpower
was inexhaustible, requiring no effort to pre-
serve it. This stance changed in 1942, how-
ever, as the war on the Eastern Front
dragged on and the shortage of manpower
was keenly felt.
In March 1942, concentration camps were
placed under the SS-Wirtschafts- und Ver-
waltungs-Hauptamt (SS Economic and Reaching the next corner, Mucha took a picture looking down the southern side of
Administrative Main Office — WVHA), a the camp. Here the screening wall lay much closer to the inner barbed-wire fence.
move that suggests a more rational approach The building closest to the camera is Block 11.
to prisoner manpower in concentration
camps. From the second half of that year,
and particularly from 1943 on, this shift was
apparent in a modest improvement in the liv-
ing conditions of prisoners which, in turn,
somewhat reduced the mortality rate. While
this relaxation of prisoner labour policies did
not extend to the policy on the extermination
of European Jews, which reached its climax
during this period, it did affect the conditions
of some Jewish victims. Under heavy pres-
sure from officials interested in the most
effective use of manpower for the war
machine, Himmler consented to the tempo-
rary use of some able-bodied, skilled Jewish
workers in the production process, while
making sure that these prisoners were placed
in concentration camps under SS control.
Although the living conditions of Jewish
prisoners in the camps generally were much
harsher than those of other national and
ethnic groups and their mortality rate conse-
quently was higher, it is nonetheless incon-
trovertible that the few Jews who survived
until the end of the war in the camps owe

ATB
their lives largely to the Germans’ desperate
need for manpower, which brought a relax-
ation of camp regime in the later stages of The aspect is virtually unchanged today. Note the wall connecting Block 11 with the
the war. one next to it, No. 10.
In the first years of their existence, the
camps were populated by German prisoners per cent of the prisoner population, while the The growth in the prisoner population was
and, after the annexation of Austria in 1938, overwhelming majority of prisoners were formidable, from 25,000 at the outbreak of
by numerous Austrians as well. In the final Russians, Poles, French, Dutch, Czechs, the war to 525,000 in 1944. In January 1945, a
stages of the war, Germans from the Reich Greeks, and Jews from Nazi-occupied Euro- few months before war’s end, the camps held
(Reichsdeutsche) comprised only five to ten pean countries. more than 700,000.
The concentration camp system was a rela-
tively small segment of the vast network of
more than 2,000 camps in areas under Nazi
control, including labour camps, prisoner-of-
war camps, and transit camps for prisoners
and Jews awaiting transport to their final
destination. Concentration camps differed
from other types of camps in that they
remained under the control of the central SS
authorities and maintained a uniform inter-
nal regime and unified command. All SS-
controlled concentration camps were bound
by the same harsh regulations which gov-
erned other prisoners and SS personnel: a
daily schedule that regulated prisoners’ lives
down to the last detail; a hierarchy of SS
command with some power handed to func-
tionary-prisoners (those assigned official
duties), and a penal system which permitted
the hanging of prisoners.
The camp established at Dachau in 1933
by Himmler, then police chief in Munich,
served as a model for all subsequent concen-
tration camps. Dachau served also as a train-
ing facility for the SS’s so-called Toten-
kopfverbände (Death’s-Head Units), which
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became the core of SS personnel responsible

9
Block 11 (originally Block 13), in the
south-eastern corner of the camp, was
the camp prison and was known to the
prisoners as the ‘Block of Death’. The
ground floor served as prison for Polish
civilians (men and women) who were
awaiting the verdict of the Gestapo
police summary court in Katowice. About
once every month on average, SS-Stan-
dartenführer Dr. Rudolf Mildner, chief of
the Gestapo in Katowice, would come to
Auschwitz and, together with his assis-
tants and with SS-Untersturmführer
Maximilian Grabner, the head of the Poli-
tische Abteilung (the Gestapo detach-
ment in the camp), hold a court session.
At one sitting, lasting from two to three
hours, they would pronounce from a few
dozen to more than 100 death sentences.
The condemned were then shot in the
back of the head in the adjoining court-
yard or, if the number was small, in the
lavatory situated in the passageway to
the yard. Prisoners from the camp were

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executed in the same way.
In the cellar of the building were 22 prison cells of various size, and political commissars (who had been sent to Auschwitz to be
used for camp inmates and civilians arrested on suspicion of eliminated) inside and, wearing a gas mask, threw in the gas pel-
maintaining contact with prisoners or helping them to escape. In lets which killed the victims instantly. A few days later, on the
late August 1941, while camp commander Höss was away on evening of September 3 (and after Höss had returned) the SS
official business, SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch, the repeated the experiment on a much larger scale, cramming 298
Schutzhaftlagerführer (Protective Custody Camp Commander), Polish prisoners, selected from the camp infirmary, and about
on his own initiative carried out the first-ever experimental 600 Russian POWs into a larger number of cells into which Zyk-
gassing of prisoners in these cells using Zyklon B. (The poison lon B was introduced. When the doors were opened the next
was used in the camp as an insecticide and there was always a morning, one prisoner was found to be still alive so more poison
stock of cans on hand.) Blocking the window of one cell with was thrown in and the doors shut again. Inmates removed the
earth, he shoved a small group of captured Russian functionaries corpses on the next day.
for running the concentration camp system.
Having completed the Dachau ‘school’, they
went on to serve as commanders and senior
officials in other such facilities (see After the
Battle No. 27).
SS-Oberführer Theodor Eicke, the first
Dachau commander and later the Inspector
for Concentration Camps, designed the
Dachau camp regulations, which served as a
model for regulations in all other concentra-

Right: The courtyard between Blocks 10

and 11. Enclosed by a high wall on both
sides, this is where those who had been
sentenced to death in Block 11 were led in
pairs to stand facing the ‘Schwarze
Wand’ (Black Wall) or ‘Wall of Death’ and
then shot in the back of the head. In all,
an estimated 20,000, most of them Polish
prisoners, were executed here between
1940 and 1945. The execution wall is a

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post-war reconstruction.
tion camps. It was Eicke who determined
that ‘commiseration with the enemy of the
state [the prisoner] does not benefit the SS
man’. At the beginning of the war, Eicke
joined the Waffen-SS, taking command of
the SS-Division ‘Totenkopf‘, and was killed
on the Eastern Front in 1943, but his theory
and practice remained in force in Nazi con-
centration camps until the end.
The site selected to become the core of the
future Auschwitz camp lay outside the town
of Oswiecim. It included 16 one-story build-
ings that had served as army barracks. The
Inspectorate for Concentration Camps dis-
patched two commissions to inspect the pro-
posed site. The first, which arrived in Janu-
ary 1940, issued a negative opinion. The
second, which arrived in April 1940, was
headed by SS-Hauptsturmführer Rudolf
Höss, whose name was to become perma-

Left: A portable gallows was used to

hang prisoners who had escaped and
been recaptured or had been found
guilty of organising resistance in the
camp. This picture of it in the courtyard
of Block 11 was taken in 1945. Right:
Today, the gallows is exhibited inside
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Block 11.

10
 Right: The crematorium of the Stamm-
lager (Auschwitz I) was built in June-
August 1940, converted from an old store.
It stood in a walled enclosure behind the
SS administrative buildings, outside the
prisoners’ compound. Originally it just
served to dispose of the prisoners who
had died in the camp but, following the
first gassings of prisoners in Block 11, it
began to be used as a gas chamber.
nently linked with the camp. Acting on a
report from Höss, Himmler ordered the
establishment of the camp on the site and
appointed Höss as its commander.
The first order of business was the eviction
of about 1,200 persons who lived in shacks
and cabins in the vicinity of the projected
camp. Next, 300 Jewish residents of Oswie-
cim were brought in for six weeks to level the
terrain and lay foundations. Then, in May
1940, 30 German criminal prisoners arrived
from the Sachsenhausen camp. Assigned the
first Auschwitz camp serial numbers, these
prisoners made up the network of func-
tionary-prisoners holding official posts in the
prisoner hierarchy, ‘the long arm of the SS in
the camp’, as David Rousset, a French con-

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centration camp survivor, put it.
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Left: Its Leichenhalle (mortuary) was made airtight and several Between March and December 1942, tens of thousands of Jews
openings made in the ceiling (right) to enable Zyklon B to be from Upper Silesia, Slovakia, Holland, France, Belgium,
dropped inside. Some 700 to 900 persons could be crammed into Yugoslavia and Poland were murdered here. Krematorium I (as it
the room and killed in one go. The first gassing here took place was called after four new gas chambers and crematoria were
in September 1941, its victims being 900 Russian POWs. opened in Auschwitz-Birkenau), functioned until July 1943.

The bodies were taken to the adjoining cre-

matorium room to be incinerated. Origi-
nally there had been only one coal-fired
double-muffle furnace but two more were
installed in January-February 1941 and in
November 1941-May 1942 respectively.
Each retort could take two to three bodies
at a time and together the six cremators
could burn 340 corpses daily. The incinera-
tors were manufactured by the firm of Topf
& Söhne in Erfurt, which also supplied
those for five other Nazi concentration
camps: Dachau (see After the Battle No. 27),
Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Belzec and
Gusen, and later those for Birkenau (Ausch-
witz II). In all, including those in the four
large crematoria at Birkenau, there were 52
Topf & Söhne muffles at Auschwitz. When
this crematorium was closed down in July
1943 (gassings had already stopped here in
December 1942), the three ovens were dis-
mantled and the building used thereafter as
an air raid shelter. After the war, two of the
ovens were reconstructed by the Auschwitz
Museum using the original metal parts
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found in the camp.

The other main supplier of crematorium furnaces for Nazi After the Battle No. 131), Neuengamme, Majdanek, Stutthof,
camps was H. Kori of Berlin. They supplied fewer than Topf — Gross-Rosen, Natzweiler-Struthof (see After the Battle No. 108),
some 20 to 30 in all — but to a larger number of camps: Dachau, Dora-Mittelbau (see After the Battle No. 101), Bergen-Belsen
Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück, Mauthausen, Flossenbürg (see (see After the Battle No. 89) and Vught in the Netherlands.

11
YAD VASHEM FA157-70

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Left: In the spring of 1944 construction started of a large new where prisoners had arrived ever since the camp was first opened
Admissions Building on a plot of land immediately adjoining the in 1940 (right). Although still uncompleted, the building was
prisoners’ camp and right beside the section of rail track — known already taken into use after the summer of 1944 and this picture of
as ‘Rampe I’ (Unloading Platform I), see the map on page 4 — it was made that winter.
On June 14, 1940, the first transport carry-
ing 728 Polish inmates from the town of
Tarnow in Galicia arrived in the camp. The
administration and management staff was
assembled, mostly officials transferred to
Auschwitz from other camps. SS-Obersturm-
führer Josef Kramer from Mauthausen was
appointed as Höss’s deputy. SS-Hauptsturm-
führer Karl Fritsch of Dachau was appointed
Schutzhaftlagerführer (Chief of the Prisoner
Detention Camp). A Politische Abteilung
(Political Department — a branch of the
Gestapo, the state secret-police organisa-
tion) was also established under SS-Unter-
sturmführer Maximilian Grabner.
As the main concentration camp for the
occupied Polish territories, the Polish under-
ground and the Polish intelligentsia, Auschwitz
grew steadily and gradually to accommodate
prisoners of various categories. To facilitate
implementation of plans for the camp, more
residents were evicted from several districts of
the town and from surrounding areas; all Jew-
ish residents of Oswiecim were evacuated to

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the nearby town of Chrzanow. By uprooting
the local population, the Germans created an
empty area measuring 40 square kilometres Today the eastern wing of the Admissions Building is used as the main reception area
designated as the Interessenbereich Konzen- and visitors’ centre for the tens of thousands of people from all over the world who
trationslager Auschwitz (Interest Area of the visit the Auschwitz Camp Museum every year, while the remainder is occupied by the
Auschwitz Camp). museum administration. This is the view from the west, showing the latter offices.
YAD VASHEM FA157-20

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Left: Pictured during its construction in summer 1944, this is the gry, who visited Auschwitz to research this feature and take the
central extension to the U-shaped building. Right: Today a brick comparisons, had to hold his camera above his head to reach
wall has been erected to surround the forecourt so Karel Mar- over the wall and, with some good luck, take this shot.

12
Above: When the Soviet Red Army liber-
ated Auschwitz in January 1945, they
made an extensive record on film of what
they found. One of the most heart-rending
sequences in the material is this one show-
ing a group of small children — all twins
and survivors of the medical experiments
which were carried out by SS-Hauptsturm-
führer Dr. Josef Mengele, one of the camp
doctors at Auschwitz-Birkenau — being led
away by female attendants along the path
between the two electrified fences of the
Stammlager. As such, this path did not
lead either to or from any logical place so it
was most likely staged for dramatic effect.
Right: Karel discovered that the Soviet
cameraman filmed the sequence in the
south-western corner of the main camp.
Josef Mengele volunteered for Auschwitz
in May 1943. Posted as camp doctor to the
Gypsy Camp at Birkenau, he became infa-
mous for his pseudo-scientific research on
twins and dwarfs. Nicknamed ‘The Angel
of Death’ he was hunted as a Nazi war
criminal for many years but evaded capture
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and died of a stroke on January 24, 1979. ATB

Another sequence filmed in the same corner of the camp in All the guard towers at Auschwitz I were extensively over-
front of Guard Tower E — one of five of the large type (Grosser hauled during a restoration project between July 1998 and
Turm). Here we see the same group of twins pulling up their August 1999. The best available conservation techniques were
sleeves to reveal the numbers tattooed on their arms. employed to preserve them.

13
ATB

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Left: Camp commander Höss lived with his family in this house. (SS Economic and Administrative Main Department — WVHA)
It stands right next to the camp, at its north-eastern corner and in Berlin in November 1943, his family continued to live there.
beside the entrance of the SS administrative compound Today the house is privately owned. The concrete fence that
(see the map on page 5) along the road that runs along the hid view of the camp from the road can be seen in the back-
Sola river to the town. This is where Höss led a cosy life with ground. Right: The SS compound, which lay immediately
his wife and five children, their household chores made easier adjoining the camp, comprised three brick-built blocks — a
using prisoner servants and housemaids. Even when Höss was Kommandantur, an administration building and an SS sick bay
relieved as camp commandant and posted to take charge of — and one barrack hut to house the Politische Abteilung
Amt DI of the SS-Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungs-Hauptamt (Gestapo detachment).

Above: Guard detachments at Nazi con-

centration camps were provided by the
SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS Death’s Head
Units) of the Waffen-SS, those at the
Auschwitz complex forming the SS-Wach-
Sturmbann KL Auschwitz, commanded by
SS-Obersturmbannführer Friedrich Hart-
jenstein. A Sturmbann equated to a bat-
talion and the one at Auschwitz grew to
encompass eight to ten companies. It later
expanded to a regimental strength of
some 3,500, designated the SS-Wach-
Regiment Auschwitz, still under Hartjen-
stein’s command. Part of the unit was bil-
leted in two large buildings of the former
Polish Tobacco Monopoly (Tabak-
Monopol-Gesellschaft), located a short
distance away from the main camp on the
other side of the Rampe I railway track.
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The block seen here was known as the

Stabsgebäude (Staff Building) while the
open area between the buildings formed a Today, the former SS barracks are used by the Panstwowa Wyzsza Szkola Zawodowa
ready-made parade ground. (State High School for Vocational Training).

