Statement no. 51

Auschwitz-Birkenau

Copied according to the original texts of Mr. Erich Schön, Vsetín

Prague, October 1945

1. What Was Birkenau
2. What It Looked Like in the Crematorium
3. Plan of Crematoriums I and II.
4. Plan of Crematoriums III and IV
5. Sonderkommando - Gravediggers in Birkenau
6. Hans Schwarzhuber - Camp Commander
7. Who Were the Jailers and Sadists
8. How People Were Transported to Birkenau
9. How Did the Mass Extermination Begin in Birkenau
10. Statistics of the Dead by Nationality
11. History of the Czech Family Camp in Birkenau
12. Mentally Disabled Transports
13. Hungarian Transports
14. How Letters Were Written in Auschwitz and Birkenau
15. Experiments on Live Humans
16. How Birkenau Ended
17. Poem by an Unknown Female Author Sent from the Crematorium
18. Plan of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau Conc. Camp
19. Plan of the Barracks in Birkenau

Accepted on behalf of the Documentation Campaign by: Weinberger

Accepted on behalf of the archive by: Tressler

Copy: Marta Fischerová

What Was Birkenau

Tens of thousands of people all over Europe are asking what happened to their fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers. They only know that in the years 1942, 1943, and 1944 we were deported to the east, to somewhere in Poland. Some received their last news from us sent from the labor camp in Birkenau.

It was a very different camp from all the other concentration camps that we went through. Its main role was the willful and mass extermination of races and all living people who the rulers of the Nazi empire deemed unfriendly. The task that Birkenau practically finished was the extermination of the Jews from the entirety of occupied Europe. According to the testimony of the prisoners who were in constant contact with the incoming transports, and who managed the registry in the camps, the number of people murdered in Birkenau is estimated to be about 4 million. Roughly 90% of them were Jews.

Its range and organization is discernible in plan no. 1. It was thoughtfully constructed to house 250,000 prisoners on the site of formerly peaceful villages that had to be abandoned in order for this Hitlerian metropolis of slaves behind barbed wire fences to be established. The goal of this death camp was to exhaust the interned physically and mentally and make them ready for the crematorium. It was like a feeder for four crematoriums.

The first section, B I a and B I b, was built in 1941. It was constructed by prisoners from Auschwitz I, most of them Russian POWs.

The primitive brick barracks were built from materials sourced from the demolished villages. Birkenau was about 2 km west from the town of Auschwitz. The name Rajsko is wrong. Birkenau is the same camp that the Germans called labor camp (Arbeitslager) Birkenau by Neu-Berum, or, at other times, Waldsee in the Auschwitz prison letters. They did this to deceive and mask its connection to Auschwitz, whose name was often mentioned on the Moscow and London radio in the last years of the war.

In 1942, its second section, B II, was partly finished. On a 1,000 x 750 m space there were 7 camps, each of which could contain up to 20,000 prisoners.

Notes on the plan:

The whole camp was divided by roads into 3 main sections:

Section B I had two camps (a, b). The main entrance to the camp was through camp B I a, the second entrance was via the road between both camps.

Section B II was separated from B I by a road and ditches. There was also a ramp of the train station of death, the destination of trains and victims from all over Europe. Section B II was divided into 7 camps:

a, b, and c were on the right side of the road and, d, e, f, and g on the left. The entire section was interwoven with various drainage ditches because the countryside here was marshy. The individual camps consisted of a system of blocks surrounded by electrified barbed wire fences.

Camp sections:

B-I-a women’s camp quarantine and hospital

B-I-b women’s labor camp

B-II-a men’s quarantine camp

B-II-bCzech family camp, later women’s

B-II-c Hungarian women’s camp

B-II-d main men’s basic camp

B-II-e Roma family camp, later men’s, then women’s

B-II-f men’s hospital camp

B-II-g Canada camp with warehouses and sorting rooms.

B III unfinished section, partly housing for Hungarian women

In 1944, the construction of barracks in section B-III began. It was larger in size than the surface area of the first sections. In the construction plans it was written as the KGL section, which stood for Kriegsgefangenelager, where POWs were to be enslaved and exterminated. The construction of this section was never finished. In October 1944, the SS began to tear down the unfinished barracks in this section, loaded them onto train cars, and transported them to Gross-Rosen, which is where Auschwitz was supposed to have been evacuated to. This plan was in some small part realized. The barracks in Gross-Rosen were built and in January 1945 about 11,000 prisoners from Auschwitz were evacuated there.

The first months of the construction of Birkenau in 1942

Witness Vladislav Langfelder, prisoner. no. 36830, born 13. 1. 1914 in Vsetín described it. He was arrested in June of 1941 for anti-German activity in the illegal Communist Party. He was imprisoned in the Ilava conc. camp in Slovakia. In March 1942, he was deported to Lublin and on 13. 5. 1942 transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The conditions at that time were horrific. Every day, hundreds of starving prisoners were killed, people died in the blocks and courtyards, and many desperate people voluntarily chose to be shot. Every evening, the strongest prisoners were selected to carry away the dead bodies that were stored in block no. 21, from where they were driven away in cars. During this terrible

work, the prisoners were tortured and beaten, for some corpses were already beginning to decompose. They were rewarded with pieces of bread, which there was enough of since there were so many dead.

The hardest thing to bear was the lack of water. In the entire camp there was only one water tap for 8 thousand prisoners. Bathing was practically out of the question. Tea or coffee was distributed only partially, and the rest was kept by the prisoners who were employed in the blocks. The cost of water was high. One bottle of water went for half of the daily ration of bread. Under these conditions, the camp was completely lice infested. The shaving that took place every Sunday was a special kind of torment. Sundays in general were the worst days. The labor units didn’t go to their usual places outside of the camp on Sundays. All of the general population prisoners were chased out onto the camp street, where they were encircled by rows of SS-men, Kapos, and Vorarbeiters armed with sticks. The prisoners had to run through the rows, carrying soil from one pile to another in their hats or inside their coats. We had to run through water and mud. All the while, they shouted at and beat us. This frenzy lasted until 11 o’clock. One Sunday in May, they beat to death 300 people and hundreds were injured so severely that they succumbed to their wounds and died.

