A Holocaust Survivor's Interview

Yesterday I watched and listened to the 2 ½ hour testimony given by a 73 year old woman named Brigitte Altman to an interviewer of the USC Shoah Foundation in 1997. Her testimony is one of over fifty thousand recorded for posterity by the Foundation to keep alive the experiences of men and women who survived the Holocaust. Brigitte’s testimony was given in Fort Worth, Texas where she had lived for some years with her husband, a former USA Air Force officer and their four children. Brigitte was an attractive woman, impeccably dressed, well-spoken with excellent English, dignified, confident, and warm, but maintaining a reserve throughout the process of the interview.

Brigitte was born in 1924, an only child, to a German-speaking Jewish couple in a small city, Memel, in Lithuania. This part of Lithuanian had belonged to Germany at one point and the city was mainly composed of ethnic Germans. Her father was a well-to-do businessman, running a mill and a lumber yard, later a textile mill employing over a hundred people. They lived in a large house with a live-in maid and a nurse for her when she was young. Her parents doted on her; she was, as she said, “pampered.” Her parents celebrated the major Jewish holidays and her mother maintained a kosher kitchen out of respect for her more observant parents and in-laws but as a family they were not strictly observant Jews. Brigitte attended the public school with the other German-Jewish and ethnic German students. No racial distinctions were made in her early years. After 1933 when the Nazis came to power in Germany, she gradually felt a change in her school atmosphere. The ethnic German girls began to shun those who were Jewish at lunchtime and no longer invited them to birthday parties as had previously been the custom. The Jewish girls, perhaps 5 or 6 of her class of about 30 pulled together, forming their own, smaller society. Their teachers' attitudes toward them changed as well; no longer were they as friendly or interested in the Jewish girls. A distinct sense of being unwanted and devalued pervaded their experience. About this time Brigitte joined a Jewish youth group that was Zionist in intent.

Her first real awareness of the Nazis as a dangerous threat came about the time of Kristallnacht in 1938.  Her parents would talk at the dinner table about the events in Germany – how Jewish men there were being sent to prisons, and how German friends were appealing to come to Lithuanian for safety. Lithuania did not want an influx of German Jews, however, and visas were difficult to obtain. About this time her father began to actively seek papers allowing them to move to Canada, the USA or to Britain. Through circumstances not explained by Brigitte, her father lost his mill and other properties about this period. The family left for Brigitte’s grandmother’s village, staying for about a month before moving on to Kovno, one of Lithuania’s largest cities, still seeking visas. Along with the German-Soviet partition of Poland in September, 1939, Soviet troops also invaded Lithuania. Brigitte, then about 15 years old, had been enrolled in a Yiddish school. The Soviets were not a threat to her family as their targets were only wealthy business people and large land-owners. Thousands of wealthy families in the country were deported to Siberia from which few returned.

With the German invasion of the USSR in June, 1941, Lithuania was once again over-run. Brigitte spoke of various anti-Jewish edicts that were quickly put in place: the wearing of the yellow star; being forbidden to walk on sidewalks, along with a myriad of other indignities; and, within weeks being forced to move into a newly created ghetto in the poorest area of the city. Her parents had nothing substantial with which to bargain for a decent placement. They ended with a small attic room in a farm house within the ghetto walls. It contained a bed for her parents, a cot for herself, and a sewing machine of her grandmother’s for a table. In this area of the city there was poor sanitation: outhouses were utilized, and there was no running water. Labour groups were formed within the ghetto. Brigitte, now 17, worked for some time in a nursery and greenhouse that grew vegetables raised specifically for the SS. An early “Action” as a rounding up of prisoners for “special treatment” was called, invited the young, well-educated men of the ghetto to enlist for special jobs that required university degrees. About two hundred showed up, were marched away, and never seen again. In October, all of the Jews of the ghetto were ordered to appear in a main square of the city. There a “selection” took place: those who looked able to work were pointed in one direction; the very young, the old and infirm, in another. About 10,000 people were taken away to be murdered by SS divisions and by members of the Lithuanian Activist Front, a right-wing nationalist group that was profoundly anti-Semitic.  Because her mother was unwell, Brigitte had applied rouge to give her more colour; supported on either side by her daughter and her husband, the mother managed to pass with them onto the side of the chosen workers. All around them families were wailing as members were separated, never to see one another again. Despite their good fortune of staying together, Brigitte’s mother died just a few months later in March, 1942 of starvation and of pneumonia.

Brigitte’s father was assigned to a construction group building an airport for the Germans. He and his co-workers walked for two hours daily both to and from the work site. Brigitte also was assigned to a work group. Food was given to them at a depot, in rationed amounts, not always available. There was a daily struggle to find ways to barter for other sources of nutrition in order to stay alive. After a later Action that took the remaining children of the ghetto, Brigitte’s father began serious, though extremely dangerous, efforts to help her to escape. A Lithuanian man, the husband of his former secretary had some business that brought him into the ghetto periodically. Through him, the secretary was contacted and her family agreed to help Brigitte if a way could be found for her to escape. Another work group that regularly went by boat to a site at the outer limits of the ghetto agreed (through what arrangements or payments were not explained) to take her with them on an assigned trip. On the way over one of the women carefully removed the sewn-on star that all Jews wore as identification. Brigitte left the work group and was spirited away in a car which took her to the home of her father’s former secretary. After a month there posing as a new maid, the family sent her on to the husband’s family farm in a more remote and safer location.

The length of Brigitte’s stay in the Kovno ghetto is not clear from her testimony. In July, 1943 Himmler ordered the liquidation of all ghettos. In many places such as in Warsaw the intention was to simply speed up the movement of the ghetto populations to death camps. In Kovno, however, the ghetto itself was made into a concentration camp. This change would have guaranteed even more rigorous controls than those experienced by the ghetto. It is unlikely that Brigitte’s escape could have been effected under that regime. The German occupation of Lithuania lasted three years: June, 1941- July, 1944. During those years Brigitte lived in the ghetto – possibly for close to two years, and for most of the remainder of that period on the farm to which she had been sent.

The farming family sheltered her until the Soviet army re-conquered Lithuania. She was a farm hand, doing the same heavy work as were some Soviet prisoners of war placed there as slave labourers. She shared their work and their meagre food rations but was allowed to sleep in the farm house, together with a six year old Jewish girl who had somehow come under the care of the family. Sleeping there gave Brigitte some protection but she was sexually harassed by one of the sons of the family. He would come to her room at night and force her to come into his. She fought off his attempts to rape her, eventually speaking to his sister; presumably the sister cautioned her brother as these attacks then ceased. When the Soviets arrived, the sons of the house retreated with the Germans, no doubt aware that their status as wealthy landowners would lead to a trip to Siberia. The family appeared no longer willing to keep Brigitte or the other Jewish girl, so she left, finding her way with the child to Kovno. Her father had been taken with the retreating army to continue to be used as a slave labourer in Germany.

Brigitte was able to find a relative of the child and left her there. A family she had known before the war took her into their home though there was no room or bed for her. She slept on the floor, and for a time was without a ration card. Eventually she obtained a job assisting food inspectors on the railroads. This was a good position but Brigitte did not want to remain in Lithuania under what would clearly be but another dictatorship. The Soviets already kept a careful eye on the population, combing out those who appeared to be a threat politically, or simply those not keen to contribute to the newly offered “workers’ paradise.” Brigitte made clandestine connections with a Zionist group; with one of their factions she made a perilous two-month trek across Poland and Czechoslovakia to the border of Austria and Italy. She and others crossed the Alps to join a Jewish “base camp,” a kind of kibbutz that prepared people who intended to move to Palestine when possible. Sometime later she received news that her father had survived the war. He had been taken to Dachau and liberated by American forces. Eventually he joined her in Italy. An uncle of his who lived in Fort Worth, Texas helped them to get visas to go to the USA in 1949. It was there that Brigitte later met and married her husband.

Thinking about the testimony of Brigitte Altman, I am struck by how restrained she was throughout her narration. The interview was conducted by an American woman in a kindly and sensitive manner but without much probing of Brigitte’s feelings. Brigitte herself resolutely did not enter into any in-depth revelation of either any horrific periods or experiences, or of her feeling states throughout her long journey from a happy child in a settled home and city, through the rigours and the terrors of Soviet and Nazi, then again Soviet, domination. At the end of the interview her husband and daughter appeared with her, both praising her dignity, strength, intelligence, and virtues as a good mother and wife. Undoubtedly they also had not either during her interview or possibly throughout their long relationships with her, been privy to her innermost pains and troubles that stemmed from her history. She said clearly that when she came to the USA she had focused on her new life, wanting to leave the past behind her, to fit in as well as possible to the world she was then entering.

Brigitte’s daughter, the youngest of their four children was asked how her mother’s experiences had affected her own childhood. She spoke of two things: when she was about six years old other children at school were playing a game in which they saluted with a straight arm and called out “Heil Hitler.” Brigitte’s daughter later mimicked this at home to her mother’s horror. Her mother sat her down and told her what that gesture and phrase meant and something of her own history under the Nazis. The daughter was entirely taken aback with this new and frightening story of her mother’s early life. She spoke to no one of it but carried it always as a secret, an inner knowledge that engendered a sense of being different from others, and, in a particular way, isolated. Her second comment underscored a feeling about her mother that she had sensed from when she was young: her mother was never light-heartened in the way that others of their family’s acquaintance could be. This, she said, affected her as she grew up as well.