14
 YAD VASHEM FA157-153
Along the same stretch of railway, but further to the north, Auschwitz was taken by the company on March 8, 1943 and
were two of the factory complexes built to put camp prisoners the factory opened on June 7. Led by Krupp director Dipl.-Ing.
to work in industrial and armaments production: Deutsche Herbert Weinhold and a civilian staff of 30, some 1,500 inmates
Ausrüstungswerke (DAW) and Friedrich Krupp AG (see the were put to work here manufacturing aircraft parts and fuses
map on page 4). This is the Krupp factory, seen from the north, for artillery shells. Five months later, on October 1, the firm of
pictured while it was still under construction in 1941. The deci- Weichsel-Union-Metallwerke took over the factory from Krupp,
sion to actually move part of its production capacity to again for the production of artillery fuses.

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Today, what remains of the former Krupp factory stands abandoned and neglected. This is the view from the south.
YAD VASHEM FA157-38

ATB

Left: In 1943, the SS started the so-called Schutzhaftlager- workshops and some 6,000 women prisoners employed at
Erweiterung (Expansion of the Protective Custody Camp), the Weichsel-Union armaments factory. Right: Today, little
prisoner labour squads building a complex of 20 two-storeyed noticed by most of the present-day visitors to the camp, all
barrack blocks to the north of the main camp, planned to the buildings survive as ordinary blocks of flats housing
house another 30,000 prisoners (see the map on page 4 and Polish families and forming a residential quarter of Oswiecim
the aerial on page 46). By October 1944, they accommodated known as Pilecki.

15
 ATB
During his first inspection of Auschwitz on March 1, 1941, for the horrors of Birkenau, was only added in 1942, long after
Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler announced his decision to the camp first opened. Originally the building comprised only
further enlarge the complex. As he was in on the secret that the part with the two arched gates — one for vehicular access,
the Wehrmacht would soon invade the Soviet Union, he the other for a railway line — and the tower but, as the needs
instructed Höss to build a camp for 100,000 prisoners of war on of the camp increased, a new wing was added on the right in
a swampy site near the village of Brzezinka (Birkenau), three 1943. The single railway track passing through its right-hand
kilometres north-west of Oswiecim. The camp’s main gate- gate was a branch line leading directly into the camp and was
house, the ‘Gate of Death’ which has since become a symbol only laid in early 1944.
When Himmler first visited Auschwitz in ber 1941. The terrible congestion which pre- basic sanitary and hygienic conditions and
March 1941, 10,900 prisoners, most of them vailed in the main camp as a result of the were subject to frequent selections for
Poles, had been incarcerated in the camp. arrival of Soviet prisoners of war toward the gassings.
After touring the camp with an entourage of end of 1941 forced the Germans to acceler- The Birkenau camp sectors, both men’s
senior SS officers, local officials, functionar- ate the pace of construction work in Birke- and women’s, held prisoners of many nation-
ies of the Inspectorate for Concentration nau. Preparation of the ground necessitated alities, most of them Jews. In January 1944,
Camps, and officials of the giant industrial draining swamps. Workers laboured under the total prisoner population of Auschwitz
conglomerate IG Farbenindustrie which inhuman conditions and suffered cruel treat- camps reached 80,839.
sought to establish a subsidiary on the camp ment. The new camp was completed at a high In February 1943, a separate family camp
grounds, Himmler laid down expansion cost in lives of POWs and civilian prisoners. for gypsies was created in sector B II e, and a
plans. They included intensive construction However, ultimately the construction did not similar camp for Jews from the Theresien-
work in the camp area with a view to accom- go according to plan, and the projected scope stadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia was opened
modating 30,000 prisoners and the establish- of construction and the division of the camp in September. Later, both family camps were
ment at Birkenau (Brzezinka), about three into sub-camps had to be modified. liquidated and most of their inmates mur-
kilometres away, of a camp for 100,000 pris- In the second half of 1941, Himmler dered in the gas chambers.
oners of war. Three months before the Ger- entrusted Auschwitz authorities with prepa- In addition to the intensive expansion and
mans attacked the Soviet Union, Himmler rations for the projected mass annihilation of construction of sectors of the main camps in
was clearly anticipating prisoners from that European Jews. In the context of this plan, the years 1942-45, some 40 camps were
future campaign. Expansion plans also called Birkenau was designed to hold various cate- established over a wide area around
for supplying 10,000 prisoner workers to IG gories of prisoners and to function also as a Auschwitz, some of them tens of kilometres
Farben for the construction of a large indus- death camp. The first sectors of Birkenau, from the main camp. These camps were
trial enterprise in the vicinity of Auschwitz sub-camps separated by barbed-wire fences either directly affiliated with Auschwitz or
and for agricultural development with the and equipped with gates and watchtowers, served as branches. Varying in size, their
help of prisoner manpower, establishment of were completed in 1942. In 1943, the sector prisoner populations ranging from several
workshops, and war effort enterprises in the designated as B II was completed. It con- dozen to several thousands, these camps
camp. sisted of separate sub-sectors designed for were established near mines, foundries and
Himmler’s visit inaugurated an upsurge in living quarters (designated B II b to B II f) other industrial enterprises. Establishment of
construction and in 1942, an average of 8,000 and located in long wooden structures built such an extensive network of satellite camps
prisoners were employed daily on such work. originally as horse stables. Thus a barrack was necessary because prisoners could not
The main camp (Stammlager), Auschwitz I, originally designed for 52 horses served as march more than a few kilometres to work,
expanded so rapidly that by the end of 1941 living quarters for over 400 prisoners. and mines and other sources of raw materials
it could accommodate 18,000 prisoners and In March 1942, a women’s sector was were often located considerable distances
in 1943 held as many as 30,000. Living quar- established in the main camp. It held 999 from the main camp. The Germans also
ters for the SS were built within the perime- German women prisoners brought from the sought to avoid concentrating a large num-
ter of the camp, together with barracks for Ravensbrück concentration camp and the ber of industrial buildings close to the main
SS guards, headquarters for the Auschwitz same number of Jewish women brought from camp for security and other reasons.
complex, and a workshop and depot sector. Slovakia. Before long, the population of the The various types of satellite camps were
The entire main camp occupied an area 1000 women’s camp rose to 6,000. In August, it designated Aussenlager (external camp),
metres long and 400 metres wide. was moved to Birkenau. In January 1944, the Nebenlager (extension or sub-camp), Arbeits-
Construction in the Birkenau camp, which Birkenau women’s sector held 27,053 prison- lager (labour camp) and others. For the most
was to become Auschwitz II, started in Octo- ers, who suffered from a lack of the most part, their internal regime was patterned after

16
YAD VASHEM FA157-312

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Left: Soviet POWs and prisoners from Auschwitz Stammlager quarters for the guards. The picture was taken by SS-Unter-
were used to construct the new camp, commencing work in scharführer Dietrich Kamann, who worked as a photographer
October 1941. Here a labour detail is pictured working on the in the camp’s construction office. Right: The wing remains
new wing of the gatehouse, extending the transformer-station intact to this day, the view being taken from inside of the camp
(the lower building attached to the tower) and adding office enclosure.

The first prisoners and Soviet POWs were settled in Birkenau Solution of the Jewish Problem’, i.e. the industrialised mass
in early March 1942. However, even before the camp was murder of the European Jews. Trainloads full of Jews from
brought into use, its envisaged role had been decisively Germany and nearly every country under Nazi rule would be
changed. Following an order from Himmler to Höss in the sum- sent to Auschwitz where Höss was instructed to devise the
mer of 1941, instead of a camp for Russian POWs, it was now means to kill them off. This aerial view of Birkenau was shot by
to become the central site for carrying out the Nazis’ ‘Final a Soviet cine cameraman after liberation in January 1945.

17
Above: Design and construction of the new camp was super- gate, thus forming a separate entity within the larger camp.
vised by a specially created bureau, the SS-Zentralbauleitung The total length of wire fencing at the site added up to more
KL Auschwitz (SS Central Building Office Auschwitz Concen- than 17 kilometres. Thirty-eight guard towers surrounded the
tration Camp), led by its chief architect, SS-Hauptsturmführer outer perimeter of the camp. Across the road from the
Karl Bischoff, and his main assistants, SS-Untersturmführer secondary gate giving access to B II and B III was the SS com-
Fritz Ertl and SS-Unterscharführer Walter Dejaco. With plans pound comprising a commandant’s office and a series of
enlarging the camp to hold 200,000, new sections were added wooden huts housing the SS personnel. Right: The massive
to it until eventually it encompassed an area of 1,660 by 720 undertaking began with the construction of section B I,
metres, divided into three major sections (B I, B II and B III). planned to hold 20,000 persons. The first compound to be
Only B I and B II were completed in full. B III (which was started was B I b (seen in the distance on the right in this
planned as a hospital area) was begun but it never advanced to panorama shot taken from the tower of the gate building),
the stage where it could be taken into full use. Only one-third which housed the Soviet POWs and male prisoners assigned to
of its huts were ever finished and they were mainly used as build the camp. Completed in March 1942, it then became a
transit or overflow camp, especially during the mass arrival of men’s camp for prisoners of various nationalities. B I a (on the
Jews from Hungary in the summer of 1944. A fourth section, left) was opened in August 1942 and became a compound for
B IV planned to the left of B I, never even progressed beyond female prisoners. B I b continued to serve as men’s camp until
the drawing-board. Each of the main sections was further sub- July 1943 (when the inmates were transferred to B II d) and
divided into compounds (B I a, B I b, B II a, B II b, etc). Each of thereafter was incorporated into the Frauenlager (Women’s
these was enclosed by a barbed-wire fence and had its own Camp), which it remained until the end.

18
The first women to arrive in B I were those transferred here from the main camp on
August 16, plus another 137 from the Strafkompanie (Penal Company) at nearby
Budy who were moved in on the same day. The first women to reach the camp from
other locations were 552 Jewish females who came from Ravensbrück on October 4,
two days after Himmler had ordered all Jewish prisoners held in other camps to be
transferred to either Auschwitz or Majdanek. B I was the only section of Birkenau to
have part of its prisoner accommodation barracks built from brick, 30 of them being
constructed (using material recycled from the demolished houses in the region).

ATB

The same barracks still stand. These are (L-R) Blocks 14, 8 and 2 in B I a, with the
compound’s delousing barrack (completed in October 1943) standing at right
angles to them at the far end.
ATB

19
 Left: Each brick-built block was originally
designed to house 550 persons but when
an order came to increase the camp’s
capacity, the Zentralbauleitung adjusted
that to 744 by simply increasing the use
of each sleeping platform from three to
four. In actual fact, with the Frauenlager
at times filling up to over 40,000 persons,
eight to ten persons had to sleep on each
of the three levels. Built hastily on
swampy terrain, initially the buildings
had no concreted floor and there were
no ceilings so that during the rainy sea-
son the interior became waterlogged
due to leaking roofs. Each hut had two
iron stoves but in winter the occupants
still shivered with cold as there was
often no coal or firewood to burn. This
picture was taken by Stanislaw Mucha
after the liberation in 1945. Right:
Although the interior has been preserved
clean and tidy, one can only imagine the
miserable conditions that the inmates

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had to endure for months on end.

YAD VASHEM FA157-330

Section B II, which became available in July 1943, had a capac- being gassed. B II c was used as a compound for Jewish prison-
ity of 60,000 and was designed as a Männerlager (Men’s Camp) ers, especially Hungarian women (from June 1944); B II d as
but it ended up with each of its six sub-sections having a differ- men’s camp (Poles, Russians and Jews); B II e as family camp
ent function at various times. From August 1943, B II a was used for gypsies (from February 1942 until the night of August 2/3,
as men’s quarantine camp. B II b functioned as so-called Fami- 1944, when the last 2,897 out of a total of some 23,000 gypsies
lienlager (Family Camp) for Jews from Theresienstadt. Opened were driven to the gas chambers), and B II f as male prisoners
on September 8, 1943, a total of 18,000 Jews from that ghetto hospital. This overview of B II was pictured by SS-Unterschar-
were placed here until the night of July 11/12, 1944 when the führer Kamann from the tower of the gate building in the winter
entire Family Camp was liquidated, all surviving 4,000 inmates of 1943. Note the railway siding under construction on the left.
that of the concentration camp. They were
populated mostly by Jewish prisoners living in
the utmost deprivation, often under worse
conditions than in the main camps. Mines and
other industrial enterprises using the slave
labour of prisoners (who, of course, were paid
nothing, with all the proceeds from their
labour going to the SS coffers) belonged to
some of the largest German companies,
including the Hermann-Göring-Werke,
Siemens-Schuckert and IG Farbenindustrie.
Acting in concert with the huge Krupp con-
glomerate, camp authorities established a
large plant owned by Weichsel-Union-Metall-
werke close to the main camp. It employed
hundreds of prisoners, including men from

Right: Most of the huts at Birkenau were

demolished after the war, leaving only
their concrete foundations and the brick
chimneys which serviced the stoves. The
endless wasteland of solitary smoke-
stacks is a haunting and enduring sight
to all who visit the camp. Here a school
class assembles outside the compound
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to share their impressions.

20
Left: Most of the huts in Birkenau were of a standard intended to hold a total of 400 persons, nevertheless the SS
wooden type, originally designed as stables for the army managed to crowd up to 800-1,000 prisoners into each hut.
(Pferdestallbaracken OKH-Typ 260/9) and intended to hold Right: A few weeks after liberation of the camp in January
52 horses. They had no side windows, all lighting coming 1945, the Soviet cine cameramen asked a group of women
from skylights, with heating being provided by a single brick survivors to restage the cramped living conditions in the
stove. Fitted out with a double row of three-tiered bunks, huts for the benefit of their cameras.
Auschwitz I and women from Birkenau. In
the last phase of the camp’s existence, women
workers from this plant were transferred to
separate living quarters near the main camp.
In a comprehensive survey of the structure
of the camp, Danuta Czech, a Polish scholar
on the staff of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State
Museum, concludes:
‘Twenty-eight of the 40 satellite camps of
Auschwitz worked either directly or indi-
rectly for the German armaments industry.
Nine were established near foundries and
other metal works, six near coal mines; six
more supplied prisoner labour to chemical
plants; three others to light industry; one was
situated next to the plant manufacturing con-
struction materials and one near a food pro-
cessing plant. Prisoners of other camps
worked in renovation and construction, in
forestry, farmsteads and growing livestock,
experimental agricultural stations, and other
enterprises.’
Prisoners of the Jaworzno and Jawiszowice

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satellite camps worked in coal mines; of
Swietochowice camp, in a foundry; of Lagisze
camp, in the construction of a power plant; of Of all the 250 or so stable-type huts that once stood in Birkenau, only the 19 of B II a,
Myslowice camp, in a coal mine. The largest the men’s quarantine, are preserved today. Exposed to vagaries of the Polish
satellite camp was Monowice (Monowitz), weather, especially in winter, the staff of the museum have a huge job keeping them
where IG Farben erected a huge synthetic in good repair.
ATB

Latrine huts in B II provided little more than three long double that one hut had to serve some 6,000 persons. Each prisoner
rows of seats with holes, without any privacy and without any was allowed only a few minutes of latrine time before going to
proper system to dispose of the excrement. Each row of 16 work in the morning, a further short visit being permitted
accommodation blocks in B II had two such huts which meant during the evening.