After lunch, we bathed in a pothole filled with water, from which prisoners emerged completely covered in mud and, laughed at by the kapos and block leaders, were chased back to the block for the so-called Bettruhe – this was supposed to be our rest time. The leading prisoners, block leaders, scribe, and kapo were lords with limitless powers over life and death, as is illustrated by an incident that took place in block no. 20 on May 19th, 1942:

At the evening roll call, block leader Štěpán Vierbiczs from Upper Silesia summoned his fellow prisoners and asked those who would like to be set free to come forward. 14 new prisoners, Slovak Jews, stepped forward. The block leader asked his scribe to fill out white forms. The prisoners who had stepped forward had to strip, whereupon they were beaten to death by the block leader and his staff. The white forms were death certificates (Totenmeldung). The block leader then announced to the astounded onlookers that this would happen to anyone who wanted to go home.

Štefan also killed people with the tried and true method of three blows with a stick. The first blow was aimed at a bowed back that forced the prisoner to stand straight. The murderer took advantage of this upright position to strike the victim across the chest over the place where the heart is. The prisoner would cover his chest with his hands and double over in pain. And then came the final death blow to the back of the head, which usually broke the poor man’s neck.

The famous masters of killing were: Albert Hämmerie, Kühn, Alex Neumann, Zimmer, the green Germans Alfred Zebielski, Franz Danisch - Poles, - Germans, Polish Jews Izák and Pinkus, and Löwy, a French Jew.

The most important operational buildings were the 4 crematoriums with ten gas chambers and 46 incineration ovens, and two buildings adapted for the poisoning of people, the so-called Bunker V. The crematoriums were projected and built exclusively for a single task: mass extermination. The crematoriums were labelled I., II., III., and IV. The first two were large with underground gas chambers, and the second two were smaller with ground-floor chambers.

The disinfection station was an independent building placed between crematorium III and II.

All camps, crematoriums, and the disinfection station formed one whole, surrounded by the so-called small chain of guard towers. These were tall wooden booths built close to the barbed wire fences with about 50 m between each tower. At night, they were occupied by guards, whereas during the day the guards occupied the so-called big chain of guard towers, i.e. the space where almost all labor units worked. In front of the entrance to each camp there was a guardhouse, the so-called Blockführerstube. It was manned by SS-men and officers. Every prisoner or labor unit that left the camp had to announce himself at the guardhouse and his number was taken down until he returned to the camp. The SS-men at the guardhouse controlled the exiting and entering of prisoners, confiscated illegal items, and made reports.

The SS barracks are outlined on the plan. The SS barracks were well equipped, with central heating, hot and cold water, kitchens, and entertainment rooms. About 5,000 SS-men who worked in the camps were housed in these barracks.

The SS hospital was a luxuriously equipped hospital for the SS and soldiers from the front. It took two years to build. After being used for only three months, it was bombed to smithereens by the Allies on December 24th, 1944.

Large-scale waterworks were installed and served the entire camp.

The kennels (Hundestaffel) was the place where the SS-men trained dogs to chase prisoners. It was dangerous for prisoners in striped clothes to walk around these dogs because the dogs could not be contained when they saw a prisoner.

The economic estate – the Wirtschaftshof – was a farm where prisoners, both men and women, worked on plots that were left over after the villages in the area were demolished.

The exact plans of the entire area, stolen from the construction office and sent to the home country, were destroyed in a moment of danger. We managed to acquire the plan of Birkenau with the ground plans of the crematoriums. The plan of the disinfection station is drawn according to my memory. The dimensions are approximate, as close as we could estimate.

Cleaning station: the Klärenlage were two circular buildings placed between the crematorium and the disinfection station. The purpose was to dry out excrement for the production of fertilizer.

From this short description of Birkenau, is it clear that the concentration camp was different from the others. Its goal was to exterminate by any means. The size of the camp and the means of extermination was so large that if the Germans had won, the Slavic nations would have been on the doorstep of this murder factory. The purpose of Birkenau was a secret even within the SS. Each transport going to Birkenau was deceived and lured in by a ruse. Everything that happened in Birkenau was a delusion, deceit, lies, and murder.

The impertinence of the administration of the Auschwitz camps went so far as to deceive the bereaved surviving family members of the victims. The urns sent out containing the ashes of political prisoners were always prepared well beforehand in the hundreds……..

Mr. Erich Schön from Vsetín submitted this to the Documentation Campaign.

What It Looked Like in the Crematorium

In Birkenau, there were four crematoriums with gas chambers, modernly equipped, specially constructed for the mass extermination of races. Crematorium I and II were large body factories with underground gas chambers; crematorium III and IV were smaller, weren’t as well equipped, and had above-ground gas chambers.

Their location and all details are depicted in the attached two ground plans. These plans are from the SS construction offices in Birkenau (Bauleitung). They were brought there by the then employed Mrs. Věra Foltýnová from Brno, who was a prisoner in the women’s camp B I b block 4. In August 1944, we sent them to the home country with Mr. Soukup. We assumed at the time that the crematoriums and us, as witnesses to German crimes, would be removed.

At first glance, the crematorium building looked like large bakeries. They were single-level buildings in the German style with a slanted roof, barred windows, and attic dormers. The courtyard was nicely laid out as a park or garden, the paths were covered in sand, and flowers bloomed in cultivated plots. The underground gas chambers rose about 50 cm above the surface of the courtyard. They were covered in grass and made to look like a terrace garden. If you saw them for the first time, you would never be able to guess what they were. The whole courtyard was surrounded by an electrified barbed wire fence. Crematoriums I and II were right next to the camp and were visible from all sides. Crematoriums III and IV were hidden in a small forest. Tall pines and birches sheltered them and bore witness to thousands of tragedies. Around the crematoriums were long, tall stacks of wood brought there by train. They were there in readiness for the next victims.

Each crematorium had two underground chambers. The first one was bigger and was used as a changing room, and the second as the actual gas chamber. See the attached sketch for the dimensions and arrangement. The dressing room was whitewashed and in the middle were square concrete supporting pillars spaced out about 4 m from one another. Benches lined the wall with hooks and shelves above them. Each hook was numbered. Benches also lined the cement pillars. On the left side, along the rounded wall, were water pipes with drain taps.