Brigitte had “put the past behind her” to begin her new married life in the United States. In the interview she spoke euphemistically or simply brushed over pieces of her story that would have been terrifying for a young woman caught in the grip of regimes so given over to the absolute control of all under their sway, in particular the three years during which the Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators ruthlessly murdered many thousands of Jews. She endured great privation, the painful loss of her mother, several years not knowing if her father, her acclaimed “hero” was still alive, lived for a long period in the absolute knowledge that her own life could be forfeited as easily as had been those of others around her, and, without any clear hope that she could survive her circumstances. Her courage and strength as well as good fortune brought her through, but not without wounds that remained with her to the time of her testimony and presumably beyond. Her daughter felt them, “knew” them without articulation, and was impacted by them in ways that as an adult she was trying to understand. These wounds were discernible in Brigitte’s body, her face, in her valiant efforts to project solidity and well-being. Her story with all of its unexamined nuances stood at sharp right-angles to the face and the tone that she projected. One could only acclaim the strength of this woman and at the same time mourn the losses and the brutalities that she had endured.

I believe that the purpose of the Shoah Foundation’s filmed testimonies is to keep for posterity the stories of individual men and women who survived some version of the Holocaust as it was enacted throughout Europe. Brigitte’s interview fulfilled this purpose. In it, as in others that I have seen, the interviewer did not probe deeply into Brigitte’s feeling states or into questions about dealing with trauma once her captivity had ended. This was not a “therapeutic” process. I suspect that in the main those who agreed to be interviewed did so in a spirit of duty: to bear witness to what they and so many millions of others who are unable to speak had endured, to give the lie to those who attempt to deny the Holocaust or to water it down to more easily consumed realities. The grim reality of the Holocaust remains and will always remain exactly what it was.  It cannot be “explained” nor can it be “understood.” 

Holocaust Memorial Week

I had intended to focus my next post on Himmler (and his close associate, Heydrich) but would like to say some things about this year’s Holocaust Memorial Week. I was able to attend four of the many presentations on offer, all happily connected in some fashion with books I have read and issues I have written about. I perhaps had not looked closely enough at the literature announcing the week’s activities, as I only gradually came to realize its over-arching theme: an examination of “collaboration,” that is to say, an active working with the Nazis’ design to exterminate the Jews of Europe and other targeted groups. When the war ended there were two (to simplify something difficult to easily categorize) that played out across the zones of German domination: first -- retribution, swift and most often fatal against those seen as collaborators, as well as bringing high profile offenders into courts of law for judicial punishment; the other –  burying the past, perhaps motivated by the desire and need to orient energies toward life and the rebuilding of personal and political spaces, and/or a disinclination to examine too closely the shades of responsibility shared from egregious to more subtle degrees by many living at the time.

In areas quickly taken over by the USSR the latter process was facilitated by the Soviet government’s need to bind its new populations to itself in a common narrative: all of the horrors of the war must be laid at the feet of “the fascists.” The people of a newly created Eastern German state, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and so on were written in as simple victims of the Nazi war machine. It was all: let us maintain clarity about the bad and the good, the black and the white. When I visited the USSR in 1973 with Maurice and his students, a constant refrain given to us was about the perfidy of “the fascists” who had attacked Russia, murdering countless millions. All true of course, but only one segment of the story. In Western Europe as well there was a profound disinclination to examine or to even speak of the issues in any depth.

Over the decades, however, this reticence has given way in some places to a more honest and open dialogue. In the west Germany’s alliance with the USA demanded increasingly a public examination and acknowledgement of the horrors perpetrated within its boundaries. For many years now West German students have been taught about their history in searing detail. Turmoil erupted within families as children have had to examine their parents’ narratives of the war against things they were learning. Since the dissolution of the USSR in 1989 efforts have been made in Eastern Europe, markedly in Poland, to broaden official histories to include what happened to the vast pre-war Jewish populations. The four presentations that I was able to attend during Holocaust Memorial Week considered from various perspectives the differences between collaboration as an active espousal of Nazi aims, and, co-operation, working in some fashion with German authorities in order to protect one’s life and well-being and that of others, though not operating in any actively hostile fashion against the populations marked out for destruction. Clearly there are many shades along a spectrum between these two positions. Many survivors have acknowledged that at least a part of their good fortune in remaining alive came at the expense of others who did not. This is a broad topic that I would like to explore further.

At the moment I am reading Saul Friedlander’s 2007 book Nazi Germany and The Jews 1939-45: The Years of Extermination, sequel to his earlier work Nazi Germany and The Jews 1933-39: The Years of Persecution. Early in this work Friedlander warns against the trap of assumed homogeneity of any group. Our brains like neat categories to fit into frames of reference but these can easily lead us toward wrong conclusions. “European Jews,” (one could substitute almost any group – Catholics, American Christians, Muslims, etc) were by no means all cut from the same cloth. In Europe before the outbreak of WWII lived about nine million Jews. This was an enormously diverse group, having for centuries been effected by distinctive national histories, the dynamics of large scale migrations, and for some, the influences of urban life. Throughout the continent and across time people had been diversely rewarded or punished by changes in economic and social possibilities and/or by hostilities. Overall there had been a gradual reduction in religious observance, especially in the west. Then, as now, religious belief and observance spanned from ultra-orthodox, orthodox, liberal, to non-believing, secular Jews. Politically, Jews tended toward liberal ideas, though these could span ranges of democrats, social democrats, Bundists, Stalinites, Trotskyites, or Zionists.

The most observable split among European Jews in this period was between those living in the east and those in the west. Jews in Western Europe were considerably fewer in number than those in the East. They tended to be urban dwellers, educated, many of them professional people, speaking the national language, and identifying as citizens of their particular country. Intermarriage with non-Jews was not uncommon, allowing for some gradual assimilation. Jews living in the large cities of the East were in most respects similar. Most Eastern Jews, however, tended to live in smaller villages or towns, farming or working as artisans. They spoke Yiddish and did not identify in the same fashion with the country of their births. Generally they were poorer, less educated and sophisticated than their Western counterparts, but lived within a vibrant Jewish culture.

Friedlander speaks of the period from the late 19^th century to roughly the end of the second world war as one characterised by “a crisis of liberalism.” With the rise of nationalism minority groups like Jews everywhere became more clearly viewed as “Other,” not just in Germany but generally throughout the continent. Rights gained over previous centuries under the influence of the Enlightenment (generally put in place by monarchs) were in various ways weakened or rescinded, leaving Jews more vulnerable economically, professionally, and with respect to their rights as citizens. During this period there was also a steady migration westward of Jews from the east. The differences between those who had lived for generations in the west and the newcomers were fairly marked and they did not mesh happily with one another. Western Jews found those from the east somewhat “backward” and embarrassing; those from the east were scandalized by the secular lives of the westerners. Moreover the influx of Jews from the east provoked an even higher degree of anti-Semitism than that which had been a “normal” condition of the western milieu. The ideologies of right-wing, nationalist governments meshed easily with the views of the anti-liberal, anti-communist Catholic church, leaving the Jews of Europe without clear allies in any institutional sector whatsoever as the Nazi war machine was set in motion.

More of Friedlander’s perspectives in my next post.

Auschwitz: The Slovak Jews

The state of Slovakia was created in 1939 after the Czech portions of the 1919-formed Czechoslovakia were incorporated into the German Reich. Slovakia was allowed a “client state” or protectorate status, not unlike that of Vichy France. The new government was led by Josef Tiso, a Roman Catholic priest and his Hlinka party, a fiercely nationalistic right-wing group that like the Nazis, allied nationalism to hatred of the “extra-national,” the Jew. Laws put in place after their access to power reflect precisely those enacted in Germany after 1933, rapidly stripping their 90,000 Jews of their citizenships, their basic rights, their dignity, property, and sometimes, their lives. As the need for slave labourers grew in areas directly governed by the Nazis, a request was made for Slovakia to deport 10,000 Jewish men to assist with the ever-present short-fall. Tiso was not adverse to this possibility, however, the loss of Jewish “breadwinners” would throw the care of their families onto the state. The Slovakians countered with an offer of the men, if the Nazis would accept the families as well. At a February, 1942 meeting in the Slovak capital of Bratislava cynical negotiations proceeded, masked by the Slovaks “concerned” about the unchristian fate of the families separated from their men. Ultimately the issue was settled in Berlin: the Slovak government would send men and families into German-held territories, paying the Germans 500 marks for the “upkeep” of each family member, on the conditions that the emigrants never be returned to Slovakia, and, that Germany would not seek to claim any of the properties or other valuables of the people exported. The Slovaks would thus rid themselves of their Jews and at the same time reap enormous profits by scooping up their properties.

