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.
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