The second chamber was where people were gassed. It was a bit smaller and looked like a group bathroom. Showers were mounted into the ceiling, but water never ran through them. Water taps lined the sides. Between the cement pillars, there were two square 30 x 30 iron load-bearing pillars wrapped in thick mesh wire. The pillars went through the cement ceiling and into the grassy surface where they were topped with airtight hatches. SS-men dropped the Zyklon gas through them. The purpose of the mesh wire was to prevent access and interference with the gas crystals.

In the dressing room, there were boards with signs in all languages stating: keep calm, behave in an orderly manner. Then arrows pointing to a door marked Disinfection and another bathroom. On the left side in front of the gas chamber were double-wing doors and behind them an elevator that ferried the dead bodies to the incinerators.

The incinerators were on the ground floor of the crematorium.

The incinerators of crematoriums I and II had 15 three-layer ovens. On the bottom layer, air was blown by electric fans. In the middle layer was the oven’s own fuel burning furnace, and in the top layer were strong fireclay grates. The corpses, brought here from the elevator on carts, were placed on them. The ovens had think cast-iron doors that opened with a pulley.

On the ground floor, there was also an autopsy room, where doctors from the Sonderkomnando carried out various experiments and autopsies under the supervision of SS doctors.

Next to the autopsy room was an execution room. The back wall was black. The smooth cement floor had a slanted drain in the middle though which the blood of the executed flowed away. On the right side, there were invisible doors leading to the elevator that brought the executed bodies to the incinerator.

There was also an electric motor engine room, ventilators, an oven for the burning of trash and clothing, bathrooms for the labor unit team, housing for the SS supervisory authorities, toilets, etc.

The back room was were the gold from the teeth of the dead was melted.

Access to the underground chambers was through the courtyard and down the steps. A cement slide facilitated the transfer of the old, the sick, the half dead, and the dead. The bodies of the victims slid down it straight to the gas chamber like a sack of potatoes.

The gas chambers of crematoriums I and II could process 1,500 to 2,000 people each.

Crematoriums III and IV were smaller, each with eight ovens, a similar construction to the one described above. The gas chambers were above-ground, the smaller three could contain about 600 people. The two smallest crematoriums were much busier than the first two larger ones. Bodies were also burned on pyres. Victims were poisoned, the dead bodies were thrown out, the chambers were cleaned, and the gassing could continue on because the dead bodies were burned on pyres or pits in the meantime so that the ovens wouldn’t be overworked.

The large crematoriums had one chimney, the smaller had two. The chimneys were badly built. The heat of the incinerated bodies was too intense and the chimneys cracked. Flames rose several meters above them. It was often necessary to repair the chimneys. They were pulled together with iron hoops.

The four crematoriums in Birkenau had 46 ovens, each of which burned 3 bodies in 5 minutes. At the busiest time, they burned 5 bodies in a single oven.

Mr. Erich Schön from Vsetín submitted this to the Documentation Campaign.

Sonderkommando - Gravediggers in Birkenau

They were prisoners themselves. In the beginning, they were only Jews, and later also Russian prisoners. The last Sonderkommando had 5 Polish political prisoners, whose death sentence was commuted to working in the Sonderkommando.

The Sonderkommando, i.e. a special labor unit, was a group of people who were sentenced to do the worst and most vile work – exterminate, prepare for mass murder, and burn the dead bodies of innocent people, women, and children. It often happened that these people had to burn their own parents, wives, brothers. They were selected by camp commander Hans Schwarzhuber. Their work was to help the SS strip the people before entering the gas chambers, maintain order, sort, and pull out the dead bodies from the gas chambers. They brought the corpses to the ovens or piled them onto pyres, burned them, and removed the ashes. They cleaned the gas chambers and piled clothes, linens, shoes, and things the dead left behind onto cars.

They pulled gold teeth from the dead bodies, something the prisoners-doctors in this labor unit did as well. The prisoners were forced to do this work or they would be harshly punished. Before being burned, the mouth of each dead body was searched by SS-men and for each overlooked tooth the doctor in question would be punished by receiving 25 lashes with the bullwhip. The teeth were thrown into closed boxes and were later cleaned and melted into gold cubes weighing half a kilo. This work was done by two dental technicians, Katz and Feldmann, who were shut in a specially guarded room. The teeth were melted down with a tinsmith’s gasoline lamp in fireclay molds.

In the fall of 1944, Feldmann told us that 2,000 kg of gold had been melted down during this time. Every Tuesday, a superior SS officer arrived by car to check the process and from time to time would take some of the gold away with him.

The Sonderkommando was isolated from the other prisoners and all other prisoners were forbidden to have any contact with them. The sick were treated in their own section and had their own doctor. The Sonderkommando blocks were in section B I a, number 22 and 23, and later block no. 2, in section B II d it was block 13, later 9 and 11, and finally they lived inside the crematoriums.

The work had a destructive effect on people's mental state. They felt numb, lost all feeling, and even their bodies changed. They all resembled one another in their cruel expressions. Each Sonderkommando was automatically sentenced to death. They had enough food and cigarettes and everything, for the transports left a rich bounty. The SS didn’t even object to them procuring alcohol for themselves.

The maximum number of Sonderkommando members was 800 men and it depended on the flow of transports. This labor unit was first put together in 1942, mostly out of Slovak Jews. They had the worst work. They had to dig mass graves for decomposing bodies and burn everything. They wanted to escape this desperate situation by running away. They were betrayed and all of them were killed. On January 10th, 1943, under the pretext that they were being transported, they left Birkenau and were shot and burned upon arriving in Auschwitz I. The staff of their block and the sick who couldn’t walk were personally shot by Rapportführer Palitsch in the courtyard of block no. 2.