In preparation for their enforced deportation many Jews were rounded up in March and placed in a holding camp policed by Hlinka guards. Like the various incarnations of German Nazi enforcers, these men had swallowed the linkage of their ethnic hegemony with the hatred and demonization of those different from themselves. Laurence Rees’ interviews with former Hlinka guards sixty years later demonstrate the persistence of the belief that the Jews were parasites on the body politic and that their treatment and their fates were justified. One recalled that as he later recognized that the Jews were being sent to their deaths, “I was feeling sorry for them, but on the other hand, I was not sorry for them considering they were stealing from the Slovaks. We were not very sorry. We thought it was good that they were taken away. That way they could not cheat us anymore. They were not going to get rich at the expense of the working class anymore.” In Hlinka custody the Slovak Jews were robbed, beaten, systematically humiliated and brutalized. Then came their transportation.

At this time Auschwitz Birkenau was under construction, constantly in need of new labour sources. As well, its Bunker 1, the “Little Red Cottage” was newly available for mass killing. Himmler, always adept at finding solutions to new eventualities, had the Slovakian Jews forwarded there. This was the first time that Jews brought from outside Poland came to Auschwitz.  With clear dual purposes of labour and for killing, it was the true beginning of Auschwitz as the facility for death with which we most associate it. The selection process at arrival had not yet begun, however. All members of the initial contingent were admitted into the camp, that is, those who were able to run in groups of five the relatively short distance from the railway station to the main camp. Those unable to do so were shot. The following morning all of the roughly 1000 newly imported men were forced to run the three kilometres to Birkenau. About 70 or 80 of those who faltered were shot along the route.  This process itself became the “selection,” the means of ensuring who was capable of work and who would be unproductive, a drain on the resources of the camp.

In the following month some immediate selections occurred as more Slovak Jews arrived, though the regular and systematic selection by members of the SS at the moment of arrival on the ramp at Birkenau began only in July. The system had been perfected to allow as smooth as possible transitions from the trains to the labour camp facilities or to the gassing sites. Those arriving were told to separate into groups of men and of women and children, then to line up five across to pass by the “inspecting committee.” Those who looked fit for work were motioned in one direction; those who did not, or who had young children in tow, in another. Prospective workers were marched away; the others were taken to a far corner of the facility. Guarded by SS and their dogs they were allowed to sit on the ground while they awaited what they were told would be their initiation into the camp. The rapid processing of these large numbers to be killed with each transport depended upon keeping the victims in the dark about their actual fates. The guards were trained to be scrupulous about keeping their group together but also to speak with them in a reassuring fashion about their futures. “You will be given a shower and new clothing. What kind of work did you do previously? Yes, undoubtedly we have need of those workers.” If one of those waiting appeared hysterical or likely to set up a panic reaction in the group, the guards would manage to separate this person, taking him or her to another area where a discrete low calibre shot to the head could pre-empt any difficulty.

Though bunker 1 and later, bunker 2 could together “process” about 2,000 persons at a time by mid-July, 1942, the ordered crematoria ovens had not yet arrived. The mammoth task of disposing of the bodies was a constant difficulty for Rudolf Hoess, Auschwitz’ indefatigable commander.  An initial solution was to bury them in shallow pits also placed at the upper boundaries of the Birkenau camp. Bodies were covered with lime and a thin layer of soil to hide them from view. In the heat of the summer, however, decomposing bodies began erupting through their coverings. Hoess’ prisoners were now charged with disinterring the remains and committing them to enormous pits in which continual fires were maintained. Otto Pressburger, one of the very few Slovakian Jews to survive Auschwitz, told Rees: “The dead bodies were becoming alive. They were rotting and coming out of the holes...The smell was unbearable. I had no choice (but to do this work) if I wanted to live. Otherwise they would kill me. I wanted to live. Sometimes I was questioning myself whether this life was worth living.....We built a big fire with wood and petrol. We were throwing them (the bodies) right into it. There were always two of us throwing the bodies in – one holding the bodies on the legs and the other on the arms. The stench was terrible. We were never given any extra food for this. The SS men were constantly drinking vodka or cognac or something else from their bottles. They could not cope with it either.”

Aside from the gradual initiation of immediate “selections,” the arrival of the Slovak Jews brought another change to Auschwitz: the admission of women. Several of the blocks in the main camp were emptied and prepared for them before the first group came in March, 1942. Their treatment was as rough and barbaric as that given to the men. Stripped of their clothing and hair they were clothed in prison garb, ruled by newly imported women SS guards, and utilized primarily in the building of roads, tasks realized through hard labour and without equipment. Later, a women’s camp was constructed at Birkenau as its enormous confines proliferated.

In my next post I will look more closely at the person and career of Heinrich Himmler, the man who had accumulated enormous power from the beginning of Nazism, the man who by 1942 controlled all of the policing functions of the German state and of its conquered territories, and who was thus able to make decisions that streamlined and exploited the killing functions of Auschwitz.

Auschwitz: Concentration Camp to Death Camp

Throughout the narrative of his book “Auschwitz” Laurence Rees ranges widely over events occurring not just in Germany and Poland but around the world as they related to the ever-unfolding history of the camp itself. He situates the main actors within the Nazi hierarchy and those who worked under them to acknowledge the profoundly competing forces at work all through the twelve years of their dominance, competition not only for position and power but for the important resources that flowed from and gave access to this power. In earlier posts I wrote of the sublimation of Auschwitz from a concentration or ‘protective custody’ camp for Polish political dissidents, to become as well a site for the processing and murder of Soviet POWs suspected of strong ties to communism, later developing as well a slave labour component, facilitating the infrastructure required by I G Farber for its Buna factory. The second of these iterations was brought about by Hitler’s decision to invade the USSR in June, 1941; the third by the refusal of the Soviets to be easily defeated in the manner optimistically predicted by the army and its leader. Led by events, SS leadership used its initiative to sculpt various locations into sites producing whatever resources or activities circumstances required to further their aims and those of their Fuhrer.

In the fall of 1941 as the second phase of Auschwitz: Birkenau or Auschwitz 2 was conceived and designed, its primary function was intended to be a slave labour camp. The fully formed decision to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe had not yet come to fruition. Clearly Jews throughout areas conquered by the Wehrmacht were being rounded up and shot, or, as the example in my previous post shows, murdered by local civilians who were encouraged by the SS. This was taking place in Eastern Europe, however, far from the notice of Western journalists, even from ordinary Germans. To this point Hitler had maintained some public semblance of himself and his party as reasonably civilized. He had operated under a persisting notion that the Western powers, especially Britain, would identify more with the German people than with Slavs, and would sue for peace with him rather than support Stalin. Careful to a certain extent also of public opinion within Germany itself, the regime had not uprooted most Jews living in the Reich, though their lives were greatly restricted. After the invasion of Eastern Poland and the USSR, opinion in the group closest to Hitler favoured moving the Reich Jews eastward and he agreed. Many Jews in countries under siege or already controlled were murdered to make room for Jews being sent from Germany. In some places though, for example in Lithuania, Jews arriving from Germany were themselves summarily murdered. There was as yet no clear policy about the future of the Jews.

By the late fall and early winter, however, this was clearly changing. Hitler was no bureaucrat. He did not sit in an office; he did not hold meetings; he did not sign papers. Other than his later close involvement in the management of the war, his style of leading involved holding forth after dinner or at gatherings of those closest to him. There he would indicate directions that he favoured. Details were left to those heading specific areas. Discussions among the top Nazi leaders including Hitler in the autumn of 1941 indicate the brutal direction his ideas were leading them toward with respect to the Jews. Memos and diary entries of Hitler’s chiefs reveal the dark place to which they were tending. After a dinner in October Hitler spoke of his decision to send all of the Jews under Nazi control to the east, deriding those who would protest: “No one can say to me we can’t send them (the Jews) into the swamp! Who then cares about our people? It is good if the fear that we are exterminating the Jews goes before us.” Speaking to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in November, he commented that he wanted all Jews “to be destroyed.” This general intention was becoming accepted and spoken of among the Nazi hierarchy even though the practical means of implementing it were not yet available. Chelmno was about to be activated and a gassing facility at Sobibor, also in Eastern Poland was being designed. At this point Auschwitz was not planned as a destination for mass killings. It continued in its primary roles as a brutal prison for Polish dissidents and a slave labour camp. Jews in the surrounding areas considered incapable of productive work were brought to the facility for gassing. Soviet POWs were no longer automatically subject to selection for the gas chambers as their potential as workers became valued. An on-going “culling” process of the weak and infirm within the massive organization ensured a steady stream of applicants for the ministrations of the chambers, however.

With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941 Hitler became adamantly committed to the full destruction of the Jews of Europe. Involved now in a war that encompassed virtually the entire world, he declared in a radio broadcast that it had been precipitated by International Jewry manipulating Roosevelt even as they had Stalin. Jews would be punished by complete annihilation. The January 20, 1941 meeting at Wannsee was not the place where the “Final Solution” was resolved upon. That decision had been taken a month earlier by Hitler in concert with his chief ministers. Wannsee was rather an organizational gathering of government state secretaries to plan concrete directions for the solution of “The Jewish Problem.” The meeting was chaired by Heydrich, Himmler’s main lieutenant, authorized by Goering, Hitler’s deputy. This chain sent clear signals that the plans to be under discussion were desired by Hitler, and, that they were under the control of the SS. Heydrich’s “Jewish expert,” Adolf Eichmann took the minutes of the meeting. His notes, edited later by both Heydrich and Himmler survived the war. Intended for wider distribution, the notes were written in deliberately opaque language.Terms such as “appropriate action” or “various options were discussed” would be understood by those fully knowledgeable of the planned directions but would not create alarm among those who were not. The notes reveal the purpose and tenor of the meeting, the lack of concern and debate among the participants about the fate of the Jews, and the co-operation easily offered by these functionaries for the project outlined. Some debate arose over who was to be considered a Jew (blood or religion? degrees of kinship?), but little else. Rees points out that the men gathered there were hardly unthinking automatons. Eight of the fifteen held doctoral degrees.

