Auschwitz 4

Nyiszli learned soon from his location in the crematoria complex that there were other ways that people were murdered here aside from gassing them. Every evening several trucks would arrive carrying about 70 men or women brought from one of the existing sections of the camp. They were chosen generally because their productive value was no longer high enough to, “make it worth maintaining them.” They would be forcibly brought into the crematorium, made to undress, and then taken individually into an adjoining room where an SS officer would shoot them in the back of the head with a small calibre gun. The body would be dragged off and the next prisoner admitted. Their clothing was disposed of and the bodies were taken to the ovens or, if these were not currently operational, to an open pit pyre which was kept burning beyond the area of the crematoria. All who were brought by lorry were aware from the moment of their selection that they were about to be murdered. Their screams and struggles reverberated throughout the complex until they were silenced by death.

On one occasion when Nyiszli was sent to the area of the pyre to collect some medicines and eyeglasses that had been left among the property of murdered people, he witnessed another use to which this burning pile was put. Several trains had arrived that day and all four crematoria were heavily laden with those selected for immediate death. The overflow was directed to the pyre. There, groups of about 400 at a time were sent into a simple hut, forced with shouts and beating to remove their clothing, then individually grabbed and pulled screaming down the path to the edge of the pyre where an SS officer would shoot them in the head; then his or her body was unceremoniously thrown onto the burning pile below them. Many were still alive when they were pushed into the fire.

Nyiszli was present in the camp throughout the remaining months of 1944. The largest contingent of people to be murdered were his own: 438,000 Jews were deported from Hungary beginning in May. Families who had been sent earlier from Theresienstadt near Prague were living together in one of the sub-camps of the facility. On July 10-12 this group (12,000 according to Nyiszli; closer to 9,000 from other sources) was “liquidated.” Groups like the Czechs and the Roma had not undergone selection at their arrival at Birkenau. Young and old, they had been able to live together and have some form of family existence despite the terrible conditions. On the morning chosen for the action against them all other prisoners were confined to barracks. Heavily armed troops cordoned off the area surrounding the Czech camp and a selection was made. Those being loaded into lorries knew immediately their destination; the crying and screaming could be heard throughout the complex. About 1,500 men and women were selected to be sent to work camps; the others were taken to the crematoria. On August 2, the “Gypsy” camp of about 3,000 was wiped out in the same way. Shortly afterward the deportation of 67,000 Jews from Lodz to Auschwitz began. Also in August 13,000 Poles were sent there following the Warsaw uprising.

Much has been written about the immorality and cruelty among those who “chose” to work for the SS in camps. Their numbers were in the tens of thousands. The conditions of their beginning to work, of the manner in which they operated, and how they viewed what they were doing must have varied considerably among this population. Nyiszli, far from being judgemental of the Sonderkommandos with whom he worked, clearly saw them as co-workers, caught unwittingly, as he was himself in a terrible position. The men were chosen usually at the time of selection because they were young and healthy. Some stepped forward when a general search was made, for example, for dentists or dental assistants thinking that they might be able to do something useful in the camp related to their profession, little realizing that they would be put to work removing the gold teeth and dentures of corpses.  Knowing nothing of the crematoria or its business until arriving there, theirs was hardly a question of choice. Once realizing the horrors that they were involved with, some did refuse to work and were immediately killed. They learned very early on that their own time was limited and that they would never escape the crazed universe within which they operated. Some managed to deal with this; others succumbed to depression and attempted or succeeded in committing suicide.

Because the Sonderkommandos were well housed and fed there was considerably less friction and competition among them than was endemic within the concentration and work camps. They recognized one another as members of a team that had a job to do but that soon would be annihilated; generally they looked out for one another. Their common enemy was their SS guards; even there, however, even there was some sense of understanding. The guards themselves had an inkling of the fact that they too would never be permitted to re-enter regular society: the possibility of their disclosing the terrible secrets of the crematoria were too great. There was an unacknowledged collusion among all who worked within the crematoria premises by which some tiny portion of the confiscated gold was collected by the Sonderkommandos, turned into 140gm discs, smuggled out of the crematoria premises to purchase perishable foods more difficult to obtain. All within the area participated at least by having knowledge of the activity and all received its benefits.