In summer 1944, we were suddenly ordered to clear out a room in Auschwitz I. It was arranged as a disinfection chamber and the window was quickly walled in. Nobody knew why. Thus far, 300 numbers from the Sonderkommando in Birkenau had been transported to Auschwitz I. They were taken to the disinfection chamber, where an SS-man acting as a recorder sat in front of the door. He asked each one about their personal information and employment, and let them in. Once they were all inside, they poisoned them. The bodies were taken away at night by car to the crematorium in Birkenau. The prisoners were not allowed to see their dead bodies, and the SS-men burned the poisoned members of the Sonderkommando with their clothes on. The next day, they told the prisoners who had been herded into the underground chambers for the night that it had been the victims of American bombings in the area that had been burned.

Uprising in the Sonderkommando: on October 10th, 1944, about 200 prisoners were selected, made to stand in rows of 5, and were sent to be bathed in camp B II e in order to get ready to be transported. They knew exactly what would happen to them. They knew that in a few seconds it would all be over for them. They attacked several guards, took their weapons, shot some of them, and set fire to crematorium III. The SS sounded the alarm, arrived in full force with machine guns, and easily put down the uprising. But the crematorium completely burned down. Those who didn’t fall in battle or weren’t shot were forced into a corner of the courtyard. They were made to lie on their backs and were shot in the stomach.

When those in crematorium I saw that crematorium III was on fire, they also rose up. They burned the leader of the Sonderkommando, the German kapo who had been torturing them, alive. They broke through the wire fence and about 80 of them began to run. Most were shot and caught. The Russian members of the Sonderkommando actively participated in the uprising. The investigation by the camp Gestapo revealed that the women who worked in the Union bomb factory in Auschwitz I had given the gunpowder to the Sonder. In December, the women were sentenced and publicly hung in Auschwitz in front of the Union factory.

After that, the number of guards was tripled, although the whole labor unit had only 200 people. Discipline and torture was intensified, and became so intolerable that prisoners wished for death. The rest of crematorium III was removed after the fire.

End of the last Sonderkommando

The last gassing took place during the night of October 28th, 1944. On November 3rd, gassing was officially stopped and crematoriums I and II began to be demolished. All of the equipment, water pipes, ovens, exhaustors, motors, etc. was taken down, loaded onto train cars, and taken to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp near Breslau. The prisoners from the Sonderkommando were transported to the Mauthausen concentration camp. Only about 70 people remained to serve crematorium IV., when the bodies of people who had died a natural death were burned. Before the evacuation, the rest of the Sonderkommando was also killed, but the management of the camp didn’t have the situation under control. The 70 last prisoners of the Sonderkommando managed to blend into the rest of the population and several ran away along the way.

Filip Müller, prisoner no. 29236 from Sered n. Váh., was the only one who survived everything from beginning to end. He would secretly leave his block and visit us at our locksmiths workshop. We knew about every transport and the details of the extermination.

When new people were recruited into the Sonderkommando and found out what they had to do, they mentally collapsed and refused to work. They hurled themselves voluntarily into the gas chambers or chose death by shooting so that they wouldn’t have to do this horrible work. The head of the crematorium, Moll, threw them into the fire while they were still alive. He punished those who attempted suicide by placing the prisoners’ bodies half in the oven and half out. He would then shut the oven door. This is how he scared them and threatened that this would happen to anyone who wouldn’t work. Other times, he poured gasoline on a prisoner’s clothes, set him on fire, and chased him around the courtyard of the crematorium until the poor soul jumped onto the electrified barbed wires, where he was shot for running away.

Moll was often in a good mood when he was drunk. Usually, he would show off his skill with a firearm. He would shoot at the lit end of a cigarette that a prisoner had to hold in his mouth. He would shoot with his back turned as he looked at the target in a mirror. He was also the main and the most talented master executioner. I didn’t care whether he shot Jews or Germans, Poles, or Russians. It often happened that the SS would conduct their black justice sessions in the crematoriums and sentenced their own people – officers and soldiers from the front, civilians, and anyone else that had become inconvenient. Moll performed the executions in the execution chamber. Executions by lethal injection were done in the autopsy room.

The death of Rapportführer Schillinger. Shortly after Italy was occupied, a transport of 2,000 interned American Jews arrived. They were lured from Italy and told that they were going to Switzerland in order to resettle there and would be exchanged for German POWs. In Birkenau, they sent all of them straight to the gas chambers. In the crematorium where women were gassed, SS-man Schillinger, the famous and cruelest guard, was on duty. He wanted to entertain himself by ordering a certain actress who stood before him half-naked to take off her bra. She took it off and quickly threw it at him. In a flash, she ripped his gun out of his hand, fatally shot Schillinger in the stomach, and severely injured another SS-man (Emerich). She thus saved tens of thousands of prisoners from this rabid dog.

Another incident took place by the Vizsla River. The river was about 6 km from the camp. Prisoners in the Sonderkommando shoveled ashes out of the crematoriums. In the summer of 1944, a certain Greek suddenly struck one of the accompanying SS guards with a shovel three times in the head and after each blow cried out: This is for my mother, this is for my father, this is for my brother. He grabbed hold of his gun, swam across the Vizsla, and ran away. He was later caught and tortured.

How they got rid of witnesses from the crematoriums: in the spring of 1944, 150 members of the Sonderkommando were sent to Lublin in passenger cars. They were told by the camp commander that they were going there for work and would later return. After the Lublin camp was liquidated, as the Lublin prisoners have told us, all 150 of them were immediately killed upon arrival. At the same time, 300 well nourished young girls from Lublin arrived in Birkenau. They had been employed in a very good labor unit and were taken away before the liquidation of the Lublin camp. In Birkenau, nobody knew what to do with them. They waited in isolation in a block for several days, and then were taken to the crematorium.

Mr. Erich Schön from Vsetín submitted this to the Documentation Campaign.

Hans Schwarzhuber. Camp Commander

Hans Schwarzhuber, an SS officer, builder, and commander of the Birkenau camp, is interesting because the man participated and was highly involved in the killing. It will remain a characteristic German trait that first a German destroys people with tricks and false pretenses and then once he has been found out, he can send any number of people to their deaths with systematic brutality.

Hans Schwarzhuber was a product of the world of the Nazi concentration camps. He worked his way up from a rank-and-file SS-man to a Blockführer. Many older prisoners remember him from the Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp. Birkenau was the life’s work of this Bavarian. He first worked as a Rapportführer with the rank of a non-commissioned officer, but for his success in building Birkenau he was elevated to officer status and soon became the Obersturmführer-camp commander-Lagerführer. Under his leadership, the camp reached its peak in terms of size – 100,000 prisoners – and the maximum record of killings was achieved – 30,000 people in 24 hours.