The plans outlined in the Wannsee meeting were of necessity general. Their implementation could only occur as events on the ground unfolded and as sites for their completion were constructed. Auschwitz itself was not yet targeted as a major location for the mass killing of Jews. In early 1942 a requested new crematorium was still intended to be placed at Auschwitz 1, not at the Birkenau facilities being constructed. However, the particular difficulty of that location -- the screams of the dying at a place easily heard within much of the camp compromised the preferred secrecy of the actions -- persuaded Hoess to reconsider. A cottage at the far upper corner of the Birkenau site was quickly converted into a killing site. By bricking up doors and windows and gutting its interior, the cottage was divided into two gas chambers holding as many as 800 people at any one time. It was known as “The Little Red House,” or, Bunker 1. It was nearly a year before adequate crematoria became available for the site. In the meantime bodies would be buried in large pits dug beyond the bunker itself. The first uses of the bunker in March, 1942 was for Jews sent to Auschwitz as part of the forced labour program but who were considered incapable of work.  Later a second cottage, known as Bunker 2 was similarly adapted.

As the possibilities for mass killing expanded at Auschwitz, Himmler recognized its potential as a centre for the “processing” of Jews about to be deported from countries now in the control of the Nazis. The first deliberate use of this nature occurred in the spring of 1942 with the transportation of Jews from Slovakia. I will write of this particular action in my next blog.

Jedwabne: When Neighbours Turn on Neighbours

In Germany a general “combing out” process began immediately following Hitler’s becoming Chancellor in January, 1933. The apprehended – communists, social democrats, persons inimical to the Nazi “revolution” --were taken to Gestapo headquarters for interrogation and subsequent execution or incarceration in the newly founded concentration camp at Dachau. As Germany extended its grasp over other countries, similar programs were put in place to eliminate sectors of the populous against Nazi control. Special forces, the Einsatzgruppen (Operational Groups) were charged with policing consolidation in Austria in March, 1938, the Sudetenland in October, 1938, and Bohemia and Moravia in March, 1939. When on June 22, 1941 the German army attacked the Soviet Union, several contingents of Einsatzgruppen entered Soviet-held Poland and Russia immediately behind the Wehrmacht. Comprised of regular and security police the charge from their chief, Reinhardt Heydrich was to apprehend and to execute extremists: saboteurs, snipers, agitators, senior and middle rank Communist Party members and officials, as well as Jews in the service of the Party or State. In their book "Auschwitz" Dwork and Van Pelt quote from a directive sent by Heydrich to policing forces entering the Soviet sphere: “no steps will be taken to interfere with any purges that may be initiated by anti-Communist or anti-Jewish elements in the newly occupied territories. On the contrary, these are to be secretly encouraged.” (Pg 284)

An example of this “encouragement” is documented in Jan T Gross’ 2001 book, Neighbours: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland. This town of about 2500 in Eastern Poland was in Soviet control after the 1939 partition of the country by German and Russian forces. It was a fairly typical centre in that area, a place of small businesses, craftsmen, and farmers. About two-thirds of the occupants were Jewish. The day after the invasion of Soviet-held territories began, German policing forces entered the town. Two days later, on June 25 an anti-Jewish pogrom was initiated by some members of the community. Men, women, and children were stoned, stabbed, or drowned. The following day a local priest intervened, advising the participants to stop the pogrom, saying that the Germans would “take care of things themselves.” From that day locals no longer would sell food to the Jews. Rumours spread that the Germans would give an order for the Jews to be destroyed.

On July 10 eight Gestapo men met with representatives of the town authorities. The Germans enquired about the people’s intentions toward the Jews. Their response was unanimous: the Jews should be killed. The town representatives were willing for their own people to enforce the decision and the Germans agreed, giving them that day to carry out their decision. People fanned out, pressing other individuals to round up Jews from their homes and bring them to the town square. In the process many were beaten and killed. Some Jews tried to run away but peasants around the town prevented them. A group of about 75 younger Jewish men were forced to uproot and carry a large statue of Lenin installed by the Russians, to a place away from the town square and to dig a hole for it. After the statue was put into the hole, they themselves were killed and thrown in as well. One of the mob’s participants volunteered his barn as a killing place for the large numbers yet to be destroyed. The remaining Jews of the town were surrounded and forced into this barn. Kerosene was spread about the outside and it was set alight. In this “action” the Jewish population of 1600 souls was destroyed. Seven people, hidden by one neighbour survived. Other than taking photographs of the proceedings, the Germans did not act or interfere. The next day they re-took control of the policing of the town.

Gross’ documentation of this story derives in part from a witness account given in April, 1945 by Szmul Wasersztajn, one of the seven survivors, to the Jewish Historical Commission in Bialystok.  In 1949 and in 1953 the main figures complicit in the massacre were indicted and brought to trial. The trials were conducted fairly quickly with preparations stages of about two weeks. Each of the accused was deposed only once. In this heavily Stalinist period the actions of the perpetrators were viewed not so much as atrocities against the Jews, as they were crimes against the state: ways that they had assisted the Nazis in their conquest of Soviet lands. Of the twenty-two brought to trial, eight were found not guilty.  Sentences against those found guilty were relatively light. Gross had access to documents related to the trials as well as to interviews with and memoirs of elderly town residents in 1998 and later.

The Jews of Jedwabne were aware even before July 10 that a major pogrom was brewing. Rumours circulated that on July 5 “with German consent” in nearby Wasosz, 1200 had been murdered and on July 7 about 800 in Radzilow. A Jew from the latter town, Menachem Finkelsztajn who managed to escape with his father reported at length about the breakdown of the rule of law from the moment the Germans entered their town on July 22. From that day to the final destruction of the Jewish population there, the Poles encouraged and even modelled by the Germans, inflicted progressively brutal and humiliating punishments on the Jews. Finkelsztajn relates how many of the Poles cozied up to the invading Germans, building a triumphal arch decorated with a swastika and a portrait of Hitler. They asked the Germans if it was permitted to kill the Jews and were given an affirmative answer. Over the next two weeks Jews were beaten and robbed; their homes were invaded and destroyed; their cattle were taken and given to Poles; they were unable to buy food. “Propaganda started coming out of the upper echelons of the Polish society which influenced the mob, stating that it was time to settle scores with those who had crucified Jesus Christ, with those who take Christian blood for matzoh and are a source of evil in the world – the Jews....It is time to cleanse Poland of these pests and blood-suckers. The seed of hatred fell on well-nourished soil which had been prepared for many years by the clergy. The wild and bloodthirsty mob took it as a holy challenge that history had put upon it – to get rid of the Jews, and the desire to take over Jewish riches whetted their appetites even more.”

This story and ones similar to it that played out in many of the countries invaded by the Germans during WWII reveal the complex relations that endured for centuries among so-called national groups and the Jewish peoples who had lived closely beside them. Anti-Semitism fed by religious intolerance and nationalism, to say nothing of envy and greed, facilitated atrocities against the Jews especially in Eastern Europe with the breakdown of the rule of law and the encouragement and participation of the invading forces. After the war Western Germany was in a sense “forced” by its essential relationship with the USA to acknowledge its crimes against humanity. Travelling today in Europe, it is only in Germany that one senses an on-going effort to educate its young about the war and about the horrors perpetrated there. In areas dominated by the Soviet Union until the late 1980s, accusations were levelled only at the Nazis, the fascist hordes, not at the East German people themselves or at other groups within the Soviet sphere who had clearly co-operated with the Germans in their efforts to eradicate the Jewish population of the entire continent. Since the fall of the USSR, however, efforts are being made, for example, in Poland, to acknowledge and in some fashion rectify the official narratives of the war. This year a major new museum has been opened in Warsaw: The Museum of the History of the Polish Jews.

In Jedwabne itself a stone monument was inscribed after the war: 1600 Jews were killed by the Nazis. After 1989, a second was mounted that read: To the memory of about 180 people including 2 priests who were murdered in the Jedwabne district in the years 1939-1956 by the Nazis and the secret police. The latter inscription refers only to Poles murdered by the Germans and by Soviet-controlled forces. Yet in the town itself the facts of the July, 1941 murder of the Jewish population by their neighbours was well-known and spoken of privately. In the year 2000 the true events of the Jedwabne massacre came to nation-wide attention in Poland with the broadcast of a documentary “Where is My Older Brother Cain?” and a series of investigative articles by Andrzej Kaczynski in the nationwide newspaper Rzeczpospolita. The Polish language version of Gross’ book, Neighbours, was launched at the same time. Since then efforts have been made by politicians to acknowledge and to ask forgiveness for the crimes perpetrated in Poland against their Jewish population. These efforts meet resistance in some quarters, however. For example, a newer Jedwabne monument that reflects the actual events of July, 1941 has been defaced by swastikas. Debates within European countries about responsibilities for war crimes are far from over, though they are not necessarily showcased in regular journalism. YouTube has a documentary entitled Legacy of Jedwabne that can be viewed. Interestingly and unhappily, the series of comments made under its release are almost universally Anti-Semitic.