21
 efforts. Despite being surrounded by thou-
sands of fellow inmates, each prisoner
remained utterly alone. Only a handful
appear to have established ties of friendship,
to have considered other prisoners, or to
have understood the reality engulfing them.
Others drew sustenance from memory in
their obstinate effort to go on, to nourish
their hope of survival, to eventually reach the
shore of the living.
Setting foot on the soil of Auschwitz
marked a radical and irrevocable departure
from one’s previous existence. The camps
were surrounded by a double length of
barbed wire, an electrified fence illuminated
at night and dotted with watchtowers
manned by armed SS guards. All around
were other camps and kilometres of empty
space patrolled by the SS. On entry, the pris-
oner was stripped not only of all personal
possessions but also of his or her identity.
Even the prisoner’s body was violated, as all
body hair was shaven off. A camp serial
YAD VASHEM FA157-333

number was tattooed on the prisoner’s left

arm (a practice unique to Auschwitz), and a
small triangle if the prisoner was Jewish.
Name was replaced by number, home by
block, room and bed by a three-tiered bunk
with a thin layer of straw for a mattress.
Throughout the year, the prisoners wore
striped camp fatigues, the fabric stiff with
A large group of male prisoners at work digging a drainage ditch on the edge of B II a, dirt and sweat, without underwear, and their
pictured by Zentralbauleitung photographer Kamann. feet shod in wooden shoes without socks. A
piece of cloth was attached to the coat and
rubber plant (the Buna-Werke). Studies con- hollow, empty and mirthless, lacking any trousers bearing the prisoner’s serial number
ducted after the war indicate that the perfor- novelty and enveloped in everlasting gloom. and the symbol of his or her category: red tri-
mance of prisoners working under duress, in Despite the stress, with the ever-present dan- angle for political prisoners; green triangle
conditions of brutal regime, harsh oppres- ger the Auschwitz prisoners could never for ordinary criminals; black triangle for a-
sion, and extreme deprivation, fell far short lower their guard, all their energy going to socials. There were several other such identi-
of German objectives, and the overall perfor- maintain permanent vigilance. Furthermore, fying marks, for homosexuals, for Bibel-
mance of the huge industrial complex near the prisoners enjoyed no privacy; day and forscher (Bible researchers, i.e. Jehovah’s
Auschwitz can be considered an abysmal fail- night they remained in tangible proximity to Witnesses) and others. All Jewish prisoners
ure in terms of output and efficiency. others. Spoiled food provided no nourish- were marked by a Star of David composed of
In the autumn of 1943, sweeping organisa- ment. Incessant hunger was also a source of red and yellow triangles.
tional and administrative changes were made ceaseless torment and anguish. For most prisoners, the first encounter
in the camp complex. These changes appear to The daily regimen of the prisoner, whose with what one former French prisoner
have been precipitated by the discovery of name was replaced by a camp serial number, described as l’univers concentrationnaire was
widespread corruption in the Politische was punctuated by duties and orders from usually the decisive one. As a rule, adjust-
Abteilung (the Gestapo branch in the camp) morning until night which had to be per- ment to the camp proved most difficult for
headed by SS-Untersturmführer Maximilian formed quickly and accurately. In addition to persons accustomed to comfort, order and a
Grabner, perhaps the most feared and cruel SS personal responsibility for inadequate per- predictable social milieu; such individuals
functionary in Auschwitz. Investigation pro- formance, the prisoner had to bear the bur- either could not or would not become part of
ceedings instituted against Grabner uncovered den of collective responsibility. Sleeping and camp life. Prisoners who had experienced the
unauthorised appropriation of property and waking were regulated as well. Each morning harsh living conditions of prisons and ghet-
other cases of abuse of power involving some the prisoner had to draw on every ounce of tos, which served as an antechamber of sorts
senior SS officials, including Höss himself. strength to survive. to the inferno of the concentration camp,
Grabner was relieved of his duties and subse- It comes as no surprise that memoirs and were, on the whole, better prepared. Those
quently put on trial; others were transferred to reminiscences of former prisoners abound unwilling or unable to adapt soon sunk into
new posts. In November, Höss was removed with descriptions of terror and superhuman apathy and dejection; they were known in
as camp commandant and transferred to the
Inspektion der Konzentrationslager (Inspec-
torate for Concentration Camps) at Oranien-
burg. He was replaced by SS-Obersturmbann-
führer Arthur Liebehenschel.
Simultaneously, the entire camp complex
was broken into three parts. Auschwitz I
remained the main camp; Birkenau became
Auschwitz II; and Auschwitz III, also called
Monowitz, the industrial camp, comprised
the Buna-Werke and the network of satellite
camps. Liebehenschel was the commander of
Auschwitz I. SS-Obersturmbannführer Fritz
Hartjenstein was the commander of the
Birkenau complex, which included the mass-
murder installations and crematoria for
incinerating the bodies of victims, and SS-
Hauptsturmführer Heinrich Schwarz the
commander of Auschwitz III. These changes
brought some relative improvement in living
conditions in the camp and opened the final
phase of its existence, which lasted until its
evacuation and liquidation beginning on Jan-
uary 18, 1945.
It is all but impossible to portray the living
conditions faced daily by prisoners of the
Auschwitz camps. Every day in the life of a
prisoner was filled with unbearable tension
ATB

and superhuman effort, emotional turmoil

and terror, continuing without respite for
months on end. The prisoner’s day was also Even the lush green of the grass fails to conceal the misery of the past.

22
Right: The camp street of B II d (the
men’s camp), pictured by Kamann from
the roof of one of the huts. This enclo-
sure was first brought into use in July
1943, when the men originally incarcer-
ated in B I b were transferred here. Note
the flowerless flowerbeds.
the camp slang as ‘Muselmänner’. (The ori-
gins of this appellation remain unknown,
some surmise that it derived from the alleged
resemblance of these prisoners, unable to
stand on their feet, to Muslims in supine
prayer.) Moribund, their senses dulled, such
prisoners hovered in the twilight zone
between life and death. Before long, their

YAD VASHEM FA157-317

bodies lost their shape, becoming little more
than skeletons covered with dry yellowish
skin. Gazing aimlessly with their lifeless eyes,
they moved slowly, unperturbed by savage
cries in German urging them to move on,
even after truncheon blows rained hard on
their bodies. For their part, veteran prisoners
found little pity for these ‘misfits’. We may
surmise that the sight of these tragic figures
caused fellow inmates considerable fear and
anxiety at the prospect of deteriorating into
one of them.
The prisoner’s day began with reveille at
4.30 a.m. Half an hour was allowed for morn-
ing ablutions. At the mandatory roll-call,
prisoners stood at attention in straight rows
to be counted; the number of prisoners had
to match the official figures. After roll-call,
the prisoner work details or labour squads,
called Kommandos, would set off to their
places of work. Most prisoners were assigned
permanently to a labour squad. In rows of
five abreast, they passed through the gate
emblazoned with the sign ‘Arbeit macht frei’

Right: With no high vantage point to be

found, Karel had to take his comparison

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from ground level.

YAD VASHEM FA157-313

Above: At the northern end of each

enclosure in B II, two huts stood near to
its gate, one on each side of the camp
street and at right angles to the other
huts. Of a different design compared
with the latter, these were the kitchen
blocks — note the three large chimneys
serving the cooking stoves. The open
space in between formed the com-
pound’s Appell platz (roll-call square).
This is again BII d, identified by the
water tank. It was on this particular
Appellplatz that prisoners at Birkenau
were publicly hanged. Note the barbed-
wire fence behind the kitchen block,
separating the enclosure from B II c.
Right: The water tank confirms the
ATB

comparison.

23
 ATB
After the first experimental gassings with Zyklon B in nearby, but from September 1942 they were burned out in the
Auschwitz’s main camp, in the early spring of 1942 the SS open on grates of steel beams. In little over a year, tens of thou-
began regular gassing of large groups of prisoners in Birkenau. sands of people were murdered here, men, women and children
To this end they converted a farmhouse (whose Polish owners who had been deported to Birkenau from countries all over
had been evicted) on the north-eastern edge of the camp into a Europe. The SS also killed gypsies here and on June 11, 1942, a
gas chamber (see the plan on pages 18-19). Referred to as group of 320 Poles from the Penal Company were liquidated on
Bunker 1 or ‘The Red Cottage’, it had a floor area of some 90 this spot as reprisal for an attempted mutiny and escape. In the
square metres and was divided into two chambers having a spring of 1943, when the four large gas chambers and cremato-
combined capacity of 800 persons. Doors and windows were ria in Auschwitz came into use, the Red Cottage was no longer
sealed and the SS threw in pellets of Zyklon B through open- needed and the SS ordered it demolished and the ground rein-
ings in the walls. The victims died naked, having previously stated in order to conceal all evidence of what had taken place
been ordered to undress in two disrobing barracks erected here. Today, all that remains to be seen is an empty field with
alongside. Their bodies were then buried in mass graves three symbolic gravestones and an information panel.
(Work makes one free), often to the accom- for hours until the missing prisoner or the divided the prisoner population into ethnic
paniment of an orchestra playing near the reason for his or her disappearance was dis- and ‘racial’ groups, as Germans did with all
gate. covered. subjugated populations. One important divi-
Most of the work was performed outdoors The evening roll-call was often followed sion in the camp set the so-called reds, or
in both summer and winter. In summer the by individual or collective punishments. Only political prisoners, against the greens, or
workday lasted 12 hours, in winter a little after that were the prisoners allowed to criminal prisoners.
less. Work was performed under the watch- retire to their living quarters in the ‘block’ to Despite their small numbers, German pris-
ful eyes of the Kapos — prisoner foremen receive their bread rations with meagre sup- oners generally held positions of authority
assigned to oversee the entire squad or parts plements and a watery drink. Those with and occupied key posts in the prisoner appa-
of it — and the SS escort, who urged on both enough strength or will power would leave ratus. Hermann Langbein, an Austrian politi-
the Kapos and the working prisoners. No rest their block to meet with friends or relatives cal prisoner, wrote in Menschen in Auschwitz,
was allowed. A prisoner assigned to latrine from another block. At curfew two or three (People in Auschwitz) that Höss concealed
duty would measure the time taken by work- hours later, prisoners were confined to their the fact that his subordinate SS-Hauptsturm-
ers to relieve themselves. cold and dark blocks. Prisoners used their führer Hans Aumeier, who served as
The squads considered as ‘good’ assign- rolled-up clothes and shoes as headrests to Schutzhaftlagerführer (Chief of the Prisoner
ments were those employed in services: prevent their theft during the night. Camp), admitted frankly after his arrest that
kitchen, laundry, and various workshops. Except for those employed in armaments prisoners with sadistic dispositions were
Prisoners in such squads worked indoors and plants, the prisoners did not work on Sun- deliberately singled out for the positions of
enjoyed greater opportunity to ‘organise’ (a days. Nevertheless, Sunday was not a day off. ‘block elders’. ‘Most of them were profes-
camp slang expression for ‘steal’) some extra Cleaning, shaving, showering in groups, and sional criminals’, Aumeier added.
food, the most precious benefit in the camp. similar activities were compulsory, keeping In Auschwitz I, most official posts held by
For the most part, only the old-timers and the prisoners occupied even on their one day prisoners were assigned to Poles. In the
prisoners with ‘connections’ worked in these free of work. men’s and women’s camps at Birkenau,
squads. Relations in the prisoner society, Although the prisoner society lived under many such posts were held by Jewish prison-
such as they were, originated in pre-war ties, a uniform regime, it was far from homo- ers. Contrary to the prevalent opinion, not
solidarity among prisoners from the same geneous in its composition and, to some all prisoners in positions of authority, such as
transport, and, above all, ties of membership extent, in conditions. Some tensions and con- Kapos and block elders, maltreated their fel-
in the political underground and resistance flicts, including divisions between different low inmates. Mistreatment was the case
movements. categories of prisoners, resulted from delib- mainly in the first two years of the camp’s
After returning to camp from work, the erate German policies. Camp authorities cre- existence. This situation gradually changed,
prisoners reported to evening roll-call, also ated a small though powerful stratum of pris- and the urge to harass and torment the pris-
mandatory. The number of prisoners present oners in positions of authority: Kapos in oners abated somewhat.
again had to match official figures. The fail- charge of the work units, Lagerälteste (Camp Bruno Bettelheim and others argue that
ure of even a single prisoner to appear, Elders) in charge of the entire prisoners’ the concentration camp system spawned a
whether because he or she had fallen asleep camp population, Blockälteste (Block or Hut reality in which all the beliefs, values, and
or escaped, caused considerable agony to fel- Elders) and Stubendienste (Barrack Room norms of behaviour adhered to in the world
low inmates at the evening roll-call; they had Chiefs) — the prisoners commanding the outside the camps were abandoned. The pris-
to remain in their places, standing at atten- blocks — and many positions in the central oners came to accept this situation as reality
tion, regardless of the weather, sometimes administration of the camps. They also and in a certain sense even identified with

24
 ATB
Above: With new groups of victims arriving every day, within
three months the SS opened a second provisional gas chamber,
again converting a deserted farmhouse, this one being located a
short distance east of the Birkenau camp perimeter. Referred to
as Bunker 2 or the ‘The White Cottage’, it had a floor area of 105
square metres and comprised four rooms with a total capacity of
1,200 persons. As with Bunker 1, there were two huts nearby for
individuals to undress and the killing procedure was the same as
well. It was first commissioned on June 30, 1942 and it was at
this gas chamber that Himmler witnessed the killing of a large
group of Dutch Jews during his second inspection visit to
Auschwitz on July 17. Bodies were initially buried in mass
graves and from September incinerated in two large pits at the
rear of the building (marked today by the symbolic gravestones).
Like Bunker 1, it ceased functioning when Birkenau’s four pur-

ATB
pose-built gas chambers and crematoria became available in the
spring of 1943. However, when even these got overworked with
the mass arrival of Jews from Hungary in the summer of 1944, Looking in the opposite direction, one can see how close Bunker
Bunker 2 was brought back into use. It was finally demolished in 2 was to rear fence of the camp perimeter. The brick building in
the autumn of 1944 but archaeologists from the museum uncov- the background is the ‘Zentral-Sauna’, the prisoners admission
ered its foundations in the mid-1980s. and disinfection station built in 1943-44 (see page 31).
the apparatus of brute power, thereby of the police was so strong that prisoners the super-ego is extremely strong, and the
becoming an integral part of the system. were not willing to believe that they had weaker the ego becomes, the stronger is this
Thus, in his Surviving and Other Essays, Bet- been unjustly persecuted. Rather, they desire. Since in the totalitarian system the
telheim maintains that ‘even in the concen- searched their mind to find some guilt in most powerful super-ego surrogates are the
tration camps, belief in the power and justice themselves. The inner desire to be loved by rules and their representatives — in short the

Left: The burying of victims in mass

graves proved a mistake and during his
second inspection visit to Auschwitz,
Himmler ordered that the graves be
exhumed and the bodies burned. To
carry out this gruesome task, a special
squad of prisoners was formed, super-
vised by SS-Untersturmführer Franz
Hössler. Incineration of corpses in the
open air began on September 21, 1942,
the human remains being heaped on
timber pyres in piles of 2,000 and set
alight with waste oil or methanol. Later
they were burned in pits, 30 metres long,
seven metres wide and three metres
deep. The job of emptying the mass
graves was completed on October 30 by
which time some 107,000 bodies had
been exhumed. However, the practice of
destroying corpses from Bunkers 1 and 2
by burning still continued. Today, a sim-
ple Russian memorial and four symbolic
headstones are all that marks the site of
the mass graves and the incineration
ATB

area.