He diplomatically connected all of the means of cunning and cruelty. He knew how to pick his collaborators from the population of prisoners, and they worked with enthusiasm on tasks that ultimately led to the extermination of people. Schwarzhüber knew very well and understood how disenfranchised people are ambitious and desire a career. He understood the mentality of green Germans, criminals, and fascist Polish functionaries who tried at all costs to stand out, control others, and became drunk with power. Schwarzhuber surrounded himself with a pack of small hitlers, who fought amongst themselves to gain the favor of their beloved Lagerführer. To achieve this goal, these prisoners-functionaries used any means necessary without any regard for the health and lives of their fellow prisoners. It was unbelievable how these prisoners forgot about the rest of the world and life beyond the barbed wire fence. Schwarzhuber made them identify with their new roles and consider their camp activities as their ultimate life’s mission. He constantly emphasized that their collaboration proved how much they understood the Nazi way of thinking. It was also a determining factor in the earlier and often promised release from the camp.

While they were mere puppets in a temporary game, they thought in all seriousness that they were above all of the other prisoners. The German ubermensch Schwarzhuber created fascist super-prisoners out of inferior creatures. The absolute lowest level of human society – thieves, pimps, prosperous fascists – outdid one another in terms of following orders. They fulfilled the Nazi program of expanding Germanness and helped with the extermination of everything non-German.

Schwarzhuber also influenced his collaborators politically. In conversations with individuals or lectures to groups of kapos and head prisoners, he emphasized their superiority and primacy over the lower Jews, Poles, and Russians. He knew how to use national conflicts for his own purposes. He maintained a constant tension in the camp between the races. He pitched Poles against Russians, of whom he was afraid. He boldly promised that the Russian advance would stop in Bug. The Bolsheviks would never reach Auschwitz.

In the spring of 1944, panic broke out among the old Jewish, especially political, prisoners. The people selected to be gassed were so numerous that it seemed to be the end of all of the Jewish-labelled prisoners. Those who had the opportunity ran away from the camp. All of the prisoners who had been in the camp for a long time were preparing to escape. Even the threat that for each Jew who escaped 10 prisoners from the labor unit would be shot didn’t help. Schwarzhuber again chose to act diplomatically.

One night, he called the Jewish kapo, the German Josef Baumann, to his office at night and ordered him to calm the Jews in the camp. He assured him that there would be no more selections of prisoners from the camp to be gassed. In the interest of maintaining peace, he kept his promise for several months, which was easy since the crematoriums were so busy with the arriving transports that they barely managed to process the large amount of victims.

Just like Hitler never kept his promise on the international stage, the commander of the Birkenau camp was the same such deceptive German. He personally assured the prisoners who were considered unable to work that they would go to the sanatorium. He gave them his word that they wouldn’t go to the crematorium. To support his claim, he ordered a special ration of bread to be given to them. This was at a time when they were all concentrated in block no. 20, awaiting the arrival of cars. The next day, the prisoners, in the presence of Schwarzhuber and SS members armed to the teeth, were loaded into the cars and taken to the gas chambers.

Schwarzhuber acquired popularity with underhanded tricks, especially with newcomers. He pardoned prisoners who had the courage to beg him not to send them to be gassed. It was easy for him to oblige them since he knew that he was only going to put them off until the next selection.

Schwarzhuber honored his collaborators with petty benefits, and the ones that received them felt very proud. One day, he honored 5 new Germans whose mothers spoke Polish. However, in the camp they requested to be admitted into the Volksdeutscher group for their faithful and successful service in leading the camp and building it. Schwarzhuber, before an assembly of all prisoners announced that they had become premier prisoners (bevorzugte Häftlinge). They could let their hair grow out, they received food from the SS kitchen and, among countless other benefits, a blind eye was turned to their transgressions, such as drunkenness, organizing, etc.

Another of Schwarzhuber’s methods was to spread various news through the grapevine. The purpose of this was to divert prisoners’ attention away from reality.

It was often rumored that gassing was truly stopped, that Berlin officially ordered the demolition of the crematoriums, there was talk of various transports, etc. In the final days of the camp, Schwarzhuber realized that the end was near and was almost constantly drunk. Faithful prisoners and his confidants procured alcohol and valuable items for him. Shortly thereafter, when gassing stopped, Schwarzhuber was transferred to the Buchberg camp by Dachau, where his job was to manage the construction of a new camp. As we learned from our friends, he was captured there by the American army.

Schwarzhuber perfectly fulfilled the Nazi principle of clean hands. He never committed any brutal or violent acts on the prisoners himself. He always found people to do it for him. He played the part of a caring commander, who only wants the best for his charges. During his leadership, a small group of SS-men ruled over tens of thousands of people. The mass killing went smoothly, and save for one exception, there never was an uprising – that was his art. He always found out newer and newer methods of mass extermination for the surplus of prisoners.

During his tenure between 1942 and 1945, hundreds of thousands of people from all of the countries of occupied Europe were killed.

Mr. Erich Schön from Vsetín submitted this to the Documentation Campaign.

Who Were the Jailers and Sadists

These are the names of the SS-men that I still remember and their responsibilities:

In the men’s camp: Höss ………………………………. Commander of Auschwitz

Krammer ………………………….. Commander of Auschwitz II

Kraus ……………………………… Commander of Auschwitz II

Aufmeyer 1Note 1: Aumeier …………………………. Commander of the Auschwitz I camp

Schwarzhuber ……………………... Commander of the Auschwitz II camp

Hoffmann …………………………. Commander of the Auschwitz I camp

Schwarz …………………………… Commander of the Auschwitz III camp

Zell 2Note 2: Sell………………………………… Commander of the labor service

Moll ………………………………... Commander of the crematorium

Palitsch …………………………….. Rapportführer

Stiwitz …………………………........ Rapportführer

Plage 3Note 3: Plagge ……………………………….. Rapportführer

Schillinger ………………………….. Rapportführer

Poloczek ……………………………. Rapportführer

Buntrok ……………………………... Rapportführer

Krupanik 4Note 4: Kurpanik …………………………… Rapportführer

Emerich …………………………….. Arbeitsdientsführer

Antal ………………………………... Arbeitsdientsführer

Oletschen …………………………… Arbeitsdientsführer

Grauel and Perschel …………………… Arbeitsdientsführers

Wolf, Krapatkin, Panzergrau 5Note 5: Pansegrau, Schneider, Schenk, Schulz,Weiss 5Note 5: Weise, Götz, Stadler, Buch, Wörster, Bardo, Kölm 5Note 5: Kolm, Dobrovolský from Michalovice, brothers Kasanitz, Schmidt from Pov. Teplé …………………………. all Blockführers.