Auschwitz: Killing Site for Soviet POWs and Polish Dissidents

Clear priorities in the early development of facilities at Auschwitz, as at other concentration camps, were to establish a punishment block wherein to torture and/or kill resistant prisoners, and, a crematorium to dispose of their bodies. Auschwitz’ Block 11 was organized into large holding cells with three-tiered bunks placed close together, each room housing over a hundred men. In the basement were smaller, dark cells with no windows and little ventilation. Four of the cells allowed only standing room; up to four men could be wedged into one of these at a time: anyone who had attempted to escape from the camp would be left there to die; others being punished for a particular offense would languish for a given period. Food, water, and toilet facilities were not provided. In the first of my two September 23, 2013 posts, entitled “Auschwitz” I described the processes of execution daily conducted in the courtyard between blocks 10 and 11. Each body was carried to the entrance of this yard and dumped there as the next condemned person was led out from the side exit. The bodies were then loaded onto carts and taken along the road to the crematorium at the end of that row of blocks. Aside from prisoners murdered in this fashion, others died from starvation, disease, or from the brutality of their guards. As the numbers of victims escalated, the initial crematorium oven was insufficient for its purpose.

The first incinerator had been installed in June, 1940. It had a capacity of two corpses at a time, or up to 70 in a twenty-four hour period. Within a few months the head of the building office at Auschwitz requested a second incinerator. A year later in November, 1941, a third was urgently requested. Another function for Auschwitz had emerged from Germany’s invasion of the USSR that summer: the processing and murder of Soviet prisoners of war, in particular those who were communist functionaries. In October, of the 9,908 Soviet prisoners who arrived at the camp, 1,255 were executed that month; a further 1,238 were condemned in the first five days of November. As well, Polish resisters, men and women, from all over Eastern Silesia were sent to Auschwitz for interrogation (with torture), conviction, and execution. These people were not registered as prisoners with the camp. They were “outsiders,” channelled into Auschwitz because of its location and its ever-increasing facilities for killing.

The crematorium had been installed in one section of the former ammunition depot at the end of one row of barracks. A room adjacent to it was transformed into a mortuary. As the numbers being executed in the courtyard at block 11 rose, the more convenient mortuary was converted for use as a killing site. Prisoners in a line would be led into the space, stepping close to the corpses of others who had preceded them. The SS officer in charge would shoot each in the back of the neck in his turn. Prisoners employed in the facility would pull the executed over to the crematorium door where others would load their bodies onto cast-iron “trucks” for distribution into the incinerators. On pages 179-180, Dwork and Van Pelt’s “Auschwitz” reproduces a detailed description of this process given by Filip Muller, one of the few slave labourers employed in the facility to survive.

Even before the outbreak of war, Nazi eugenics policies had been made operational through the murder of the disabled and mentally ill. The most convenient method found through various experiments was with carbon monoxide directly piped into the sealed compartment of a moving truck filled with victims.  It was an effective but relatively slow process given the numbers of whom the Nazis now envisioned disposing. In September of 1941 Rudolf Hoess’ suggested that his second in command experiment with the use of Zyklone B, an agent used to control the spread of lice. His first attempt held in just one of the basement cells of Block 11, was successful. It led quickly to a more ambitious slaughter: the killing of over a thousand Soviet prisoners of war and Polish dissidents crammed into the whole of the basement. An effective method had been discovered to allow the rapid murder of thousands in a day! Block 11 could not, however, be used for this function on a regular basis. Other uses of the building were disrupted for the several days it took to kill the prisoners, remove their bodies, and to air out the facility.

The other on-going difficulty in pursuing this course lay in the disposal of bodies. An area about three kilometres from Auschwitz at the village of Birkenau, was already being designed and prepared as an extension of the original camp, to be known as Auschwitz-Birkenau or Auschwitz 2. An existing cottage on the site was to be refurbished to house two new gas chambers and a crematorium. In the meantime the former morgue, former killing-by-bullet-to-the-back-of-the-head site beside the crematoria at Auschwitz 1, was reconstituted a gas chamber. Its first use was on September 16, 1941. Nine hundred Soviet prisoners of war were crammed within. Three square portholes had been cut into the roof of the room, then covered with tightly fitting wooden lids. Once the prisoners were locked within, pellets of Zyklon B were dropped into the room. Screams of the men were heard as they realized their fate and strained hopelessly to break down the restraining doors. A few hours later the powerful fan system that had been installed earlier to clear the room of odours accumulated by shooting executions, were turned on to rid the space of gas.

Before the invasion of Russia by German forces on June 22, 1941 no specific plans for the mass murder of Jews had been put into effect. Ghettos were used as places of concentration of Jews until they could be deported further east in the “cleansing” of Reich territories. With the army speeding onto Russian soil came Himmler’s special Einsatzgruppen forces, specifically charged by him with the identification and execution of political leaders, and, importantly, the murder of Jews. This shift is an example of Hitler’s officers taking initiatives that moved policies in more radical directions than those previously envisioned, albeit toward options that would not displease their leader.  Initially the Einsatzgruppen did not openly murder local Jews, but rather relied upon others in the community to turn upon their neighbours.  (See my August 20, 2013 post for more information about the Einsatzgruppen.)

A conviction that the invasion of Russia would occupy but a few summer months led to an ambitious effort to stream German and Czech Jews from their homelands toward the east. In September Himmler informed the administration in charge of the Lodz ghetto that he was sending 60,000 Jews there, using that spot as a temporary transition point before the Jews were settled in Russia. In less than two months over 20,000 people were housed in the already vastly overcrowded ghetto. But the war was not concluded and clearly would not end soon. The crisis in overcrowding at Lodz, stemming directly from the Nazis’ miscalculation of Russian resistance and from difficulties related to the vast terrain they were attempting to conquer, triggered the first dedicated use of a death location for Jews. Seeking relief from the overcrowding at Lodz, the administrative head of the district, Gauleiter Greiser, (also on his own initiative,) turned to a higher SS and police official, Wilhelm Koppe. Koppe called in Herbert Lange, an orchestrator of previous T4 programs, murder through carbon monoxide.

The village of Chelmno was chosen as a site to relieve Lodz’ overcrowding. A suitable house surrounded by a large fence became a reception point. Groups of Jews from the Lodz ghetto were transported there with the promise that they would be taken to places of settlement where they would be given work and good food. These enticements prompted some of the transported to volunteer. At their destination they were told to remove their clothing for disinfection and to go for a bath. The hallway toward “the bath” led directly into a truck wedged tightly to a basement door of the building. Told they were being driven a short distance to the bathing location, the 100-150 detainees were loaded aboard, the truck was locked and driven into the forest. Carbon monoxide pumped into the body of the truck suffocated all within on their journey. Once in the forest their bodies were removed and thrown into a pre-arranged mass grave. In the meantime another truck load from Lodz had arrived at the reception centre. Between December 8, 1941 and April 9, 1943 when the Chelmo facility was blown up by an SS detachment attempting to hide evidence of atrocities, about 150,000 Jews were murdered there. Only two survived.

In my next post I will give an example of the early involvement of the Einsatzgruppen in villages mainly composed of Jews.

Auschwitz: From a Concentration Camp to a Slave Labour Camp

Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan Van Pelt’s 1996 (revised and updated in 2008) “Auschwitz,” provides a narrative of the changing functions of this camp from its earliest days. Prior to the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, seven concentration camps (euphemistically called ‘protective custody’ camps by the authorities), had been established in Germany. A seventh, Mauthhausen, was opened near Linz, Austria in August, 1938 soon after the Anschluss, the relatively peaceful take-over of Austria. These camps functioned as extra-legal institutions to hold people viewed as threats to the consolidation of Nazi power in Germany, later in other countries as they were overrun or annexed. The first, Dachau, was opened in March, 1933, scant weeks after Hitler’s elevation to Chancellor. By the fall of that year as many as 27,000 prisoners had been absorbed into its grasp. Over the next several years through the murder of prominent dissidents, progressively restrictive legislation, the monitoring of citizens’ loyalty to the regime, and the mass emigration of about 100,000 people who recognized their peril under the Nazis, the general approval by and control of the party over Germany’s population was well established. By 1937 the entire population of the existing four camps had dropped to about 10,000.