25
 Right: To further the speed and efficiency
of mass murder on an industrial scale, in
May 1942 the SS began construction of
four purpose-built killing facilities within
the confines of Birkenau camp. Referred
to as Krematoria, they were in fact a
combination of a gas chamber and cre-
matorium. Designed by the architects of
the Zentralbauleitung, with Topf &
Söhne providing the crematorium tech-
nology and many other German techni-
cal firms helping out with their special
input, their development was a gradual
process over a period of time. Kremato-
rium II (the numbering followed on from
Krematorium I, the old facility in
Auschwitz main camp), was the first to
be commissioned in January 1942. It was
originally devised as purely an incinerat-
ing facility, required only to dispose of

YAD VASHEM FA157-358

the bodies of those who had been
gassed or had died in the camp, and
without any means of killing people. In
its original form, it consisted simply of a
large incinerating hall fitted out with five
three-muffle ovens, to which bodies
were fed from two large underground
morgues attached to it. This is the cre-
matorium part of the facility, pictured by
SS-Unterscharführer Kamann in 1943. In
the foreground is the camp’s sewage
treatment area.
system itself — one can gain approval of the
super-ego surrogates only by going along
with the system.’
But such arguments chiefly articulate the
soul-searching that went on among German
prisoners in concentration camps in Ger-
many in the 1930s as they witnessed the
growing power of the Nazi regime.
Bettelheim also refers to the phenomenon
of a weak personality overawed by power
and the desire to bask in its splendour, even
to deliver oneself to its ‘mercies’. This phe-
nomenon is in evidence in different aspects

ATB
of the totalitarian regime, including concen-
tration camps. Some prisoners elevated to
positions of official authority at Auschwitz These are the remains of the mass extermination building.
apparently exhibited such behaviour, but
even at Auschwitz and other concentration ‘I am not an expert on the unconscious and know, and it does not much interest me to
camps, this phenomenon was exceptional, the mind’s depths, but I do know that few know, whether in my depths there lurks a
not routine. Primo Levi’s comments are per- people are experts in this sphere, and that murderer, but I do know that I was a guiltless
tinent in this context: these few are the most cautious. I do not victim and I was not a murderer. I know that
YAD VASHEM FA157-393

ATB

Then in December 1942 the design was decisively changed. corpses which were moved by a cargo lift to the crematorium
The chute that fed corpses into the morgues from the outside on the ground floor. Before the corpses were burned, gold
disappeared from the blueprints and was replaced in one of the teeth and fillings were extracted and the hair cut from the
morgues by a staircase. This then became the room where the women. Located at the far end of the camp, beyond compound
victims entered the building and disrobed. The other morgue, B I (see the plan on pages 18-19), Krematorium II was com-
connected to the first by a short corridor, was fitted with a gas- pleted on March 3, 1943. With its 15 muffles, it had a theoreti-
tight door with a peephole and with wire columns, down cal daily capacity of disposing of 1,440 persons (but in practice
which the Zyklon B crystals could be poured through holes in up to 2,500 corpses would be loaded into the ovens). On the
the roof. Spray-nozzles were installed to make it look like a night of March 13/14, the first group of 1,492 persons, all Jews
shower room but in fact this was now a gas chamber with a who just arrived from the Krakow ghetto, were gassed in the
capacity of 2,000. Thus, with these few changes, the building facility. Left: This picture was taken by Bauleitung photogra-
acquired the function of a death mill. Once the Zyklon B had pher Kamann shortly after its completion. The low square
done its work, ventilation equipment sucked out the deadly building beneath the windows is the roof of the underground
vapour, the doors of the gas chamber were opened, and the gas chamber. The subterranean disrobing hall can be seen to
Sonderkommando (special squads of prisoners) pulled out the the left of the main building.

26
the murderers existed, not only in Germany,
and still exist, retired or on active duty, and
that to confuse them with their victims is a
moral disease or an aesthetic affectation or a
sinister sign of complicity; above all, it is pre-
cious service rendered (intentionally or not)
to the negators of truth.’
When key positions in the lower echelons
of the camp hierarchy were held by habitual
criminals, the Auschwitz prisoners were
often subjected to humiliation, arbitrary pun-
ishment and physical abuse, including tor-
ture. This treatment stemmed from a total
disregard for human beings and a desire to
fulfil the expectations of Nazi taskmasters.
This character type outlived its usefulness,
however, when productive work assumed
critical importance for the beleaguered Third
Reich. At that time, most supervisory posi-
tions were entrusted to the ‘politicals’, bring-
ing some relief into the lives of prisoners.
A considerable proportion of the political
prisoners in positions of authority were linked
to the underground and resistance organisa-
tions active in Auschwitz, enabling these
groups, in the late stages of the camp’s exis-
tence, to influence conditions in the camp. Above: Disregarding short periods of repair (the excessive overloading of the ovens
The underground groups operated through caused frequent breakdowns of furnaces, ventilators and chimneys), Krematorium II was
several channels, smuggling out information in use for a full 20 months, until Himmler ordered the gassings at Birkenau to be halted
to the external world, procuring medicines on November 2, 1944. During that time, hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered
and material assistance for prisoners associ- here. Three weeks later, on November 25, Himmler ordered the gassing and incinerating
ated with the underground, attempting to res- equipment to be dismantled to remove all evidence of what had taken place here.
cue prisoners due to be killed, and assisting in On January 20, 1945 — two days after the final evacuation of the camp — the empty
escapes. Although the underground’s ability building was blown up by Waffen-SS troops. Below: The ruins still remain to be seen.
to lead a general uprising and mass escape
from Auschwitz fell short of expectations, its
activities, especially in preserving invaluable
documentation and informing the outside
world about the camp, indicate that prisoner
subjugation to the overwhelming might of
Nazi power was far from complete.
Jozef Garlinski, a former Polish Auschwitz
prisoner who studied the underground activ-
ity in the camp, especially the role of the
Poles and their ties with the surrounding Pol-
ish population, wrote that ‘the earliest
threads which linked the camp with the out-
side world did not have the character of an
organised action. The people, seeing the pris-
oners working nearby, tried to help them.
Food, sometimes medicines and dressings,
were left in hiding places. The initiative was
private and spontaneous, but the circle of
those who helped kept growing and began to
take the form of a clandestine society. At the
end of 1940 the district command of the
underground army in Krakow helped to
organise the Akcja Cywilna Pomocy
Wiezniom (Civil Action for Help to Prison-

ATB
ers).’ The help of the population was vital in
accomplishing many escapes from the camp.
Hunger in Auschwitz was ubiquitous and
pervasive. Prisoners were tormented by it
before and after meals. Thoughts and fan-
tasies about food haunted the prisoners, even
in their sleep. Countless conversations
revolved around hunger and ways of appeas-
ing it. Food was uppermost on every pris-
oner’s mind, although not everyone went
equally hungry.
Theoretically, each prisoner was entitled
to a daily ration of 350 grams of bread, half a
litre of ersatz coffee for breakfast, and one
litre of turnip and potato soup for lunch.
Also, four times a week each prisoner was to
receive a soup ration of 20 grams of meat,
but in practice meat rarely reached the bowls
from which the prisoners ate. The official
daily value of food for prisoners employed in
light work stood at 1,700 calories and for
prisoners doing strenuous work, 2,150 calo-
ries. An analysis done after the war of the
actual food content ranged from 1,300 calo-
ries for light-work prisoners to 1,700 calories
for prisoners performing hard labour. The
difference was caused by plunder of food by
SS personnel and functionary-prisoners.
ATB

Inequality pervaded the food distribution

system. The Kapo, or the prisoner entrusted
with ladling out the soup, made sure that the This is what is left of the steps leading into the underground disrobing room.

27
 YAD VASHEM FA157-396
On August 18, 1942, while construction
of Krematorium II was already under-
way, three more gassing and incinerat-
ing facilities were commissioned. One
of them, Krematorium III, was to be
built as a mirror copy of Krematorium
II and to be located opposite the latter,
across the main camp road. (Its main
chimney can be seen under con -
struction in the picture of Krematorium
II on page 26.) Above: This picture was
taken by Kamann from a position near
Krematorium II. The smaller chimney
on the left is the duct for the gas cham-

YAD VASHEM FA157-386

ber; the centre one serves to extract
the autopsy room, the warm air from
the incinerator room, and the poisoned
air from the gas chamber, while the tall
chimney on the right is the combined
flue from the incinerators themselves.
The low hump covering the under-
ground disrobing room can be seen on
the left. Later both Krematoria II and III Like its counterpart, Krematorium III had five three-muffle Topf & Söhne incinera-
were surrounded by long lengths of tors (seen here being completed by prisoners and civilian workers) with a daily
wicker fence to conceal what was capacity of 1,440. Construction of the building began in early September but, due
going on there from the rest of the to various problems, it was the last of the four crematoria to be completed, being
camp. handed over to the SS on June 25, 1943.

ATB

With all gassings halted on November 2, 1944, Krematorium III In the foreground is the Birkenau International Monument,
was dismantled and then dynamited on January 20, 1945 along which is provided with bronze memorial plaques in all Euro-
with Krematorium II. This is the site today. The gate posts from pean languages. Dedicated to all those who lost their lives, it
its barbed-wire enclosure on the far right are all that remain. was inaugurated in 1967.

28
YAD VASHEM FA157-398

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The two other killing facilities commissioned in August 1942 — Krematorium IV functioned for 19 months although it was out
Krematoria IV and V — were of a different design compared of action for various periods due to its chimneys burning out.
with the other pair. Their disrobing room and gas chamber This building met a surprising end as it was set on fire by its
(divided into three, later four rooms with a combined capacity Sonderkommando during a revolt on October 7, 1944. Having
of 2,000) were not subterranean but at ground level, adjoining heard that they were about to be liquidated, 300 members of
the incinerator room. The latter had only eight muffles, con- the squad attacked their SS guards with hammers, axes and
nected to two chimneys, giving each facility a theoretical daily stones. Inevitably, in the end, the revolt failed, all insurgents
capacity of disposing of 768 corpses (although in practice up to plus another 150 men of the Sonderkommando being killed or
1,500 would be burned there in 24 hours). The pair of buildings shot in retaliation, but it still left Krematorium IV gutted and
stood at the far end of the main camp road between sections inoperable. Over the following weeks, all the equipment was
B II and B III (see the plan on pages 18-19), a few hundred dismantled and the ruins lay abandoned until the camp was
metres away from the other two. Their construction began in liberated the following January. After the war most of the
November 1942. This is Krematorium IV, photographed by bricks were carried off by Polish civilians for their own use,
Kamann shortly after its completion on March 22, 1943. The gas leaving only the concrete floor. The low ruins that visitors see
chamber is the part on the left, furthest away from the camera. today are a post-war restoration.
thicker, more nourishing contents from the
bottom would reach ‘proper’ prisoners,
whereas the others had to content them-
selves with a watery substance from the top
of the pot. (The red bowl and tin spoon were
the only items of private property the prison-
ers could have, and they lugged them every-
where they went.)
Under these conditions, supplementary
food was tantamount to survival. But other
habits sometimes overrode even this para-
mount concern; prisoners addicted to
tobacco went as far as trading part of their
daily ration for tobacco. The bread ration
thus served as a currency of sorts. The func-

YAD VASHEM FA157-397

tionaries, who made up perhaps three to five
per cent of the prisoner population,
exchanged their supplementary bread and
soup for higher-quality and tastier victuals.
Prisoners condemned to subsist on the
official ration lost weight rapidly and their
survival odds diminished accordingly. Non-
Jewish prisoners could receive some money
from relatives or sponsors outside and pur- Krematorium V stood hidden in a birch copse in a far corner of the camp and was
chase low-quality supplements of food and nicknamed the ‘forest crematorium’. It was handed over to the SS on April 4, 1943.
cigarettes. From the end of 1942, camp With all four crematoria at Birkenau operational, and with the additional capacity of
authorities allowed prisoners to receive food Krematorium I in the Stammlager (340 corpses), this added up to an ability to dispose
parcels, which proved of critical importance. of 4,756 corpses per day. With cremations per retort increased from two to three bod-
The parcels usually contained food of high ies at a time, and the incinerating process reduced from 30 to 20 minutes, in practice
caloric value, and lucky recipients could even the daily number of bodies which could be disposed of was as high as 7,000.
exchange some of it for bread. But the Jew-
ish prisoners, who soon constituted the
majority in the two main camps at
Auschwitz, received no parcels. Nor did
Soviet prisoners.
In The Drowned and the Saved, Primo
Levi argues that sometimes thirst was even
more pervasive, more physically and men-
tally debilitating, than hunger. The water at
Auschwitz was contaminated with various
impurities, and members of the SS staff were

Right: In operation until the very end,

Krematorium V was finally dynamited on
January 26, 1945, one day before the
liberation of the camp. All that remains
of the building today is the concrete
floor, vestiges of its walls and a few iron
remnants of the ovens. Over the years
the museum staff have carefully exposed
the site, laying bare the layout of the
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building.

29
 Right: Midway between the two pairs of
crematoria lay a special camp enclosure
comprising 30 warehouse huts. This was
the Effektenlager (personal effects depot)
where the masses of clothing, shoes, lug-
gage and personal belongings, brought to
the camp by the Jews, were sorted and
packed for shipment to Germany. This
section of the camp (B II g), which opened

the prisoners as ‘Kanada’, because of all

on December 14, 1943, was referred to by

the riches that could be found there, and

the several hundred inmates, men and
women, who worked there were known
as the Kanada-Kommando. Their work
allowed them to get their hands on items

YAD VASHEM FA268-182

that considerably improved their chances
of survival, such as food or money or
other items which could be used to bribe
the SS guards. Thus a position in the
Kommando was greatly coveted. They
were accommodated in two huts in the
compound, the men in one, the women in
the other. (There had already been
another ‘Kanada’ depot near the main
camp so this new one was referred to as
Kanada II.)
instructed not to drink it. This warning, of
course, did not apply to the prisoners. In
Birkenau, the prisoners, especially the
women, suffered from chronic shortage and
poor quality of water. Levi writes from expe-
rience:
‘In August of 1944 it was very hot in
Auschwitz. There was no drinkable water in
the camp or often on the work site. As a
rule, the evening soup and the ersatz coffee
distributed around ten o’clock were abun-
dantly sufficient to quench our thirst, but
now they were no longer enough and thirst

ATB
tormented us. Thirst is more imperative

than hunger: hunger obeys the nerves,

grants remission, can be temporarily oblit-
erated by an emotion, a pain, a fear; not so
with thirst which does not give respite. In
those days it accompanied us day and night:
by day, on the work site, whose order was
transformed into a chaos of shattered con-
structions; by night, in the hut without ven-
tilation, as we gasped the air breathed a
hundred times before.’
Other critical factors affecting prisoners’
chances of survival were their national origin
and racial classification. In Values and Vio-
lence in Auschwitz, Polish researcher Anna
Pawelczynska, who was also a prisoner in the
camp, attempted to rank the prisoners
according to their origins. ‘Pseudo-scientific
theories of race’, she writes, ‘began to take
drastic effect by ranking the different nation-
alities of prisoners, thus spelling out their
YAD VASHEM FA268-185

turns to die.’ Jews and gypsies, regardless of

their citizenship, occupied the bottom of the
scale, a position which automatically made
them the prime victims of the gas chambers
and crematoria. Slightly above them, she
adds, were Slavs, especially the Poles and the
Russians, who were subjected to different

Above: There were separate sorting

teams for different kinds of goods: men’s
clothing, women’s clothing, children’s
clothing, shoes, foodstuffs, jewellery and
other valuables, suitcases, combs and
hairbrushes, kitchen utensils, etc. These
women prisoners are sorting out basket-
bottles and pans. On January 23, 1945 —
four days before the liberation of the
camp — SS troops set fire to the Kanada
warehouses which continued to burn for
several days. When they took over,
Soviet troops discovered over a million
items of clothing, more than 40,000 pairs
of shoes, and a large numbers of tooth-
brushes, shaving brushes, spectacles,
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and other items in the six remaining,

partially burned warehouses. There were
even 13,000 rugs! Today only the foundations remain. This is the view towards Krematoria IV and V.