In the women’s camp:

SS-men: Hessler 8Note 8: Franz Hößler, also Franz Hössler………………………………. Commander of the Auschwitz II camp

Taube ………………………………… Rapportführer

Mokrus, Urbanovský 9Note 9: Uncertain, but most probably refers to Walter Urbanczyk. ………………… Blockführeři

SS warden: Mandel ……………………………….. Commander of the Camp

Brechsel 10Note 10: Dreschel also spelled Drechsler, or Drexler………………………………. Deputy Commander of the Camp

Brandel, Hasse, Grese, Klaus 11Note 11: Klauß, Kitzmann 11Note 11: Kietzmann………………Rapportführers

Mayer, Kempe, Kozubík, Stiewitz, Reichert, Stenge, Danz, Runge, Womenn, Mitlenz, Langenfelden 13Note 13: Langefeld, Rulloff 13Note 13: Roulofs, Bruno 13Note 13: Uncertain, most probably Luise Brunner.,Volkenrath, Kuck, Zaretzki, Weniger, Mysch 13Note 13: Misch ….Blockführers

In the warehouses: Kretzer 17Note 17: Krätzer……………………….…… Commander of the warehouses

Kubatsch 18Note 18: Kubaschk, Wunsch ……………………. Administrators of the warehouses

Graff 19Note 19: Graf, Wagner …………………………. guards in the warehouses

Gestapo - political division: Grabner, Boger, Hustek, Broad, Winand,

Hoffmann ………………………………. all members of the camp Gestapo

In the kitchens: Händler …………………………………. In the men’s camp

Franzeová ………………………………. In the women’s camp

SS-doctors: Dr. Wirtz 20Note 20: Wirths, Dr. Mengele, Dr. Tilo 20Note 20: Thilo, Dr. Schumann, Dr. Klein,Dr. Weber, Dr. Klauberg 20Note 20: Clauberg, Dr. Bünning, Dr. Göbel, Dr. König

These soldiers, the weapon of the SS along with many others whose names we don’t remember or never knew, fought on this victorious Nazi front throughout the entire war with negligible losses. They fought against the defenseless, the sick, the old, against women, and especially against children. The most successful fighters among them were honored with meritorious crosses. The fighters of the women’s camp, SS wardens, were honored in the same way.

Mr. Erich Schön from Vsetín submitted this to the Documentation Campaign.

How People Were Transported to Birkenau

Extermination transports were brought by trains from all over Europe. Several days before the transport, there were rumors that a French, Dutch, Czech etc. transport was coming. These rumors generally turned out to be true. The management of the transports and orders to exterminate them was the domain of the RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt) in Berlin, which was directly subordinate to Himmler. One of its leaders was SS-Oberführer Eichmann.

The trains arrived at the Auschwitz train station and were moved to a special ramp. This ramp was used for Auschwitz II-Birkenau until June 1944. When the transport arrived, usually with 50-70 train cars, it would be immediately surrounded by many SS guards with dogs and then the labor unit (Aufräumungskomando) called Canada composed of prisoners dressed in striped prisoner uniforms would approach. The cattle cars were opened and people were quickly chased out of them, creating chaos and confusion. The task of Canada was to quickly unload the luggage that was taken away from the prisoners, except for women’s purses. They were told that their luggage would be brought to the camp later. The ones who refused to relinquish their luggage had it taken away by force. The SS had total control over prisoners, who were forbidden to speak even a word to the newly arrived people lest they be punished by being immediately shot. It often happened that their own family members were among those who had just arrived. For instance, a prisoner happened to be working in the Canada team that was processing the transport that his own mother arrived on, but he was powerless and had to participate and help bury his own mother alive.

Sometimes, especially among the Polish transports, those arriving knew what awaited them in Auschwitz. They would ask: Are we going to the chimney? Are we going to the oven? etc.

When all had disembarked from the cars, men were forced to stand on one side, and women and children on the other. Men were selected by an SS-officer and an SS-doctor, who simply and quickly examined each of them and, based on their superficial assessment, or depending on the prisoner’s profession, would point his thumb to the right or to the left – life or death.

Women and the children who didn’t want to be separated from them were killed without exception. From the remaining women, they selected the young, healthy, aged 16 to 30 years old, and sent them to the camp. Everyone else was sent to the gas chamber. The average percentage of those who were selected for the camp, the so-called able to work, was about 15 to 20%. Those who were selected to be gassed were loaded onto waiting trucks. Before they left they were told that they were being taken to camps that were further away. Then, if anyone among that 20% wasn’t able to walk to the camp, they were invited to get on the trucks as well.

We can never forget the images we saw, the multitudes stuffed into the overfilled trucks making their way at full speed towards the crematorium. We couldn’t warn them about what awaited them with words or signs, because it was better for them not to know.

The SS closely guarded the secret of Birkenau

An incident occurred, during which a hungry old prisoner called out to the oncoming trucks with its new victims: Toss me a piece of bread, you won’t need it anymore since you’re going to your deaths. An SS-man standing close-by took down his number and the camp commander punished not only the prisoner, but also the entire labor unit, including its leader, regardless of whether they were Aryan or Jews: they were all sent to the gas chambers…

Red Cross Cars

One of the worst desecrations, the rudest insults, is the fact that for the entire duration of the Birkenau camp, during the selection process that determined who would live and who would die, as well as while people were being driven to the crematorium, an ambulance with a red cross painted on its side was parked on the ramp to give people the impression that the Red Cross humanitarian and ambulance service was present. The ambulance departed only once the last truck that carried victims to the crematorium left and it was the last car in the funeral procession.