This sector of Nazi administration was under the command of Heinrich Himmler. Not one to watch his personal bailiwick diminish in relevance and power, Himmler organized a new function for his camps, one clearly required by directions Hitler was envisioning with his young architect, Albert Speer. Working together since 1933, these two men met regularly, often daily, to talk about and to draw up ambitious plans for the remaking of Berlin as a site worthy of its role as the centre of Nazi power. Museums in places like Hitler’s home town, Linz, Austria, as well as other locations for mass rallies, memorials, museums, and administrative sites were discussed, designed, and in some cases built. To facilitate the envisioned building program required vast reserves of not just labour, but of construction materials. Bringing together these two necessities by the construction of slave labour camps in locations containing elements like gravel, granite, and loam and clay for bricks would provide new and profitable functions for Himmler’s existing camp empire. To this end Sachenhausen, just north of Berlin in the town of Oranienburg, had been established in July, 1936 to supply bricks to the capital. Buchenwald, opened a year later close to Weimar and to large deposits of clay and loam, supplied bricks for that city. To coordinate these endeavours, early in 1938 Himmler founded the German Earth and Stone Works (DESt), a company owned by the SS and operated by the slave labour of the inmates of concentration camps.  Late that year the DESt bought a brickyard close to Hamburg and opened another camp, Neuengamme, adjacent to it for its labour supply. Once Austria was absorbed into the Reich, the DESt gained control of granite quarries by the town of Mauthauhausen, establishing a camp there to exploit their valuable product.

Oswald Pohl, a deputy of Himmler’s from the SS Main Administration and Economic Office, visited Auschwitz in September, 1940, as Hoess had barely begun putting the camp together as a site for holding and punishing dissident Poles. Recognizing the value of nearby sand and gravel pits, Pohl ordered Hoess to double the capacity of the prisoners’ compound by adding a second story to each of the fourteen single-story buildings. Hoess’ on-going problem, however, focussed on finding construction materials for these endeavours. Despite repeated appeals to Berlin for supplies, little had been forthcoming. In November, Hoess met with Himmler in Berlin to discuss the camp. Their shared background as farmers as well as an ideological agreement about the almost “holy” ideal of German farmer families as the bedrock of the new order, led to discussions of using Auschwitz as a centre for agricultural experimentation. Plans were drawn up for the draining of marshes and for sites of food production. This enthusiasm did not, however, provide Hoess with his badly needed construction materials. Moreover, efforts made over the next year to implement their ideas were entirely thwarted by the poor soil of the area.

In fact materials for the development of the camp in any significant quantity became available only after contracts with the I.G. Farber Company were formalized in the early spring of 1941. Rubber was an essential element in war production. Germany had lost its source of natural rubber when in the 1919 Versailles treaty it had been stripped of its African colonies. Executives of Farber, one of Germany’s most important industrial conglomerates, had been assured that the war would be successfully concluded by the fall of 1940. Accepting the surrender of the Allied forces, Germany would insist on retaking her former colonies, perhaps even others. As the war was clearly not ending quickly, Farber’s engineers began a search during the winter of 1940-41 for suitable sites to produce what became known as Buna, a synthetic form of rubber. An area close to Auschwitz which boasted not only water and lime, but also significant quantities of coal, appeared a promising option. Farber’s main concerns about the Auschwitz area related to the poor quality of the town itself. It required not just housing but facilities like schools, proper stores, and other services for the hundreds of German skilled workers and their families that they would need to import to run their factories.

Once Goering, as head of the German Economic Four Year Plan, had committed to partnering with Farber, Himmler became actively involved in the scheme. Poles and Jews living in the town could be turned out; the town would be essentially rebuilt to house and service as many as 40,000 German workers and families. Labour for this task would be provided by prisoners at the concentration camp, which Himmler now ordered Hoess to further expand to house 30,000. Unable to get supplies from Berlin, Hoess turned to Farber executives at a March 27, 1941 meeting. If Farber could assist the development of the camp, its interests would be served by a more rapidly available source of labour for the building of its own factory and housing. The executives recognized the logic of this approach and were willing to cooperate. At the same meeting it was agreed that Farber would pay a per diem of three Reichmarks per unskilled labourer and four per skilled. A price was also settled for each cubic meter of gravel dug by camp inmates at the nearby pit. From a “protective custody” and transit camp, Auschwitz had been transformed by the prolongation of war into a slave labour camp of profit to its overlords, the SS.

Though the incarcerated men in the camp had now potential value as slave labourers, their treatment did not improve. On the contrary, already poor conditions continued to deteriorate as food supplies for these souls situated at a bottom rung in the Nazis’ growing empire, became even more scarce. Watery soup and pieces of bread were the staples of their meals. Marching to and from their job sites in poorly fitting shoes and in inclement weather, frequently occasioned suppurating sores on their feet that made continued activity impossible. An inability to work marked a man for beatings, and, as the tenor of brutality increased within the camp, for death. More and more prisoners were being funneled into the camp from lands conquered by the Wehrmacht. Pressures to house, feed, and organize them into functional units significantly decreased their individual value to those who had life and death authority over them.

One of the existing buildings of the camp, Block 11, called “the house of death” by the prisoners, had been designated the camp prison, a prison within a prison, to house those awaiting execution and to punish inmates who violated camp regulations. We visited this building during our visit to Auschwitz. My post published on this blog site on 09/23/2013 immediately after that visit describes some of the functions of Block 11, as well showing how it was used to anticipate the next function to which the camp was oriented within a six month period of its becoming a central depot for the holding of slave labourers.

Auschwitz: The Beginnings

Throughout the narrative of his 2005 book on Auschwitz, Laurence Rees traces the development and implementation of Nazi policies related to various populations as conditions arose. Like Dachau and Sachsenhausen the new camp at Auschwitz was intended as a concentration rather than a death camp. Though places of great brutality where many died, these camps were primarily holding and punishment prisons housing designated “enemies of the State:”communists, liberal politicians, people who spoke out against the regime, as well as  intellectuals and priests advocating human rights. Jews were among those imprisoned by inclusion in the above groups, but at least until Kristallnacht in 1938, not primarily because of their “racial” origin. Until the outbreak of war, policies toward the roughly 300,000 Jews of Germany mainly involved progressively stripping them of their rights as citizens, gradually stepping up abuse and terror to motivate their “voluntarily” leaving Germany. 

However, by the beginning of war in the fall of 1939 the options for Jews living in any part of Europe were profoundly constrained. Emigration was no longer a possibility for most, especially those with neither means nor permissions. Having absorbed western Poland into their orb, Nazi authorities had now to formulate new policies to deal with not just the Polish people themselves, but with a radically increased population of Jews (about two million in their portion of that country). These were not primarily urban, integrated Jews like those in Germany, but ones living in rural settings, often in their own villages or small towns, following the centuries-old traditions of their people. Hatred of Jews and a determination to rid the body politic of people characterized as not just enemies but as vermin, as well as the contingencies of war, moved policies toward ever more brutal conclusions.

Germans, who for generations had lived in various countries of Eastern Europe, were by agreement with Stalin, to be repatriated into Germany. The western part of German-occupied Poland was incorporated into the expanding Reich and was designated for this massive resettlement. Poles were summarily removed from homes, businesses, and most importantly, farms, to accommodate the newcomers. During this chaotic period, ghettos for the Jews of Poland as well as from other areas of German control became the prime instrument of ever-evolving Nazi policy. Still not overtly viewed as a preliminary to the annihilation of the Jews, these designated areas nonetheless were organized in such a manner as to provide the fewest possible resources to their residents. At the early stages of the war ghettos were viewed as way-stations. With hostilities quickly concluded, it was assumed that the sequestered Jews could then be forwarded to locations further afield, some even fantasized, to Africa. But the war was not quickly concluded. The British did not collapse and seek a peace settlement even after the French had surrendered. Ghettos became a fait accompli across Poland. Over the several years of their existence, hundreds of thousands died of starvation and disease within their cramped confines.

Lebensaum, living space for ethnic Germans was a central tenant of Nazi ideology. The establishment or simple bestowal of existing farms to incoming German families was not a practical option in Upper Silesia. The soil was poor and the area was primarily industrial. Because the maintenance of these industries and their work forces was essential for the war effort, the existing Polish population and workers had to be retained in place. However, they would remain and work under quite stringent conditions imposed upon them by their conquerors. Those who resisted were imprisoned. Overcrowding of existing prison facilities in the area soon demanded a “protective custody” or concentration camp like those existing in Germany since 1933. A ramshackle former Polish military barracks in the town of Oswiecim (Germanized to Auschwitz) was chosen as its site.The barracks consisted of eight two-story and fourteen single-story brick buildings set about a large exercise yard which had been used by the Polish cavalry. A number of other out-lying buildings were arrayed along a road close to the town railway station. The immediate tasks confronting Hoess when he arrived with five SS guards in early May, 1940 were: to delineate the area of the camp with barbed wire; to adapt the twenty brick buildings for the inmates, including an infirmary and a camp prison; to turn two barracks outside the perimeter into offices and an infirmary for the garrison; to clean and equip barracks to be used for the guard; to build guard towers, garages, and to transform the former powder magazine into a crematorium. To orchestrate this endeavour Hoess required a work force and materials. The first was easily supplied by the men about to be bequeathed to him from nearby prisons; the second was much harder to come by. His requests for construction tools and materials from Berlin were basically ignored, undoubtedly viewed as a low priority during that period of war and constant upheaval. Hoess learned to improvise by simply taking what he needed from other local sites.