30
 YAD VASHEM FA157-368
Across the road from the Kanada enclosure, on the very east- Topf & Söhne) and three steam chambers (supplied by
ern edge of the camp, stood the prisoners reception and disin- Goedecker from Munich) (below left) — but not returned. The
fecting station. Taken into use on January 29, 1944, and known naked prisoners then had their head and body hair shaved.
as the Zentral-Sauna (Central Bathhouse), this was where new After an examination by an SS doctor they were showered,
arrivals were processed in ‘conveyor-belt’ fashion. Entering at deloused (below right), and finally given striped prisoner gar-
one end of the building, they were first told to undress and ments and shoes. Before emerging from the other end of the
hand over their clothes — which were then immediately disin- building each was tattooed with their individual prisoner num-
fected and cleaned in four hot-air ovens (also manufactured by ber. Kamann took these pictures in early 1944.
YAD VASHEM FA157-370

YAD VASHEM FA157-371

ATB

For many years after the war the Sauna building, complete restored by the Auschwitz Museum in the 1990s and opened to
with its steam-cleaning equipment, stood ruined and the public in 2001. Visitors can now follow the route taken by
neglected. However, using funds provided by the Länder of the the new arrivals and the large reception room is also used to
German Federal Republic, it was extensively renovated and lecture visiting school classes and other groups.

31
Right: Trains destined for Birkenau initially
unloaded at a siding in the Auschwitz
goods station located about midway
between the two camps (see the map on
page 4). This came to be known as Rampe
II or ‘Judenrampe’ (unloading platform for
Jews). Between June 1942 and May 15,
1944, some 500,000 Jews from all over
Europe arrived via this platform. From
here they had to walk the two kilometres
to the camp. Largely forgotten for many
years, the site was restored by the French
Foundation of the Memory of the Shoah in
2005 and today two boxcars of the type
used by the Reichsbahn for the mass

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deportations stand here as a memorial.

YAD VASHEM FA268-4

On May 15, 1944, the special branch line
leading into Birkenau was completed
and from that day onward all deporta-
tion trains could unload their human
cargo directly inside the camp. Eleven
days later, on May 26, 1944, two SS
photographers on the Auschwitz camp
staff, SS-Hauptscharführer Bernhard
Walter and SS-Unterscharführer Ernst
Hofmann, made an extensive photo-
graphic report covering the arrival of a
train from Hungary. Exactly why they
featured this particular transport is not
known as their normal task as members
of the Erkennungsdienst (Identification
Service) of Auschwitz I was to take ID
photos of all new inmates for the camp
registry but the 200 photos taken by
them on this day are the closest view
we can get of the systematic mass mur-
der carried out in secret at Birkenau.
Above: Standing on the roof of one the
boxcars, either Walter or Hofmann pic-
tured the mass of deportees just after
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they alighted from the train. On the

left is camp sector B I b (part of the
women’s camp) and on the right B II (the The same view taken from ground level today. The curve of the track and the Block-
men’s camp) but, more macabre for führer-Stube (the guardhouse for the SS NCOs in charge of one or more prisoner huts
those in the know, in the background in that particular compound) at the gate of B II b on the left pinpoint the exact spot.
are the tall chimneys of Krematorium II The shattered remains of the two gas chambers and crematoria lie hidden between
(on the left) and III (on the right). the trees which have grown up on either side of the track in the background.

32
 YAD VASHEM FA268-18
The train seen in these pictures had brought 3,500 had taken them two days to reach Auschwitz. The men in
Hungarian Jews from the ghetto at Beregowo (Beregszász striped clothes are members of the Kanada-Kommando who
in Hungarian), a formerly Slovak town in the Carpatho- have been detailed to collect and transport the luggage
Ruthenian region of eastern Hungary (today western (which the new arrivals were ordered to leave behind on the
Ukraine). They had been put on the train on May 24 and it platform) to the Effektenlager.

ATB

Again the Blockführer’s hut, the path crossing the railway The brick building in the background is the Vorrätebaracke
tracks and the drainage ditch form the links with the past. (storage barrack) of B I b.

33
 YAD VASHEM FA268-22
Above: All men and boys aged 16 and
over were told to line up in one row, and
women, mothers with infants, and
young girls in another. Thus, the scene
was set for the selection carried out by
SS personnel . . . a process which was to
decide between life and death. This par-
ticular train carried so many people that
the two ranks were doubled up — note
the beginning of the second line of
women and children in the foreground.
In the background is the camp gate-
house through which the train has just
entered Birkenau. On the right is camp
section B I a — part of the Women’s
Camp. Note the lorries parked in the
background and on the platform, stand-

ATB
ing by ready to transport the luggage to
the Effektenlager or to carry those unfit
to walk to the gas chambers. The chilling silence is overpowering as one looks towards the infamous ‘Gate of Death’.
YAD VASHEM FA268-23

ATB

One by one, each new arrival had to face the cursory selection Officially, the selections were to be carried out by SS doctors
process. A short glance from the SS officer in charge . . . some- only but in practice other SS officers and NCOs, without any
times a short question . . . and a movement of the hand to the medical qualifications, also took turns. The officer carrying out
left or right to decide whether a person was deemed fit enough the selection in this picture is SS-Obersturmführer Dr. Heinz Thilo
to live . . . or if they were destined for immediate gassing. who had been a camp doctor at Birkenau since October 9, 1942.

34
The survival of these dramatic SS pictures is due to a fluke of
history. On the train from Beregowo was an 18-year-old Jew-
ish Girl, Lili Jacob. Like many of those aboard, she came from
the small Transcarpathian town of Bilke and she arrived
together with her parents and five brothers. Selected for
labour by the SS with her father and three elder brothers (her
mother and two younger brothers were gassed immediately
on arrival), in December 1944 she was transferred to work in a
clothing factory in Silesia, then to a munitions factory at
Morchenstern in the Sudeten, before ending up in the Dora-
Mittelbau camp near Nordhausen (see After the Battle 101),
where she was liberated by the Americans on April 11, 1945.
Recovering from typhus and looking for some warm clothing in
one of the deserted SS barracks, she found a cloth-bound
album containing the 200 photographs taken by Walter and
Hofmann. It must have belonged to one of the SS personnel
transferred from Auschwitz to Nordhausen. (Possibly it was
SS-Sturmbannführer Richard Bär, former commandant of
Birkenau, who ended the war as commandant of Dora.) Recog-

YAD VASHEM FA268-28

nising people from her own village in the images (among them
her own two younger brothers), Lili took the album with her
and this is how it survived. Selected photos from it appeared in
numerous publications since 1949 but Lili kept possession of
the original album for most of her life before finally donating it
to the Yad Vashem Archives in Jerusalem in August 1980. She
died on December 17, 1999.
murder methods at different times. The next
category comprised persons of various Euro-
pean nationalities for whom no precise exter-
mination plans were developed. The only
ones exempt from such plans were persons of
German origin.
In point of fact, all the Jews and many of
the gypsies brought to Auschwitz were not
only victims of murder but also subjects of
plans for annihilation. With few exceptions,
Soviet prisoners of war were also annihilated
en masse. Prisoners of other national origins
were not subjected to systematic murder,
even though in some cases they met a grue-
some fate. Among the victimised groups
were a large number of members of the Pol-
ish intelligentsia who had been subjected to
mass arrests and violent terror.
The harsh conditions in the camp and the
savagery of its regime resulted in an inordi-
nately high mortality rate, particularly in

YAD VASHEM FA268-31

the first years of the camp’s existence.
Langbein maintains that the periodic sav-
age onslaughts by the German camp com-
mand, assisted by functionary-prisoners,
were directed against the ‘new arrivals’, or
Zugänge, as they were known in the camp.
The first ones to bear the brunt of these
murderous assaults were the Poles, fol-
lowed by the Russians. The Jews’ turn also Completely ignorant of the fate that awaits them, a long column of women, children
came early. and infants starts out for the gas chambers of Krematoria II and III. On the left is the
But the Jews, including those registered gate to the women’s camp B I. The two brick buildings seen behind the Blockführer’s
and incarcerated in the camp as prisoners, hut are the delousing barracks of B I a (completed in October 1943) and, behind that,
met a different fate from that of victims of the section’s kitchen block.
other origins. The few Jews who arrived at
Auschwitz in the first transports were all
murdered forthwith. Polish and other Jews
who were deemed unfit for work were put to
death mostly by phenol injections adminis-
tered in the camp hospitals. Langbein, who
occupied an official position in the Ausch-
witz hospital and was a leading figure in the
prisoners’ underground structure, maintains
that reports compiled by the resistance
showed that between 25,000 and 30,000

Right: It is not known exactly how many

of the 3,500 people in this particular
transport consignment survived the
selection. During this period, many of
those judged fit enough to work were
admitted into the camp as temporary
‘depot prisoners’ without being regis-
tered or assigned a prisoner number. On
many a day, only the few twins or
dwarfs aboard a train selected for Dr.
Mengele’s research were given camp
numbers. What is certain, however, is
that between May 2 and July 9, 1944, a
total of 434,351 Jews from Hungary
arrived in Birkenau aboard 147 trains
and that the majority — about 330,000
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— were exterminated on arrival.

35
 persons were murdered by phenol injections;
the proportion of Jews among them was very
high. In March 1943, murder by phenol injec-
tion was discontinued. But Jews continued to
be identified in hospitals as unfit for work
and dispatched to the gas chambers.
Camp hospitals evoked fear in prisoners.
As long as they could summon enough
strength to stand, prisoners avoided sick call,
which might place them in the hospital. Even
those suffering from high fever, crippling
diarrhoea, or festering wounds tried to avoid
hospitalisation as long as possible. At the
same time, for some prisoners the prospect
of several days’ rest in bed, exempt from roll-
calls, backbreaking work and physical abuse,
could be very alluring.
The mortality rate among prisoners
peaked periodically for various reasons. In
the early stages, the terroristic regime and
the poor living conditions pushed it upward.
In those years, however, there were compar-

YAD VASHEM FA268-128

atively few prisoners in the camp. During the
first two years, up to March 1942, about
27,000 persons were incarcerated in
Auschwitz, whereas over the next year, until
March 1943, the number of prisoners jumped
by 135,000, five times the population of the
two preceding years. This large influx
marked a turning point in the composition of
the prisoner population. According to Almost too shocking to believe is this photograph of a group of women and children
reports compiled by the resistance, at this calmly queueing up for the gas chambers on the main camp road. The building in the
time 2.7 per cent of the Auschwitz prisoners background is actually Krematorium III, but this group is waiting to enter the com-
were Germans, 30.1 per cent were Poles, and pound of Krematorium II which stands on the opposite side the road, directly to the
57.4 per cent were Jews. With time this trend rear of the photographer.
gained momentum so that in the middle of
1944, Jews constituted two-thirds of all the
Auschwitz prisoners.
Epidemics of lice, typhus, dysentery, and
common phlegmon, particularly in Birkenau,
resulted in skyrocketing mortality rates in
the period from July 1942 to March 1943;
according to available data, they ranged from
19 per cent to 25 per cent per month. The
decline that followed can be attributed to
some improvement in the camp conditions in
general and in hospitals in particular. In May
1943, the monthly mortality rate dropped to
5.2 per cent, and in the main Auschwitz camp
it fell even more. Opportunities to help
patients were seized by most prisoner-doc-
tors and other members of the medical staff.
Ota Kraus and Erich Kulka, authors of The
Death Factory, conclude that ‘most prisoner-
doctors conducted themselves honourably.
They succeeded in saving many lives not only
by providing medical care but also by deceiv-
ing SS men with false diagnoses and exami-
nations, by keeping secret the existence of

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contagious diseases, etc. In this way they
saved a great many patients from gassing,
hard work in the camp, and physical punish- The embankment with the railway track and the blasted ruins of Krematorium II
ments.’ remain to remind us of the atrocity that occurred here.
YAD VASHEM FA268-121

ATB

Other mothers and children are directed up the lateral road They were pictured at the beginning of the meridian, passing
between camp sectors B II c and B II d on their way to Krema- the latrine block of B II d. Today all that remains of the hut are
toria IV and V. Note the train in the far left background. its foundations and the brick structure of its stove.

36
YAD VASHEM FA268-119

ATB
Undoubtedly one of the most harrowing and disturbing images They too were walking along the lateral road between B II c
. . . the old escorting the young on the road to the death house. and B II d, this view being into the former.
In addition to the racist policies that classi-
fied prisoners into national-ethnic categories,
the atmosphere at Auschwitz made conflicts
and divisions in the prisoner society
inevitable. In a world with all moral norms
and restraints lifted and no holds barred,
where congestion, severe deprivation and
nervous tension were ubiquitous, the prison-
ers easily succumbed to violence and rude-
ness. Conditions of life in the camp managed
to undermine any solidarity that might be
expected to arise among human beings who
found themselves in identical situations. The
assumption that common suffering bridges
distances separating people was not borne
out by camp reality. Tempers were short, and
foreign customs and habits, manifestations of
religious piety, and the sound of foreign lan-
guages kept the prisoners on edge. Deprived
of privacy, the prisoners proved especially
sensitive to an unfamiliar language which
grated on their ears and often gave rise to

YAD VASHEM FA268-133

suspicion that the speakers were mocking
those unable to understand it.
National stereotypes gained acceptance.
The Germans were described as arrogant
and conceited, seeking privileged treatment;
the Poles were described as keeping to them-
selves and xenophobic; the French gained a
reputation as unconcerned with personal
hygiene. Jews were perceived as inferior by Having reached the area of Krematoria IV and V, this group of women and children
everybody else. Anti-Semitic stereotypes calmly await their fate. It was not uncommon for victims to have to abide time for
brought from the outside tended to become several hours before it was their turn to be gassed. In the background, beyond the
entrenched in the camp though in some cases barbed-wire fence, lie the huts of Kanada — the personal effects storage depot.
non-Jewish prisoners discarded their home-
grown prejudices. Jewish prisoners were set
apart by national origin, cultural and eco-
nomic background, and language. Thus, for
example, the Hungarian Jews who arrived at
the camp as late as August 1944 from rela-
tively tolerable conditions accused the others
from the harsh northern climate, did not
speak any languages spoken in the camp, and
often believed that other prisoners were
responsible for their troubles and acute dis-
tress. Even if these divisions, rivalries, and
rifts among the prisoner society were
unplanned and did not stem from deliberate
German policies, the camp authorities were
of course well aware that this phenomenon
worked in their favour.
Jewish prisoners in particular lived in the
shadow of certainty that their relatives had
perished, that their own fate was sealed, and
that their incarceration in the camp was but a
reprieve granted by the Germans to drain
them of their strength through slave labour
before sending them to their deaths. Writers
of memoirs and researchers of concentration
camps usually agree that a source of great
anguish and torment for prisoners, even in the
period of some improvement in living condi-
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tions, was uncertainty as to the timing and cir-

cumstances of their liberation. Although no
prisoner remained unaffected by it, the The birch trees and the foundations of the Effektenlager remain as silent witnesses.