It didn’t have any medicine, nor did it carry any sick people, only cans of Zyklon gas for the gas chambers.

Where Were the Transports Sorted?

The previously described selection process of the transports was carried out on a special ramp of the Auschwitz train station about 2 km from Birkenau, and so the prisoners in the camp and its surroundings never witnessed the actual selection process.

A change occurred in May 1944. A sidetrack was laid from the Auschwitz train station to Birkenau, which went through a tunnel from the main gate, through the electrified fence between the men’s and women’s camps, and up to crematoriums I and II. This sidetrack was extremely quickly laid by prisoners working day and night at a speed never seen before in Birkenau. Many people were beaten to death by the capos and exhausted to the point where they were ready for the gas chambers. Between the I and II labor section, a perfect four switch ramp was built, allowing several trains to unload new victims at the same time.

From June 1944 onward, the selection process was conducted publicly on this ramp, and so all the prisoners from the women’s and men’s camps saw everything. Birkenau was at its fullest during this time with the arriving transports of Hungarian Jews. Train after train stood from the crematorium all the way to Auschwitz, waiting to be emptied.

In 24 hours, 14 transports numbering 30,000 people were emptied and poisoned. This was carried out in horrific circumstances. It was extremely hot during this time. The people in the cars died of thirst after traveling for 4 days in cars with 80 people stuffed into them. Some went mad.

We experienced all of this and many other situations every day:

At night we heard the trains arrive, the cars leave, screams and wails. Selected men and women in rows of 5 stood on the roads between camps D and C. They were then marched towards the crematorium or baths. We often saw elegantly dressed women who had come straight from Paris or Budapest and several hours later we saw them again on their way back from the baths, transformed into the slaves of the Nazi regime. The women’s heads were shaved, and they were dressed in rags and given wooden slippers instead of shoes. All of their things were taken away from them, even basic things like soap and towels.

Mr. Erich Schön from Vsetín submitted this to the Documentation Campaign.

How Did the Mass Extermination Begin in Birkenau

In May 1942, with Himmler in attendance, 500 men, women, and children from the transport of Slovak Jews were the first to be gassed to death with Zyklon gas in the Auschwitz crematorium. Prior to this, victims, of which there were only a few, were shot and then burned.

The construction of 4 large crematoriums with gas chambers had already begun, but mass murder was already in full flow. They adapted two small houses with thatched roofs to house the simple gas chambers. These houses stood about half a kilometer west from the disinfection station and the place was called Březinky. The chambers were named Bunker IV and V.

The 6 x 12 m houses were divided into 4 large chambers that could fit 150 people. The chambers had heavy doors and a tiny barred window. On the back wall of each chamber was a second heavy door. There was a gigantic board by each house that read:

Desinfektionsraum. The front door to the chambers had a sign stating disinfection, and on the back door it said bathroom. Inside the chamber, there were signs in all languages: remain calm, maintain cleanliness, etc.

To block the house from view, it was hidden behind a tall, thick, and covered fence. There were two 40 x 9 m large buildings with no windows on their fronts. This is where people would undress.

People were brought here on trucks, dumped in front of the building, and then surrounded by a thick column of guards armed with automatic rifles, grenades, machine guns, and dogs.

People were told to form groups and make their way to the blocks, women and children in one, men in the other. They were told that they were in a labor camp and must first be disinfected and bathed to stop the spread of infectious diseases.

They were ordered to undress, put away their clothes and outer garments, and hand over their valuables. They were promised that their personal items would be returned to them. They were then made to enter the gas chambers. Sometimes people would realize what was happening and would be afraid to go inside the gas chambers. The SSmen would beat them with whips, batons, and rifle butts. Attack dogs bit them and tore off bits of flesh from their nude bodies. As soon as the chamber was full (up to 150 people stuffed into 18 sq. m.), the doors were shut tightly, the latches slid into place, and gas was poured in through the small upper window.

Zyklon Gas – hydrogen cyanide, in tin boxes the size and color of gas masks. Its blue-green crystals released poisonous gas into the air that killed human beings by causing them to suffocate. The company that produced it was in Hamburg.

After the gas was poured in, the window was closed and screams and moans could be heard for several minutes. After about a ½ hour, the back doors of the chamber were opened. It was a terrible sight. Women and children frozen in horrible convulsions, naked, with scratched skin, clenched fists, and bite marks on their limbs stood dead, bodies packed in so tightly that they were unable to fall.

Statistics of the Dead by Nationality

According to what the prisoners who came into direct contact with the incoming transports to Birkenau (the Canada commando, the Politische Schreiber, the Entwesungskomando) observed, during the entire period of gasing in Birkenau, this number of Jewish men, women, and children of these nationalities were killed:

Nat..American: 2,000 people

- // - Belgian: 60,000 - // -

- // - French: 13,000 - // -

- // - Dutch: 60,000 - // -

- // - Italian: 3,000 - // -

- // - Yugoslav: 15,000 - // -

- // - Hungarian: 400,000 - // -

- // - German: 200.00 - // -

- // - Norwegian: 1,000 - // -

- // - Polish: 2,200,000 - // -

- // - Greek: 70,000 - // -

- // - Czechosl..: 150,000 - // -

Some of the Hungarians were in fact Czechoslovak citizens from occupied Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia who were deported as Hungarians (Jews). All of these victims were sent without being processed or issued a number directly from the train to the crematoriums’ gas chambers. Only a small number (10-15%) were selected for labor and sent to the Auschwitz camps. They were given the same numbers as political prisoners and tattooed on their left hands. The tattoos had different serial numbers and the total number of tattooed prisoners came to about 400,000. During the evacuation in January 1945, only about 30,000 of these 400,000 tattooed prisoners remained. The rest either died from hard labor or gross mistreatment, or were gassed if they were no longer able to work.