The first prisoners to arrive in June, 1940 were 30 German criminals, forwarded from Sachenhausen to become Hoess’ team of Kapos. The Kapo system, devised in Dachau, inserted a level of control between the SS guards and the prisoners. Each housing block or work unit was led by a Kapo, a prisoner chosen for his capacity for brutally keeping others in line. The Kapo was allowed considerable scope in his treatment of his prisoners. He could beat them, deprive them of food or rest, or even murder them. His special perks were a space of his own within the block, special furnishings and food, and discretion in distributing favours as he wished to those whom he chose as favourites. It was a brilliantly diabolical arrangement, freeing the SS from much “hands on” discipline by  inserting the Kapos as their instruments of force and terror in sub-groupings of the camp. However, this did not mean that the SS guards were inactive in maintaining a punitive and terrorizing climate. They asserted their own authority in a myriad of ways, ready to beat, torture, or murder prisoners at whim or for examples. The Kapos themselves were tightly controlled by the guards, each knowing clearly that if he was not in absolute control of his group or if he showed unwonted leniency, he would lose his position, joining the regular prisoners who would not hesitate to gain revenge by murdering him.

The first Polish prisoners to arrive at Auschwitz that summer were immediately put to work refurbishing the existing facilities. Stones and other construction necessities were obtained by dismantling houses in the surrounding area. The work was labour intensive and gruelling, performed regardless of weather in insufficient clothing, on insufficient rations, and in a general climate of brutality that entirely disregarded the humanity of its inmates. In the first one and a half years of the Auschwitz camp’s existence, 10 of the 20 thousand prisoners sent there died. Changing conditions and needs of the Nazi regime affected the structure and purpose of the camp almost from its origin. More about its evolution in my next post.

Auschwitz: Rudolf Hoess and the Formation of Fundamentalist Extremists

In his 2005 book Auschwitz: A New History, Laurence Rees follows events and developments both within the Nazi party and during World War II that led to the shifts of purpose and function to which Auschwitz was brought. Several main characters in the narrative, for example, Hitler himself, his main collaborators: Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goering, and Josef Goebbels, as well as other important persons like Reinhard Heydrich and Josef Mengele are followed as their initiatives contribute to the gradual conversion of Auschwitz from its initial purpose as a concentration camp to its ultimate manifestation as a death camp. Rees’ research was conducted after the collapse of the Soviet Union, allowing him access to previously unavailable documents held, for example, in East Germany. Moreover, with greater access to countries formerly dominated by the USSR, Rees was able to meet with and to interview survivors of the camps as well as former members of the SS and camp functionaries. The long  passage of time since the ending of the war had allowed some of these people freedom to speak of their experiences for the first time. Using all of his sources, Rees is able to document many of the stages of the expansion of Auschwitz in both size and function as well as the events and personalities which affected these changes.

Throughout he keeps a close eye on Rudolf Hoess, painting a portrait of another not particularly exceptional person, who nonetheless was instrumental in shepherding a broken-down Polish military barracks in a back-water area into the premier death camp of the Nazi gulag, responsible for the demise of roughly 1.1 million people. Hoess was the commandant of Auschwitz from its inception in 1940. Other than the period from November, 1943 to May, 1944 which he spent at another death camp, Majdanek, he remained its leader until January, 1945 when the remaining prisoners were forced out into a winter death march just ahead of the advancing Soviet troops. Hoess was captured soon after the fall of Germany and was executed at Auschwitz in 1947. During the year preceding his death he wrote his memoires, which though self-serving, provide a fairly accurate record of the development of and activities at Auschwitz.

Hoess was born in 1900 to Catholic parents in the Black Forest area of Germany. While very young he joined the army, fighting bravely in WWI, becoming one of the youngest non-commissioned officers and receiving the Military Cross. Like Adolph Hitler and many of his generation he was bitter and angry at the defeat of Germany, buying into the view of a number of right-wing nationalist parties, that internal enemies, communists and Jews, were responsible. In 1922 he joined the Nazi party. Involved in a politically motivated murder, he was imprisoned until 1928. After his release he joined the Artamans, an agricultural community where he met his wife and became a farmer. In 1934 Himmler, Hitler’s chief policeman, invited Hoess to leave his community and to join a special detachment of the SS that would oversee the burgeoning world of concentration camps. In his memoir Hoess attributed his acceptance of Himmler’s offer to questions of advancement and salary. More to the point it was his opportunity to take on a role in the kind of world he had dreamed of since Germany’s devastating loss in the war. In November, 1934 Hoess travelled to Dachau to begin his experiences as a concentration camp guard.

Reading about Hoess, I have found myself reflecting on the life trajectories that have pulled so many young men into similar all-encompassing movements with “religious” as well as nihilistic components. The Nazi party clearly drew to itself men (and some women) who enjoyed their permission to employ brute force against vulnerable peoples. But it was more than that. Its success was born of particular circumstances: the profound anguish of a generation schooled to believe in their ability and right to prevail, devastated by the collapse of their forces in November, 1918; bitterness and rage turned against an already identified group – the Jews; an extension of this hatred to encompass the Allied forces who had defeated them, and, communists who favoured trans-national allegiances over a predominately German identity; social, political, and economic dislocation in the aftermath of war and again during the Great Depression which affected European countries even more profoundly than North American; the rise of a charismatic leader who articulated the experience of this generation and seemed to point the way toward a new and brilliant millennium. Nazism for many with Hoess’ background became a “religion,” a faith to which they might happily give themselves over. Its doctrines were extreme and fundamentalist but they had a clarity that appealed to people wandering in the confusions of post-war Germany. Their leader was also their prophet, a man to revere, to love, and to obey. One of the former SS soldiers that Rees interviewed more than 50 years after the demise of the Nazi state was asked to sum up how he viewed the years of its dominance. After a moment’s reflection, he uttered just one word: “paradise.” Extreme religious fundamentalists of whatever creed see the world in a substantially black and white manner. Their need for coherence and certitude makes them vulnerable to adhering to whatever “religion” or cause the circumstances of their lives makes available to them.

However, not all are vulnerable to causes that involve extreme violence. I would suggest that those who are have themselves been the victims of violence, especially during their formative years – perhaps experienced in the context of war or profound social upheaval, but even more often in the crucible of their own familial home. I read recently of studies that show brain changes occurring in children who receive corporal punishment, changes that make it considerably more likely that they will employ the same means of so-called discipline when they have children of their own. Violence against the vulnerable is not simply a matter of behaviours being learned and mimicked, but of patterns in the brain that facilitate these behaviours. Obviously not all people who have been physically abused repeat this behaviour just as not all who were sexual abused do, but, an avenue in the brain is prepared for this option when one is faced with the kind of frustrations experienced by his or her own care-givers. Circumstances and/or conscious decisions will greatly determine the outcomes. People of my own generation generally were physically disciplined both at school and at home. We had our own children during a period when public opinion was turning against this type of violence. The impulse to strike out in frustration met a sense that to do so was fundamentally wrong. Many of us were forced to do battle with our own inclinations to act as our parents had done and to justify violence with the rationale, “You asked for it.”

A child who has been significantly abused and terrorized – because that is how the intense rage and physical force of the enormous parent is experienced by a small child – the nervous system of that child, like that of any small mammal, becomes oriented to a watchfulness for signs that other terrors are impending. As the child develops, the ways that this focus is elaborated can take many and diverse directions. It was long an assumption that if overwhelming experiences happened in the early life of a child, they would have little or no effect as they would not be remembered. Certainly the child would retain no cognitive memory as these are not formed until we have reached a stage of being able to articulate our experiences at least internally. But the body, the nervous system “remembers.” Once overwhelmed by an experience of terror, the brain, the nervous and endocrine systems become highly sensitized to cues that another profound threat is imminent. Watchfulness and reactivity absorb focus and energy needed for the development of a child’s imaginative life, the essential ingredient for age-appropriate learning and behaviour, the basis of true individuality and self-knowledge. Soldiers returning from a war zone exhibit identical responses to those of abused children under conditions of extreme stress and fear, responses subsumed under the general term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD.

Both Rudolf Hoess and Adolph Hitler grew up with dominant fathers who insisted upon absolute obedience. Unquestionably in that era, such insistence would be fortified by physical punishment, a condition which would have been similar for many of their contemporaries. These early experiences together with those of their young manhood in war, defeat, dislocation, and confusion led them not to the conclusions of mature adults, but rather to ones more consistent with children lacking a developed conscience with which to empathize and consider the feelings and needs of others. Like the boys in The Lord of the Flies, they constructed a society based on brutality, fear, and obedience, giving themselves over to a “chief,” seeing the world in starkly black and white tints: the good and the beautiful; the bad and the ugly; the survival of the fittest – in that context the one with most power, the one who crushes the weak, deemed not deserving of survival. Many of these conditions exist for those currently drawn into polarized, extreme fundamentalist sects of our own era.