37
YAD VASHEM FA268-112

ATB
Inevitably there were some who reacted angrily to the splitting- With the remains of Krematorium IV in the far background to
up of their families on the platform and many must have had identify the precise location, Karel was able to establish that the
suspicions as to the fate that awaited them. We will never know incident took place on the path leading towards Krematorium V
the true circumstances behind this particular photograph. which lies behind the photographer.
shadow of a death that could come at any
moment, even on the threshold of liberation,
loomed particularly large over the Jewish
inmates. Furthermore, unlike the great major-
ity of other prisoners, who still had a home, a
homeland, relatives, and friends waiting for
them outside, the Jewish prisoners had lost
these most precious possessions. Their homes,
their entire pre-camp world, lay in ruins, and
their families had perished.
The first gassings of prisoners in
Auschwitz were carried out in September
1941. The victims were thousands of Soviet
prisoners of war, subsumed under the
category of political activist, consigned to
immediate annihilation, who were used in
some way as guinea pigs in the trial run of
the death machinery in the camp.
A great deal of information is now avail-
able about mass murder by gas in Auschwitz,
the operation of killing installations, dates,
the type of victims and their numbers, selec-
tions for and methods of murder. There exist
precise documents about the construction of
the gas chambers and crematoria and the use
of the gas Zyklon B. We also have the writ-
ten and oral testimony of witnesses among
prisoners and German personnel, including Except for the photo report made by SS photographers Walter and Hofmann, the only
the most important among them: the mem- other images showing the actual murder process underway are three snapshots taken
oirs and testimony of the chief organiser and illegally by a member of the Sonderkommando in the summer of 1944. All that is known is
commandant of the Auschwitz camp, Rudolf that he was a Greek Jew named Alberto (‘Alex’) Errera and that several others prisoners —
Höss. Höss gave statements shortly after his Alter Fajnzylberg and brothers Slomo and Jazek Dragon — stood by to warn him against
capture by the British in March 1946 and approaching or observing SS guards. The pictures were taken surreptitiously from the
appeared as a witness before the Interna- entrance of Krematorium V with a camera secreted somehow into the camp and the film
tional Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. After was then smuggled out to the Polish resistance — an unbelievable achievement. The first
his extradition to Poland, during his impris- picture shows people undressing and naked women being led to the gas chamber.
onment before and after the trial, and as he
was awaiting execution by hanging on the
grounds of the Auschwitz camp, Höss, on his
own volition, wrote his biography and vari-
ous pieces in which he spelled out in great
detail the mass murders in Auschwitz.
Another written testimony of critical
importance was given by SS-Obersturm-
führer Dr. Johann Paul Kremer, a uniformed
SS doctor in the camp, who kept a diary dur-
ing his duty there and took part in the selec-
tion of victims. An affidavit written during
his captivity by the British in July 1945 by
another SS man, SS-Unterscharführer Pery
Broad, who served in the Politische
Abteilung (the Gestapo office) in the camp,
contains numerous details about the mass
murders there. We also have statements by
escaped prisoners, as well as reports from the
camp smuggled out by the resistance. A col-
lection of data based on daily resistance and

Right: As the original was taken quickly,

probably without using the viewfinder,
Karel reciprocated the same oblique
angle of the clandestine shot in his com-
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parison.

38
 The other two pictures show members of the Sonderkommando finding their corpses afterwards, but also because of the sure
at work, burning the bodies of the victims in open pits behind knowledge that after a certain period they would be replaced
Krematorium V. Being selected for the Sonderkommando was and gassed themselves. The average strength of the Sonder-
the worst that could happen to a prisoner, not only due to the kommando for the four crematoria in Birkenau was between 600
gruesome and horrible nature of the task which might well and 800; only around 80 of the last batch survived the war, being
mean meeting relatives or friends before the gas chambers or evacuated with the other inmates in January 1945.

ZENTRAL-SAUNA

KREMATORIUM V

KREMATORIUM IV
‘KANADA’

CAMP SECTION B II
USNA

On August 8, 1944, a photo-reconnaissance Mosquito from

No. 60 Squadron of the South African Air Force, flying out of
Foggia in southern Italy to record bomb damage to the Buna-
Werke synthetic oil and rubber factories at nearby Monowitz,
inadvertently took a vertical photo of the Auschwitz camp
complex which clearly showed the burning process taking
place outside Krematorium V. This enlargement shows smoke
ATB

rising from the incinerating pits. Allied photo interpreters may

have noticed this detail, but they failed to realise its meaning
or significance. Four symbolical tombstones mark the site of the burning pits.

39
 USNA
other documents entitled Kalendarium, Four months earlier, on May 31, another Mosquito from No. 60 SAAF Squadron, LR469
along with other data compiled by the Polish flown by Captain Fred Larcher and Lieutenant Stolk (sortie No. 60PR/462), had taken
researcher Danuta Czech, offers a systematic this vertical shot of Birkenau. Allied photo-recce aircraft had had Auschwitz under their
and thorough chronological account of cameras from April 1944, ever since the Allied air forces in Italy had occupied bases that
events in the camp. The Kalendarium (pub- brought southern Poland within range. However, photo sorties to Auschwitz were not
lished in English as Auschwitz Chronicle flown in connection with the death camps but to reconnoitre the Buna-Werke petro-
1939-1945) includes lists prepared at the chemical factories at Monowitz and to asses the damage caused by US Fifteenth Air
behest of the Nazis, lists and reports illegally Force bombing raids on them. The death camps showed up more by accident than as a
copied by inmate clerks and preserved, and result of specific targeting. Allied photo interpreters at the time identified the camps
documents abandoned when the Nazis but had no idea what was going on in them, classing them as labour camps which
retreated from Auschwitz. were ‘normal’ for an SS-supported industrial complex. Photo-recce aircraft went to
One important and greatly moving cate- Monowitz less than a dozen times between April 4, 1944 and January 14, 1945, and
gory of documents comprises notes written only half of those missions coincidentally covered the death camps — a few frames in
by Jewish Sonderkommando prisoners each of 18 rolls of film. They were first unearthed and published by two CIA photo inter-
assigned to work in the crematoria who care- preters with an interest in history, Robert G. Poirier and Dino A. Brugioni, in 1979, with
fully buried their accounts in the vicinity of additional photos later being found by USAF Colonel Roy M. Stanley II.
the crematoria. Some of these documents
were recovered and deciphered after the war
and were published in a few languages. We
also have the testimonies of German defen-
dants in the Auschwitz trials, as well as those
of the handful of surviving Sonderkom-
mando prisoners.

Right: On August 25, 1944, yet another

mission flown by No. 60 Squadron — this
particular sortie (No. 60PR/694) to deter-
mine the damage achieved by the bomb-
ing of the Buna-Werke on August 20 —
included another shot of Birkenau that
unwittingly showed the extermination
process underway. This enlargement
shows compound B I a (top left), the rail-
way platform (centre) and part of B II, with
Krematoria II and III on the right. A large
group of prisoners is seen moving along
the tracks on their way to the gas cham-
ber of Krematorium II, the gates in the
fence of which are open. A freight train of
33 cars is halted on the siding but the pris-
oners seen probably came from two trains
that had arrived the day before bringing
Jews from the Lodz ghetto. Another
group of prisoners is seen beside a hut in
B II d. The annotations were added by
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Poirier and Brugioni in 1979.

40
 Right: SS photographers Walter and Hof-
mann also covered the treatment of
those prisoners who survived the initial
selection process. Here a group of young
men, deemed healthy enough for work,
are entering the lateral road through B II.
They will first march to the Zentral-
Sauna to hand in their clothes, to be
shaved, deloused, showered and issued
with striped garments, before being
admitted to one of the compounds of the
men’s camp.
The critical importance of the Höss testi-
mony stems not just from Höss’s unique
knowledge of the details and overall picture
of the camp. His testimony is crucial mainly
because Höss answers the questions not only
of who carried out the mass murders, but
also when and how, who ordered the conver-
sion of Auschwitz into a death camp, and

YAD VASHEM FA268-64

who backed this order with the necessary
authority. Despite some inaccuracies due to
tricks of memory, the general reliability of
his testimony remains beyond doubt.
Höss relates how in the summer of 1941 —
he could not give the exact date, but we have
reason to assume that it was in July or
August — he was suddenly summoned from
Auschwitz to the SS headquarters in Berlin.
Himmler, contrary to his custom, received
Höss outside the company of his aide-de-
camp and addressed him as follows:
‘The Führer has ordered the final solution
of the Jewish question and we, the SS, were
assigned this mission. The existing liquida-
tion sites in the East cannot cope with the
large operations expected in the future. I
have therefore chosen Auschwitz for this
purpose, first, because of its convenient loca-
tion in terms of transportation, and, second,
because the site can be easily isolated and
concealed.’
Höss claims to have been keenly concerned
with what kind of gas could be used as an effi-
cient killing agent. During his absence from
Auschwitz, Zyklon B, a product usually used
for sanitation, was used to kill a large group
of Soviet prisoners, and, he learned, it suited
the requirements of mass killing.
In early 1942, two peasant cottages near
Birkenau whose inhabitants had been
evicted began functioning as provisional gas

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chambers. About 2,000 persons could be
squeezed into them at one time. In this phase
of the operation, the gas victims were Jews The gate on B II’s meridian road still remains although the watchtower is a post-war
brought in transports from Upper Silesia and reconstruction by the Auschwitz Museum. Note the photo panels on the right-hand
Slovakia. Then, from March 1943 on, four side which display other SS pictures taken along this stretch.
gas chambers and crematoria, designed and
built specifically for mass murder by German It was in these installations at Birkenau low the transport of Jews rounded up in vari-
engineers and companies, were in operation that hundreds of thousands of Jews were sys- ous ‘actions’, or mass seizures of Jewish
at the Birkenau camp. At their top capacity, tematically murdered after being transported nationals, in several countries. Thus in 1942,
these installations could ‘process’ 4,416 vic- from European countries. The chronicle of Jews from Upper Silesia, Slovakia, the
tims in 24 hours. events, the Kalendarium, enables us to fol- Netherlands, France, Belgium, Yugoslavia
YAD VASHEM FA268-171

ATB

Women, selected for work and on their way to the Zentral- The narrow-gauge railway line that ran along B II’s lateral road
Sauna, are overtaken by trucks carrying the luggage left has been lifted and the drainage ditch filled in. Remains of the
behind on the platform to the sorting barracks at Kanada. brick smokestacks mark the positions of the huts in B II d.

41
 YAD VASHEM FA268-167
Now shaved and dressed in camp clothes, a large group of entrance, those for the B II enclosures being at their northern
women is led into B II c which at this time was used to house ends. In the distance are the huts of sector B III, begun in 1943
Hungarian females. Each compound at Birkenau had only one but never completed (and known in camp slang as ‘Mexiko’).
and parts of occupied Poland reached
Auschwitz. In 1943, Jews from Germany,
parts of Poland, Theresienstadt in Czecho-
slovakia, the Netherlands, France and
Greece (continuous transports), as well as
Yugoslavia, the Majdanek camp and ghettos
of Zaglebie in Poland, the Bergen-Belsen
camp (see After the Battle No. 89) and Italy,
met their fate. In 1944, transports rolled into
Auschwitz with Jews from France, the
Netherlands, Belgium, Theresienstadt, Italy,
Slovakia and Poland (Lodz, Radom, Galicia)
and one huge consignment comprised of sev-
eral hundred thousand Hungarian Jews.
Unlike other victims, Jews, with some excep-
tions, were not brought to Auschwitz individ-
ually, accused of real or imaginary offences.
With the establishment of the death factory,
ATB
Jews arrived in mass transports from Nazi-
occupied countries or satellites of the Third
Reich. Most transports carried entire fami- The gate and the water basin on the left remain to identify the location.
YAD VASHEM FA268-162

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Hungarian women, in grey prisoner garments and with scarves The comparison shows that the gate in the right background is
masking their shaved heads, assemble on the roll-call square at that leading to the main lateral road, the gravel track running
the northern end of B II c. between B II c and B II d.

42
 YAD VASHEM FA268-166
Above: Another group of Hungarian
women lined up in front of the kitchen
hut for B II c on the opposite side of the
roll-call square. Whenever the supply of
the striped clothing ran out, garments of
people who had been gassed were
painted with a coloured stripe on the
back and given out to newcomers. Lili
Jacob, who found the SS photo album,
recognised herself in this particular pic-
ture: she is the one in the front row, sev-
enth from the right, in the dark dress
with the lighter-coloured collar. Right:
Only the central one of the kitchen’s
three chimneys remains standing today,
the other two having collapsed. How-
ever, all three belonging to the kitchen
block in the adjoining compound, B II b
(seen behind), remain upright. The large
building in the left background is the
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office of the Birkenau Commandant.
YAD VASHEM FA268

ATB

Some time later, either Walter or Hofmann photographed what The comparison proves that the women were transferring from
appears to be the same group of Hungarian women being B II, leaving the latter through the gate which can be seen in
marched into section B I — the Frauenlager. Note the SS the background, and crossing the railway tracks to enter their
soldier standing outside the Blockführer-Stube on the left. new compound.

