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.