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.
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