43
 NUMBERS OF JEWS TRANSPORTED TO AUSCHWITZ 1940-45

Year Month Total Hungary Poland France Holland Greece Bohemia and Slovakia Belgium Germany
Moravia and Austria
(Theresienstadt)

1940-41 1,500 — — —

February — — — — — — — — — —
March 3,112 — — 1,112 — — — 2,000 — —
April 8,004 — — — — — — 8,004 — —
May 7,716 — 6,130 — — — — — — 586
June 21,496 — 16,000 4,037 — — — 1,059 — —
1942 July 19,465 — — 7,930 5,978 — — 4,810 — 510
August 41,960 — 13,000 13,123 6,265 — — — 5,990 —
September 26,591 — — 12,134 6,675 — — 1,992 5,790 —
October 22,841 — — — 11,965 — 1,866 860 4,841 759
November 2,800 — 18,000 3,745 5,199 — — — — 1,001
December 18,025 — 14,000 — 2,496 — — — — 997

January 57,605 — 44,246 — 3,594 — 6,000 — 1,555 2,210

February 21,039 — 8,682 2,998 4,283 — 1,001 — — 4,075
March 26,360 — 7,000 1,000 — 10,002 — — — 8,200
April 28,034 — — — — 24,921 — — 1,400 1,688
May 16,325 — 1,000 — — 10,930 — — — 395
June 9,479 — 6,145 1,018 — 880 — — — 360
1943 July 7,194 — — 2,000 — — — — 1,553 —
August 50,105 — 45,926 — 2,005 1,800 — — — 374
September 23,330 — 12,800 1,000 2,971 — 5,007 — 1,425 127
October 8,688 — 1,386 2,000 1,007 — 1,313 — — 148
November 13,620 — 8,501 1,200 2,144 — — — — 69
December 8,577 — 800 1,850 — — 5,007 — — 79

January 6,434 — 2,000 1,155 949 — — — 657 83

February 4,774 — 104 2,714 1,015 — — — — 50
March 4,557 — 679 2,501 1,331 — — — — 32
April 8,666 1,800 564 2,504 240 1,500 — — 625 61
May 228,674 215,436 27 2,200 453 — 7,503 — 507 560
June 169,345 164,425 761 1,100 496 2,000 — — — 46
July 72,419 55,741 9,811 1,300 — — — — 563 485
1944 August 17,218 131 4,509 493 — 2,500 — — — 56
September 10,416 — 3,393 — 1,019 — 3,999 — — 68
August/ 65,000 — 65,000 — — — — — — —
September
October 18.101 152 — — — — 14,403 — — 31
November — — — — — — — — — —
August/ 7,936 — — — — — — 7,936 — —
November
December — — — — — — — — — —

1945 January 14 — — — — — — — — 14

1941-44 Various or 1,837 — — — — — — — — —

Missing Dates

Grand total 1,084,457 437,685 290,464 69,114 60,085 54,533 46,099 26,661 24,906 23,604

Establishing the exact number of persons that perished at allowed into the camp as prisoners (though a large number of
Auschwitz has always been difficult, not only because the them were still not formally entered in the camp register). The
Nazis destroyed most of their records just before the final col- remaining 900,000 were gassed immediately after arrival. Of
lapse of Germany, but even more so because the majority of the 200,000 put to work, about half later succumbed to hard
Jews that were deported to Auschwitz were never entered in labour, starvation, maltreatment and further selections, giving
the camp registry. In 1993, Franciszek Piper, a Polish historian a total of Jewish victims of one million. To these must be
on the staff of the Auschwitz State Museum, published this added 21,000 gypsies (out of 23,000 sent to Auschwitz);
computation of the total number of Jews sent to the camp 70,000-75,000 Poles (out of 140,000-150,000); 15,000 Russian
complex. Based as it was on surviving records (transport lists, POWs (virtually the entire complement) and 10,000-15,000 per-
etc) of deportations from each individual country, and on sons of other nationalities (out of 25,000) murdered in the
research carried out by historians in each country, it is now camp. This makes a grand total of 1.1 million who lost their
accepted as the most-reliable calculation of Jews deported to lives at Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945. Of the 1.3 million
Auschwitz. Out of the grand total of nearly 1.1 million, about prisoners, only 400,000 were formally registered in the camp
200,000 were selected as fit enough for slave labour and records and assigned a prisoner number.

44
 In November 1943, concurrent with the
relief of Höss, the Auschwitz camp
complex was divided up into three
independent sections, each with its own
Yugoslavia Italy Norway Other camps commandant. The original camp, now
and places designated Auschwitz Stammlager
(Main Camp) or Auschwitz I, came under
SS-Sturmbannführer Arthur Liebehen-
schel; the commander of Birkenau
1,500 (Auschwitz II) was SS-Obersturmbann-
führer Friedrich Hartjenstein, while
— — — — Monowitz and other satellite camps
(Auschwitz III) were the responsibility of
— — — — SS-Hauptsturmführer Heinrich Schwarz.
— — — — Right: Hartjenstein’s headquarters build-
— — — 1,000 ing stood on the edge of the camp oppo-
site its secondary entrance (see the plan
— — — 400 on pages 18-19). Behind it stood several
— — — 237 rows of wooden barracks housing the SS

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3,500 — — 82 personnel of the camp.
— — — —
1,500 — — 1,050
— — — 55
— — 532 —

— — — —
— — — —
— — 158 —
— — — 25
4,000 — — —
— — — 1,076
— — — 3,641
— — — —
— — — —
— 1,031 — 1,803
— 415 — 1,291
— 215 — 626

USHMM 34752
— 584 — 1,006
— 485 — 406
— — — 14
— 606 — 766 In May 1944 — in anticipation of the mass arrival of trains from Hungary — the principal
SS commanders at Auschwitz were replaced. On May 8, just six months after he had
— 575 — 1,413 been posted to Berlin, Höss returned to temporarily take over command of the whole
— 517 — — complex. Liebehenschel was replaced as commandant of Auschwitz I by SS-Sturmbann-
— 1,805 — 2,714 führer Richard Bär, and Hartjenstein was succeeded as commandant of Auschwitz II by
— 250 — 9,279 SS-Haupsturmführer Josef Kramer (who had already been Höss’s deputy at Auschwitz
in 1940-41). Höss’s special task as Standortälteste (Garrison Commander) was to lead
— — — 1,937 and supervise the Hungarian operation. He stayed for 11 weeks (until July 29), during
— 102 — — which time 330,000 Hungarian Jews were exterminated, and then returned to his desk
job in Berlin. Kramer would be posted to command of Bergen-Belsen in November and
Bär would stay until the evacuation of the camp in January 1945. On conclusion of the
— — — 3,413 Hungarian operation — sometime in late July or early August — this picture was taken
— — — — at the retreat for the SS staff at Solahütte, 30 kilometres south of Oswiecim near the vil-
— — — — lage of Midzybrodzkie Zywiecki. Enjoying a moment of leisure are (L-R): Bär; camp doc-
tor Josef Mengele; Kramer; Höss (nearest the camera) and SS-Obersturmführer Anton
Thumann (Schutzhaftlagerführer of Majdanek but temporarily posted to Auschwitz in
— — —` — the spring of 1944). This unique photo comes from the private photo album of SS-Ober-
sturmführer Karl Höcker, Bär’s adjutant. Containing 116 exceptional photos showing the
— — — — SS camp staff and personnel in the summer and autumn of 1944, the album only sur-
faced 62 years after the war. In 1946, a lieutenant colonel of the US Counter Intelligence
Corps found it in an abandoned apartment in Frankfurt and took it home with him and
1,000 837 — — he donated it to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington in January 2007.
Höss was already on the Allies’ wanted list as an alleged war criminal but he evaded
capture for nearly a year. British troops eventually tracked him down masquerading as a
farmer under the name of Franz Lang. He was handed over to the Polish authorities on
10,000 7,422 690 33,734 May 25, 1946 and put on trial for murder. Found guilty he was sentenced to death on
April 2, 1947 and 14 days later taken to Auschwitz to be hung on a gallows specially
erected adjacent to the crematorium in Auschwitz I.
lies uprooted from their residences as part of which indicates their fate. Danuta Czech and 616 women were incarcerated in the
the process of total eradication of Jewish points out that individual deportees, mainly camp, whereas the remaining Jews were
communities, their only offence being their twins (designated as subjects of the Nazi gassed. The selections among Jews were car-
‘racial’ and national origins. physician SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Men- ried out by SS doctors. Regular transports of
Designated as ‘RSHA transports’, the gele’s experiments), were put in the camp as non-Jews did not go through the selection
Jews faced selection immediately upon registered prisoners. Furthermore, a certain process; non-Jews went on to become regis-
arrival; those deemed fit to work, usually a number of young people and those classified tered prisoners.
small minority of those on the transports, as fit for work were consigned to other The overwhelming majority of Jews trans-
became registered prisoners, whereas all camps. The remainder went to the gas cham- ported to Auschwitz, particularly those from
others, including as a rule all children and the bers. Thus, for example, in an entry of May 2, Western Europe, Greece and Hungary, were
elderly, went to their death in the gas cham- we read that following the selection of two unaware of their destination or its nature
bers. Transport entries in the Kalendarium transports — one carrying 1,800 Jews, ‘men until the very end. The SS was in charge of
referring to mass transports of Hungarian and women fit for work, ages 16 to 50’, and the killing process, and SS men poured the
Jews in May-July 1944 reveal a clear pattern another carrying 2,000 deportees — 486 men gas pellets down the shafts of the gas cham-

45
 SS BARRACKS

LAGER-ERWEITERUNG
USNA

AUSCHWITZ II (BIRKENAU) AUSCHWITZ I (STAMMLAGER)

bers. The Sonderkommando, comprising On June 26, a Mosquito from No. 60 SAAF Squadron (sortie No. 60PR/522) took this
mostly Jewish prisoners kept in isolation high-altitude vertical aerial of the wider Auschwitz area, taking in Auschwitz I (the
from the rest of the camp, performed the Stammlager) and its Lager-Erweiterung (camp expansion); Auschwitz II-Birkenau
‘dirty work’, consisting, as Höss wrote in his three kilometres to the west, plus the huge IG Farben Buna-Werke petrochemical
biography, of ‘helping [the victims] to factory complex with the adjoining Auschwitz III-Monowitz camp which lay four
undress, filling the bunker with Jews, removal kilometres to the east. The discovery of the Allied aerial photographs of Auschwitz in
of the bodies’, and burning the corpses. There American and British archives has provided a rare source of confirmation of Nazi
is no doubt that the Sonderkommando work- documents and camp survivor reports, enabling precise measurements and location
ers were the most wretched of all the siting for buildings that were destroyed before the Nazis left.
Auschwitz prisoners. Not only was their work
the incarnation of a nightmare, but also they oppressors; explosives were smuggled in by last roll-call in the main camp listed 48,342
knew, as witnesses and participants in the Jewish women workers from a factory to the male prisoners, 16,000 women, and 96 pris-
labour of death, that their fate was sealed. In Birkenau camp. Their uprising and subsequent oners of war. About 58,000 prisoners then
autobiographical notes, some wrote descrip- attempt to escape, which ended with the mur- started forced marches from stop to stop,
tions of their deeds; one wrote that no inter- der of all participants, was the only significant from camp to camp. They walked through
pretation of the camp’s meaning would be act of resistance in the history of the camp. Austria and Germany in the cold and snow
complete without their testimonies. On January 18, 1945, ahead of approach- of the winter and early spring months of
In October 1944, Sonderkommando prison- ing Soviet troops, the Nazis began a hasty 1945. Along the way, a large percentage of
ers staged a doomed uprising against their and chaotic evacuation of Auschwitz. The the last Auschwitz victims perished.
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Left: In early 1941, the Auschwitz camp administration had rubber for the German war effort. Prisoners were leased out by
begun negotiating with the German IG Farbenindustrie chemi- the SS to IG Farben, charging them four Reichsmarks per day
cal concern for a further extension of the camp. IG Farben was for skilled workers, three for unskilled workers, and one-and-a-
planning to build a factory on a site near the village of Mono- half for children. Right: The plant built by IG Farben was taken
wice (Monowitz), some four kilometres east of Oswiecim, and over by the Polish government after the war, becoming one of
wanted to hire camp inmates as cheap labour. The Buna- the largest petrochemical complexes in the country. It is still
Werke, as it became known, was to produce synthetic oil and operational today. This is the view from the south.

46
 N

7
2

8
6
5
4
3
1

AUSCHWITZ III
BUNA-WERKE (MONOWITZ)

USNA
The first prisoners began working on the site at the end of March 1941. At first they
marched the seven kilometres to the worksite, later on they went by train, but in Sep-
tember/October 1942 some of the prisoners were housed in six newly-erected bar-
racks on the southern edge of the factory area. Thus originated the Monowitz camp,
which later became referred to as Auschwitz III. Gradually expanding both in number
of huts and occupants, at its peak in July 1944 it held approximately 12,000 prisoners,
the great majority of whom were Jewish. This vertical aerial photo of it was another
from the series taken by Mosquito LR469 of No. 60 SAAF Squadron flown by Captain
Larcher and Lieutenant Stolk (sortie No. 60PR/462) on May 31, 1944. [1] SS compound.
[2] Political Prisoners compound. [3] Camp bordello. [4] Camp kitchen. [5] Appellplatz
(roll-call square). [6] Tents housing prisoners (erected in 1943). [7] Camp hospital. [8]
Camp expansion (not completed). [9] Road to the Buna-Werke plant.
In Survival in Auschwitz, Primo Levi, who Jews, but they were afraid. Then the bom- work, no blows, no roll-calls, and perhaps,
was among the few thousand inmates liberated bardment began. It was nothing new: I later, the return. But we had to make an
at Auschwitz, writes about January 18, the day climbed down to the ground, put my bare foot effort to convince ourselves of it, and no one
when the evacuation of Auschwitz began: into my shoes, and waited. It seemed far away, had time to enjoy the thought. All around lay
‘Nobody knew what our fate would be. perhaps over Auschwitz, but then it was a destruction and death.’
Some SS men had remained, some of the near explosion, and before one could think, a Attempts have been made to classify the
guard towers were still occupied. About mid- second and a third one loud enough to burst survivors according to their behaviour or
day an SS officer made a tour of the huts. He one’s ear-drums. Windows were breaking, the personality traits, in an effort to pinpoint fac-
appointed a chief in each of them, selecting hut shook, the spook I had fixed in the wall tors that might explain their survival. In
from among the remaining non-Jews. The fell down. The Germans were no longer there, some cases, physical fitness, endurance, a
matter seemed clear. No one was surprised the towers were empty.’ capacity to distance oneself mentally from
that the Germans preserved their national About 6,000 sick and completely exhaus- the camp realities, or a callous attitude
love of classification until the very end, nor ted inmates and a few of the hospital person- toward fellow prisoners undoubtedly played
did any Jew seriously expect to live until the nel remained behind in the camp area wait- some part. But for the majority of survivors,
following day. The two Frenchmen had not ing for the end. Finally, on January 24, the SS one is hard put to formulate general rules in
understood and were frightened. I translated left in a hurry. Levi writes: this regard. Life in the camp resembled walk-
the speech of the SS man. I was annoyed that ‘January 24. Liberty. The breach in the ing through a minefield, and the fact that
they should be afraid: they had not even expe- barbed wire gave us a concrete image of it. some prisoners managed to brave all the
rienced a month of the lager, they hardly suf- To anyone who stopped to think, it signified obstacles and dangers was due mostly to
fered from hunger yet, they were not even no more Germans, no more selections, no pure luck.
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ATB

Virtually nothing remains of the camp but a memorial near the Hard labour, starvation, executions and other forms of murder led
main entrance of the petrochemical plant, unveiled in 1966, to a very high death rate. Those deemed unfit for work were killed
remembers those who died working at the Buna-Werke. Life with phenol injections or sent back to Birkenau to be gassed. From
expectancy of slave workers there was just three to four months. August 1944, Allied bombing attacks added to the death toll.