At Dachau Hoess entered into and embraced the world of the SS as exemplified by its commandant, Theodor Eicke. To Eicke the prime virtue of a man called to this form of duty was hardness: total elimination of compassion for prisoners in his charge. A prisoner was ipso facto, an enemy of the State; the duty of the guard was in all cases to follow orders, regardless of how severe or inexplicable, in his treatment of the prisoner. Any sympathy or human understanding of the prisoner was to be squelched. Beatings, even executions must be carried out unhesitatingly. SS members formed a special bond of brotherhood, recognizing their collective capacity to perform difficult but essential offices for the State of which “weaker” men would be incapable. A model member, Hoess advanced quickly, becoming by April, 1936 Eicke’s chief assistant. That September he was promoted to lieutenant and transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp just north of Berlin, where he remained until his 1940 posting as commandant of the yet to be constructed camp of Auschwitz.

Another Beginning

I have not written posts for this blog for many months. A year ago Mark and I embarked on our trip to Europe to visit some of the sites of the Holocaust. I wrote about this experience before, during, and afterward. I was profoundly affected by our journey, most particularly by the day that we spent at Auschwitz. When we returned to Toronto, I wrote for awhile longer about seminars that I attended at the Centre for Jewish Studies at the U of Toronto and about some authors that I was reading. When we went to Puerto Vallarta for the winter I took along a number of books related to the Holocaust but found myself disinclined to read them. Back in Toronto in the spring I started another blog, Letters From the Annex, focussing mainly on my life back in the Annex area, its resources and pleasures, other books that I have been reading, and incidents related to my family and friends.

A couple of weeks ago Mark was away for the day visiting some of his buddies in Orillia and enjoying time on the lake. It was a quiet day for me. I spent some time walking about my “library” of books in the built-in shelves in our livingroom, pulling out and thinking about books that I have read and ones that are awaiting some attention. I recognized a sense of wariness in myself about tackling ones that relate the painful stories of Holocaust survivors. It felt as though to read them I would be reinserting myself into that place of anguish that I experienced for some time after being at Auschwitz. I knew at that moment that I had in some ways put away my connection with and interest in the Holocaust to protect myself. I also knew that if I was to be true to myself, I would have to put my caution to one side.

I began by selecting a slim volume entitled Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz by Isabella Leitner, as well as a larger volume, The Dentist of Auschwitz: A Memoir by Benjamin Jacobs. I read these two books within a few days, beginning then on Laurence Rees’ book Auschwitz: A New History. Published in 2005, it is dedicated to the 1.1 million men, women, and children who perished at Auschwitz. The vast majority of these people were Jews, but their number also included Roma people, Poles, homosexuals, political dissidents, and Soviet prisoners of war. Rees’ book is of particular interest to me as he has had the advantage of research pursued after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Using documents previously unavailable, Rees is able to look more closely at what ultimately evolved into the “final solution” of the “Jewish question” and the role that Auschwitz played therein. He shines a clearer spotlight on Rudolf Hoss, the commandant of Auschwitz from its inception as a concentration camp throughout its years as the primary death machine of the Nazi party, as well as on others who played major and minor roles in the attempt to exterminate the Jews. I plan to study his book more closely and to summarize and reflect upon his findings in this blog.

It may seem to many an anomaly for a person like me to embed herself so deeply in an area of interest that is in many respects distant from her own time, place, and culture. Born in Canada of Scots and Irish parentage and brought up as a Roman Catholic, I am an unlikely candidate to be viewing myself as a witness to the Holocaust. And yet despite the chasms of time, space, genealogy, and cultural heritage, I do experience myself standing in that place. The Holocaust of the Jews and all of the components of racism and hatred that facilitated its enactment belong not just to one period of time and geography but in a very real way to all of us who live and who have ever lived. It touches upon our human capacity for good and for evil. I have inklings about the sources of my interest and concern about this period of history, still reverberating as it is in many ways within our contemporary world, though there are undoubtedly aspects that I do not understand. Be that as it may, I nonetheless intend to pursue the line of inquiry and of self-learning upon which I embarked in a consistent fashion about a year and a half ago. I welcome any commentary or questions along this path.

Remembrance of 70 Years Ago in Hungary

Since last fall when I attended a one day conference on the Holocaust presented by the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto, I have received emails from them almost daily announcing the vast array of lectures, films, and discussions that they arrange on the university campus, often in conjunction with other groups or faculties. Yesterday’s was the first I have been able to attend since the fall and it was one of particular interest to me. This event was co-sponsored by the Centre for Jewish Studies, the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at U of T, and, the Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Foundation. Its title was Hungary 1944: The Fate of the Jews and the Roma. A brief film based on the Azrieli’s newly published memoir by George Stern called Vanished Boyhood, was followed by a panel presentation featuring: Laslo Borhi, a visiting professor whose work has been focussed mainly on the political life of Hungary; Anna Porter, author of Kasztner’s Train; Susan Papp, who does research related to survivors’ memoirs; and, Tibor Lukacs, founder of the United Roma of Hamiliton. The panel was ably chaired by the head of the Centre for Jewish Studies, whose name eludes me at the moment. Each speaker had 15-20 minutes to present one small piece of the huge mosaic implied by the event’s title. This year is the 70^th anniversary of the invasion of Hungary by German troops and the rapidly organized deportation of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz where the vast majority were immediately sent to the gas chambers and annihilation.

I will focus here only on the remarks made by Professor Borhi because he was able to outline some of the decisions made by the Hungarian government that had fateful consequences for the Jewish citizens who had been a part of that society for centuries. After WWI and the Paris Conference the outlines of Europe were drawn in ways that accentuated the independence of nation states which had formerly been part of large, multi-national empires. Hungary had, for example, been an important part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. With its dissolution Hungary lost about a third of its land and with it, a large number of its citizens. As in Germany there was tremendous bitterness about these losses. The economically straightened circumstances and ideological upheavals across the continent after the war and during the 1930s, contributed to the country and its people turning inward. Losing the previous balance needed in multi-cultural societies for tolerance and peaceful co-existence, the populous veered more toward nationalism and a consequent marginalization of those who were considered not to be “truly” Hungarian. Anti-Semitism found fruitful soil in this climate, though never became the ideologically driven anti-Semitism which in Germany led to the deliberate enactment of the Holocaust.

When in 1938 the Munich agreement opened the possibilities of reclaiming lands taken from countries in Eastern Europe, the Hungarian government saw an advantage for itself. In 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union moved to partition Poland. Hungary mobilized at the same time, taking back some of its own lost territories, thus allying itself to Germany in the eyes of the western powers. In fact Hungary remained neutral in the early global war, only entering on the side of Germany when in 1941 Hitler ordered the invasion of the USSR. During that part of the war Jewish men were called up for labour service. Battalions were sent to various fronts to build roads, bridges, or other needed facilities. The conditions under which they were quartered and cared for were abysmal and about 40,000 of the 50,000 conscripted died from disease, starvation and cold. Previous to this era Jewish men had fought alongside other Hungarian soldiers, receiving identical treatment and being rewarded with medals and promotions. The alliance with Germany and the right-wing, anti-Semitic climate in Hungary militated against their equal treatment, but did not degenerate into the establishment of ghettos or concentration camps for the Jewish population.

By 1943 it was clear to many observers that Germany could not win the war. Hungary and other countries began secret talks with the Allies seeking separate peace treaties. An advantage for the Allies in establishing peace with countries like Hungary and Romania was the possibility of mounting an assault into Europe through places bordering on or close to the Black Sea.  However, plans were already developing to mount the second front in Normandy. A major concern for the Allies was finding ways to keep the Axis forces away from the Atlantic coast when the attack would be launched. Professor Borhi quoted from correspondence among the Allies revealing that it would be to their advantage if Hitler knew of the secret peace overtures. Germany could not afford to have that vulnerable area left open to Allied incursions and would most likely invade the “betraying” countries. The Allies knew for some time of the death camps in the east and had been warned that should the Germans invade Hungary its population of about three-quarters of a million Jews would be placed in extreme jeopardy. Nonetheless, the “secret” talks were leaked or in some fashion discovered. On March 19, 1944 German armies marched into Hungary, assuming political and military control of the country.

With them came Adolph Eichmann and his 300 assistants to put into effect a prearranged plan to collect and transport Jews to Auschwitz. Within weeks tens of thousands of Jews were forced into camps; between the middle of May and the end of June, 1944 over 300,000 had been sent to Auschwitz. Most were gassed immediately upon arrival; only a few were taken into forced labour groups. A further 150,000 were sent over the next few weeks. As the Soviet armies drew closer to Hungary, international pressure placed on the Hungarian government to stop the deportations had effect by mid-July. The Germans, under pressure now from several directions, acquiesced.

In the discussion following the presentations questions about the co-operation of Hungarians in the round-up and deportation of Jews during this period of German domination were raised. Clearly some members of the Hungarian military and police were complicit. Some panellists and people in the audience had family members who had survived the attempts of the Germans to kill them. These relatives told stories of Hungarians who betrayed or abused them as well as other tales of Hungarians who protected and hid them from the Germans. There are no easy demarcations that can be made within any population in this respect.

The event was well attended; the room at the Jackman building was full with a dozen or so people standing. Quite a few were university people – teachers and students – but there were also others like myself, drawn by their own reasons to attend, being interested in this profound and disturbing period of our common human history. Being right here in the heart of the Annex and close to the university, I can easily avail myself of these opportunities. 

I have published this post also on a blog which I recently started to chart my life and adventures in our new living situation in the "South Annex." The link is www.lettersfromtheannex.blogspot.com