Nyiszli states clearly that he found some of the Sonderkommandos with whom he associated to be decent men. He cites as an example a situation in which a group of 500 women were constructing a road close to the crematoria fence by moving stones to it. The women were guarded by two SS men with dogs. Gaining permission from their own guards, some of the Kommandos made contact with the SS men watching over the women and handed each a box of cigarettes. Individually then they casually approached the gate adjoining the outside area and handed a prepared bundle of food, clothing, and cigarettes to each woman who approached them. They repeated the practice again the following day. These men did not know the woman and had nothing personal to gain from what might have been sufficient cause for their own instant deaths. They did it, Nyiszli says “as a matter of honour.” Nyiszli himself would take medicines with him on his walks about the crematoria perimeter and leave these close to places where they might be found.

Nyiszli gives an account of the co-operative work of a number of the Sonderkommandos and himself to leave a document describing the activities of the crematoria to future readers. One of the senior officers of the SS had commissioned a group of the Kommandos to make a special bed for him; it was to be transported to his home when finished. Nyiszli hit on the idea of producing the document, sealing it a metal tube and hiding it among the springs of the bed. The document was copied by one of the men in calligraphy and 200 of the Sonderkommandos signed it. A second copy in another metal case was buried in the courtyard of the crematorium. These documents have never been found though five others of this nature were discovered, four buried in the grounds of the crematoria.

In October, 1944 some of the men with whom Nyiszli had worked developed a plan to break out of the crematorium premises and the camp. Under cover of air strikes by the Allies which were happening more frequently, Polish partisans in the area had been able to breech the fences of the compound and to leave explosives for the men. This seems to have been part of a broader plan of the partisans to liberate the camp. Sensing that the SS would be moving soon to eliminate part of their compliment, the Kommandos decided to strike early. Before they did, however, the SS sent in special troops and a fierce fight broke out between the two groups. An explosion in Crematorium III reduced it to rubble, killing many of the Sonderkommandos who had retreated there. Some escaped the camp but were hunted down and executed. In all 451 of the Sonderkommandos died in the attempt for freedom. Three SS men also died in the battle and twelve were wounded.

In November word came from Berlin that the killing at Birkenau was to be stopped. The mass murders in the gas chambers did cease at that point but other groups continued to be killed by shooting. The remaining Sonderkommandos were killed by SS troops as they were no longer needed in the crematoria and would not be allowed into the general population. Nyiszli and the few doctors working with him on Mengele’s “research” were spared as he continued to need their help. By early January, 1945, however, the entire camp was mobilized as the Soviet troops grew closer. Discovering that their SS guards had left the crematoria, Nyiszli and his colleagues dressed in warm clothing and left the area, heading toward the centre of the camp. They mingled with the thousands of prisoners being ordered out of Birkenau, to walk in long columns toward Germany. Nyiszli and the others knew that if it was discovered by the SS that they had been workers at the crematoria their lives would have been immediately forfeited. Over the next few months Nyiszli managed to stay alive as he went with other prisoners on their long death march to elude the approaching Soviets. Nyiszli did survive and returned to his home. His memoirs were published in Hungarian in 1946.

On January 17, 1945 there were still over 67,000 prisoners at Auschwitz and its subsidiary camps. On the eighteenth all but about 7,000 were marched in long columns to another centre 69 kilometres away. Many died enroute. The Soviets liberated Auschwitz on January 27. Before leaving the SS blew up the remaining crematoria and tried to burn any buildings containing records. These efforts were not entirely successful, however. Many documents were saved and used in later criminal proceedings. Nyiszli gave evidence at the Nuremberg trials, the most publicized of the many trials after the war.

We are in Prague now; today we will go to the town of Terezin to visit the former concentration camp of Theresienstadt.