47
THE 70th ANNIVERSARY OF STARS AND STRIPES
The purpose, policy and the very name of States, so he was selected to become the No. 36 Rue du Sentier. The initial problem
the US Army’s own newspaper is credited first editor of The Stars and Stripes. General was that of distribution as the 300,000
to Guy T. Viskniskki, a 2nd Lieutenant with James J. Harbord, Chief-of-Staff, and Gen- American troops were spread out widely
the 80th Division, who in 1917 was serving eral Denis E. Nolan, the Chief of Intelli- but by the time the last French issue
as a censor with the American Field Press gence, both supported the idea as an excel- appeared on June 13, 1919, circulation had
Headquarters at Neufchateau in France. lent agency for morale. risen to 526,000 copies, which were then
The head of the Press section, Major Fred- The first WW1 issue appeared on Febru- printed by the large plant at Le Journal.
erick Palmer, a well-known war correspon- ary 8, 1918, the initial run of 30,000 copies This total included 70,000 copies sent by
dent, already knew of Viskniskki’s creden- being printed at the Paris plant of the servicemen to families in the States. In total,
tials as publisher of Bayonet in the United French edition of Britain’s Daily Mail at 71 editions were published in Paris.
ATB

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The Hotel Sainte Anne (left) was well known to members of the Centre: No. 10 Rue Sainte Anne has today been converted into a
American Expeditionary Force who visited Paris in 1918. It was fire station. Right: The paper was printed for the Americans on
here in a small bedroom that the offices of The Stars and Stripes the presses of the French edition of the Daily Mail at No. 36 Rue
were located for the production of the first five First World War du Sentier. Although the building is now occupied by the
issues which started on February 8, 1918. In March the paper Fédération Nationale de la Coiffure Française (National Federa-
took over two floors of No. 1 Rue des Italiens, later moving to tion of French Hairdressing), it was nice to see that the old Daily
No. 32 Rue Taitbout, the final issue appearing on June 13, 1919. Mail sign still remains above the entrance.

48
With the introduction of US troops to
the European Theater in 1942, Major
(later Lieutenant Colonel) Ensley M.
Llewellyn was charged with resurrecting
the paper. Arrangements were made
with Hazell, Watson & Viney to produce
the ‘Stripes’ at their printing works in
Long Acre in the West End of London.
Following the declaration of war by the The first editorial office. L-R: Tom Bernard, Mark Senigo, Bud Hutton, Bob Moore and
United States in December 1941, the first Ben Price.
troops to reach Europe disembarked in
Belfast on January 10, 1942 (see After the Sergeant Oram C. ‘Bud’ Hutton, former edi- The leading story in the first edition was
Battle No. 34). Just three months later the tor of the Buffalo Evening News and ghost an interview with General George C. Mar-
first edition of the reactivated Stars and writer for the Zane Gray Westerns. The shall, the Army Chief-of Staff. He quoted
Stripes was published as a weekly on Satur- reporters included enlisted men from the General John J. Pershing, the American
day, April 18, 1942. 34th Division yet all were experienced news- Expeditionary Force commander in the First
The first editorial office was established in men like Len Giblin (Associated Press); Rus- World War, who said that the Stripes had
the offices of Hazell, Watson & Viney at No. sell Jones (United Press International); been a major factor in sustaining the morale
52 Long Acre, London. As one of Britain’s Charles Kiley (Jersey Journal); Ham Whit- of members of the AEF: ‘We have his
largest printers with a work force of 1,700, its man (New York World Telegram) and Bob authority for the statement that no official
main purpose-built factory was on Tring Road, Wood (Detroit Free Press). Staff Sergeant control was ever exercised over the matter
Aylesbury, but printing had begun in London Ben Price (Des Moines Register) was respon- which went in Stars and Stripes. It always was
at the Long Acre plant in 1901. sible for pictures and make-up, and Yeoman entirely for and by the soldier. This policy is
Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Ensley 2nd Class Tom Bernard (Los Angeles Exam- to govern the conduct of the new publica-
M. Llewellyn was the editor with Lieutenant iner) for coverage of navy and marines sto- tion.’
Harry A. Harcher and 2nd Lieutenant John ries. Private Mark Senigo (Bedford Standard To set against this is an interesting com-
Wilkinson as associate editors. The news desk Times) was sports editor, while Staff Sergeant ment by Andy Rooney in his 1995 book My
was manned by Staff Sergeant Robert L. Russell Jones (St Paul Post Despatch) was in War: ‘There were very few stories that were
Moora (New York Herald Tribune) and charge of the Northern Ireland branch. put off-limits to us by the two military cen-

ATB

The initial run of 29 weekly issues were printed by Hazells, the first No. 52 occupied the white-fronted building on the left. When we
issue coming off the press on April 18, 1942. Hazell’s old works at took this photo 70 years later it had become a ladies dress shop.

49
 Within a few months, with the build-up of American troops in
Britain, it was decided to publish daily with an initial first run of
50,000. This was more than Hazells could produce so a tender
(below) was put out by His Majesty’s Stationery Office (on
behalf of the US), the contract being awarded to The Times to
be printed the same size as The Times Literary Supplement
and typeset in 7½pt and 9pt Times Roman.

Although The Times building fronted Queen Victoria Street, its

address was Printing House Square as that was the location of the
original private house, occupied by the Walter family which
founded the newspaper in 1785. It remained as a dwelling until
1910 — the last in which a newspaper proprietor lived over the
shop. As well as printing The Stars and Stripes, included in the
The Times

price was the use of three rooms for the editorial staff in the Eaton
building — Nos. 152-156 Queen Victoria Street. Below: On this
early post-war plan it is described as ‘Photographers Library’.

The Times

50
 ATB
On September 5, 1940, a bomb fell close to the building in The whole of The Times complex was demolished in 1962
Queen Victoria Street although the details were censored until when the paper moved to new premises in Grays Inn Road.
October 12. The Eaton building is on the extreme right. The huge Mallon Centre of offices now occupies the entire site.
sors who were always in the Stars and Stripes The Times building had been damaged which were standing idle in the basement.
office. For one thing, we all knew what the by a bomb exploding in Queen Victoria In all, 915 issues were printed at The
rules were as well as they did and, for the Street on October 12, 1940, and the Stripes Times, the last coming off the press on
most part, the rules made sense. No one was able to use the old rotary presses October 15, 1945.
wanted to give information to the Germans
that would have helped them. There were
stories I didn’t write because I didn’t like to
think of the bomber crews with whom I spent
so much time talking, reading them. Too sad.
During the two years I covered the air war,
there were half a dozen stories I couldn’t
bring myself to write even though it would
have been more honest if I had.’
In the early issues in 1942, the main news
covered the fighting in the Pacific, plus home
news, but in June men stationed in Northern
Ireland began to be allowed to visit London.
To Americans, Independence Day — the
Fourth of July -– means fireworks, so it was
only natural that they decided to mark their
display in 1942 in a special way. The Eighth
Air Force, using RAF Bostons of No. 226
Squadron, mounted their first raid to Hol-
land on July 4 when, as Stars and Stripes
reported on July 11: ‘In a joint operation
with RAF light bombers, six American air-
crews attacked targets in German-occupied
territory today. Two American planes are
missing. The Americans flew A-20 type air-
craft in a daylight minimum altitude attack.’
(In actual fact, the first operation by an
Eighth Air Force crew had taken place five
days earlier!)
At this stage, the Stripes was only appear-
ing weekly but after 29 issues production was
switched from Hazells to The Times building
in Printing House Square at Blackfriars,
where there was capacity to produce a daily
paper. The initial contract was for 50,000
copies. There were to be eight pages in the
Monday edition and four on the other days
except Sundays when a special British Isles
edition of Yank would be distributed as a The staff of The Stars and Stripes gather round to see the first daily edition come off
Sunday supplement. For this, the roto- the press. L-R: Private Mark Senigo, New York City; Private R. J. Collins, Yeoman 2nd
gravure positives were rushed to Britain by Class Tom Bernard, Los Angeles, California; Sergeant Bud Hutton, New York City;
aircraft to be produced on British presses. Major Ensley Llewellyn. Second row: Corporal Einor Elg, Minnesota; Sergeant Robert
The first Times issue came off the press on Moora, New York City; Sergeant G. K. Holdenfield, Iowa City; and Lieutenant Harry
November 6, 1942. Harcher, Bethlehem, Philadelphia.

51
 Following the landing in North Africa in The busy London editorial department at The Times. One anecdote, no doubt
Operation ‘Torch’ in November 1942, the first wholly apocryphal, is worth repeating to show how much the London staff felt at
pressroom outside London opened in Algiers home in Printing House Square. It is said that one of the staffers was heard to say
in December that year using the equipment at in a Fleet Street restaurant: ‘The Times’? Oh yes, it’s produced in our building!’
L’Echo d’Alger. Thereafter offices of the (The Times even had its own pub, the Lamb & Lark — see plan.) As more and
Stripes were located in towns right across more overseas territories were captured, offices for The Stars and Stripes were
North Africa and Italy (see table). set up to print locally.

London April 18, 1942-October 15, 1945: 29 issues printed by Rennes circa August 21, 1944-September 21, 1944: 27 issues
Hazell, Watson and Viney, Ltd; 915 issues printed by the Times printed at L’Ouest journal, Rennes.
Publishing Co., London.
Paris Sept. 5, 1944-February 1, 1946: 493 issues printed at the
Algiers December 9, 1942-July 15, 1944: 461 issues printed at New York Herald Tribune, Paris.
L’Echo d’Alger, Algiers.
Grenoble August 25, 1944 issue published by Bill Mauldin.
Middle East April 16, 1943-December 21, 1945: 141 issues printed Next 13 issues, August 29-September 12, 1944, printed at
at Imprimerie Paul Barbey, Cairo. Les Allobroges, Grenoble.
Oran May 3, 1943-November 24, 1944: 484 issues printed at Besançon September 14-December 1, 1944: 28 issues printed at
L’Echo d’Oran, Oran. Les Nouvelles de Besançon; 40 issues printed at La République
Casablanca May 19, 1943-July 30, 1944: 205 issues printed at the de Franche-Comte Besançon, Besançon.
Imprimeries réunies de la Vigie Marocaine et du Petit Marseilles September 29, 1944-March 10, 1945: 140 issues printed at
Marocsin, Casablanca. La Marseillaise, Marseilles.
Sicily August 12, 1943-June 2, 1944: 85 issues printed at Giornale di Marseilles-Nice March 12, 1945-September 30, 1945: 201 issues
Sicilia, Palermo. Combat Edition, September 6-November 23, 1943: printed at Le Patriote, Nice.
38 issues published by a mobile Stars and Stripes
Strasbourg December 4, 1944-January 20, 1945: 42 issues printed
detachment with the Fifth Army in Italy.
at Les dernières nouvelles de Strasbourg, Strasbourg.
Naples November 10, 1943-May 2, 1945: 467 issues printed at Il
Liège January 20-April 17, 1945: 88 issues printed at La Meuse, Liège.
Mattino, Naples: May 3-June 12, 1945: 25 issues printed at Il
Messaggero, Rome. Dijon January 22-February 3, 1945: 60 issues at Le Progrès, Dijon.
Northern Ireland December 6, 1943-January 29, 1944: 46 issues Nancy January 22-April 16, 1945: 81 issues printed at
printed at the Belfast Telegraph, Belfast. L’Est républicain, Nancy.
Tunis December 21, 1943-June 2, 1944: 48 issues printed at Germany April 5, 1945-April 17, 1946: 370 issues printed at
Dépêche tunisienne, Tunis. Frankfurter Zeitung, Pfungstadt.
Rome June 5, 1944-June 2, 1946: 572 issues printed at Southern Germany May 8, 1945-December 5, 1946: 567 issues
Il Messaggero, Rome. printed at Nürnberg 8 Uhr-Blatt, Altdorf, Bavaria.
Cherbourg July 4, 1944-circa August 19, 1944: 41 issues printed at Middle Pacific May 14, 1945-January 30, 1946: 222 issues printed
L’Éclair, Cherbourg, to inaugurate the Continental Edition. at the Honolulu Advertiser, Honolulu.

52
 ATB
Editions were printed in Cherbourg and the war for printing the Paris Herald, was Above left: From August 1944, the Stars
Rennes before the main Paris newsroom was found to be undamaged as the Germans had and Stripes was based in Paris at No. 21
established at No. 21 Rue de Berri in the for- not bothered to use it and within a few days Rue de Berri. Right: Today the premises
mer offices of the New York Herald Tribune. of the liberation, Stars and Stripes was rolling is the main office of the Apostocks fash-
The equipment, which had been used before off the presses. ion retail company.

ATB

Although the London edition was still being produced for US The staff were billeted at the nearby Hotel Haussmann located
Air Force personnel in the UK, the operation in Paris became at No. 192 Boulevard Haussmann, today a retail shop. (There
the main production centre for troops on the Continent. Includ- are two other Haussmann hotels in Paris, at No. 6 Rue du Helder
ing the other European outstations, total circulation was more and No. 89 Rue de Provence, but these are large four-star estab-
than a million. lishments with no connection with The Stars and Stripes.)

53
This ‘extra’ was produced at The Times and it was claimed that it was the first paper to hit the London streets at 9 p.m. on May 7, 1945.
Just prior to the capitulation of Germany, Bradley writing in 1960 said that ‘the Stars ‘America’s favorite cartoonists and comic-
an office was established in the US Zone of and Stripes literally covered the world. Its strip artists also enlivened the pages of this
Occupation at a brewery in Pfungstadt, 30 own correspondents often were in the thick sprightly tabloid, which frequently combined
kilometres south of Frankfurt, which became of battle, because the paper’s prime interest a degree of dignity and authority worthy of
the main European office. The first issue was combat and combat troops. Because the The New York Times with the insouciance of
came off the Frankfurter Zeitung presses on men who did the fighting overseas also were The New York Daily News.
April 5, 1945. Some 370 issues were printed interested in what went on back home, Stars ‘Even though reporting the war was such a
there until a move was made a year later to and Stripes covered the home front thor- serious business with the editors that they
the office of former Nazi newspaper Der oughly, too. Major issues, from strikes to a would have fired any staff member who sug-
Stürmer before moving back to Pfungstadt. presidential election, were given the full, gested that war was fun, expressions of a whole-
Then in September 1949, the Stripes took professional treatment; and the soldiers’ some sense of humor were always welcome.
over buildings on the technical site of the for- reactions to the events were published Innumerable times levity lightened the burden
mer Luftwaffe airfield at Darmstadt. mainly in Mail Call, the popular Letters to of war and helped to ease many a weary, home-
Former Army commander Omar N. the Editor department. sick soldier through trying situations.’
RICHARD PHILIPP

Left: Very soon after the US Third Army had overrun the Frank- taken over for the mess with administrative offices on the first
furt area in March 1945 (see After the Battle No. 154), an old (US second) floor. Right: Today the pub still stands at
brewery at Pfungstadt, some 30 kilometres south of the city, Mühlstrasse 1 but has since been rebuilt and its name changed
was expropriated for Stars and Stripes. The Hotel Strauss was to Ausschank Pfungstädter Bräuerei.

54
 RICHARD PHILIPP
The paper factory (Papierfabrik Gebrüder Seidel) on Bahnhof- left is Rügnerstrasse, the house being No. 73. The vehicles are
strasse was requisitioned for the editorial offices and compos- the Jeep Model 463 Station Wagon in two-wheel drive which
ing room which were located on the top floor. The road on the was introduced in July 1946.

RICHARD PHILIPP
Left: The old school house on Kirchstrasse served as a bar- to various tasks on the newspaper. Right: Fortunately the
racks. At that time, over a hundred soldiers had been assigned building still stands in use for the Lessing-Schule.

In 1949 the ‘Stripes’ moved out to nearby Darmstadt where Stripes is still published for US forces around the world, the
they occupied buildings on the former Luftwaffe base, the European production base having moved to Kaiserslautern in
airstrip having been taken over by the US. Today The Stars and July 2008, the motto of the paper being ‘By and For the Soldier’.

55
 5 7
9 770306 154097
No. 157 £4.25