People were tattooed with the following serial numbers:

men: 0-205,000

women: 0-80,000

Russian POWs: 0-12,000 B

Series A, men: 0-30.000? A

women:0-29,000 A

Series B men: 0-18,000 B

women

Roma: men: 0-15,000 Z

Women: 0-6,000 Z

Educational detainees: (Erziehungshäftlinge): 0-7,000 E.

40,000 Hungarian men and women who were supposed to be transported to Germany were sent to the camps without numbers and tattoos.

E. Schön, Vsetín submitted this to the Documentation Campaign.

Signature:

Erich Schön

Statement accepted by:

B. Gerzonová

Signature of witnesses:

Helena Schicková

Accepted on behalf of the Documentation Campaign:

Accepted on behalf of the archive:

History of the Czech Family Camp in Birkenau.

One of the greatest crimes in Birkenau was the liquidation of this camp. What actually happened and why is still a mystery today.

The first mass transports of Czech Jews from Theresienstadt to Birkenau began in October 1942. The first one, with about 3,000 people on board, was on October 10th, 1942. The next was on January 27th and another on 29th, and two more in February 1943. As usual, about 20% of the men and women from the transports were selected for hard labor, during which 90% of them died shortly thereafter from exhaustion, illness, and torture.

We estimate that more than 50 people from these transports (about 12,000 people) are no longer alive.

Then, on September 7th and 9th, 1943, 5,000 men, women, and children arrived from Theresienstadt. It was a surprise for us and for the entire camp when none were selected to be gassed when they arrived at the train station, the first time ever in the history of Birkenau.

All of them – men, women, and children, the old and the sick, and even the dead were sent to the camp, but to a special section that wasn’t fully constructed yet: B-II-b. The camp wasn’t ready, the roof had holes, the blocks were unfinished, there weren’t any paths, the blocks didn’t have beds or bunks. For many days, there was no water in the camp.

The head of the camp – the Lagerälteste – the German criminal, serial murderer Arno Böhm from Frankfurt am M was selected according to an old German tradition. He was one of the oldest prisoners in Auschwitz and had the number 8. He was charged with building the camp and heading it. This cruel murderer made life unbearable whenever he could with beatings, torture, and bullying. He especially liked to beat women. The first thing he did was to get and luxuriously furnish an apartment for himself, and he selected the most beautiful women for his own needs and as servants.

No other older prisoner was allowed to be a member of the camp’s administration. In fact, the camp’s administration insisted that the administrative personnel be selected from among their own people and so for the first time Czechoslovak citizens became the first block leaders in the entire camp. The men on one side of the camp, and women and children on the other. In spite of Böhm’s terrible rule, in several months they managed to make life a little more bearable. Unlike the other camps, this camp wasn’t included in the labor process, i.e. the prisoners didn’t leave the camp and only worked on the construction of their own one. The SS-men spread the rumor that the camp was under the protection of the International Red Cross, and that it had to be under quarantine for 6 months. Older people suffered greatly and died quickly of natural causes, hastened by poor hygienic conditions and malnutrition.

On the first day, we managed to enter the camp under the pretense of necessary locksmith and plumbing work. There, one of the writers found his own wife and child and saw them again for the first time after three years of imprisonment.

We let the leaders of the camp know what was happening in Birkenau. They didn’t believe us at first, but later when they saw for themselves how people were killed in Birkenau, they became convinced that Czech Jews had a special position. It was suspicious that none of the prisoners from the surrounding camps was allowed into the camp except in emergency situations.The SS took great pains to hide the fact that people were being gassed and burned in Birkenau.

One of the first measures that the political division led by the infamous Grabner realized was to immediately write letters with the famous lines: ... I am healthy and doing well… with the address Arbeitslager Birkenau bei Neu Berun. Everyone had to write at least one letter, but could send five to Theresienstadt and elsewhere. It was permitted to send packages, which also began to arrive in greater numbers. At one time, the Czech camp received up to a thousand packages a day from Bohemia and Moravia. These packages helped the camp’s inhabitants very much and the quality of life improved in the camp.

Children and pregnant women received special care. They were given better food, butter, and white bread. Children were housed in a special block. During the day, they spent their time in a children’s home that was run by Fredy Hirsch. The block was tastefully and artistically fixed up by the people in the camp. The children performed theater plays and their lessons were taught in Czech. In the evenings, camp music concerts and theater performances were held. Schwarzhuber, the commander of the camp, and other SS personnel would be in attendance.

Two blocks were turned into a hospital. Doctors, professors, teachers, physicians, and medical staff were selected to work there. At first glance, the quality of life in this camp seemed to be much better than in the other camps due to the hard work of the people in charge. Unlike in the other camps, they didn’t beat people to death, didn’t torture or torment their fellow prisoners, but accommodated them and helped them. The only exception was the head of the camp, murderer Arno Böhm, who needlessly prolonged roll calls, bullied, and tortured people in typical concentration camp ways.

On December 20th, 1943, another 5,000 people arrived from Theresienstadt. The camp was full. They were treated like the previous arrivals. With no exceptions, they were all sent to the camp, tattooed, and accepted. For the bandit Böhm and his Rapportführer Buntrock, this was a unique opportunity to plunder their belongings. They closely inspected the prisoners and took away all of their valuables. Their bounty allowed them to stay drunk for a long time.

The elder of Theresienstadt, Edelstein, and his closest coworkers were on the transports that arrived on December 20th, 1943. Immediately after they arrived, they were separated from their families and imprisoned in the jail in Auschwitz I, block II.

This camp was supplied with medicine and had a pharmacy. Doctors were forced to collaborate scientifically with SS doctors and were told that they were all colleagues. An SS doctor would often visit the children’s home and ask about the children’s health and praise how well their education and care was organized. It created the impression that the SS was truly interested in the successful development of the camp. Once, Fredy Hirsch was asked to write an objective report about the camp with a special focus on childcare, which was sent to Switzerland.

An interesting and mysterious event was the visit of a superior officer from Berlin from Oberführer Eichmann’s RSHA, who was supposedly charged with solving the Jewish question in the Reich. His visit made it seem like the SS was very interested in the camp. But those who knew him from their time in Theresienstadt (like Dr. Janovitz claimed that bad things always happened after he would visit.

- …. -

The transport to Heydebreck: on March 2nd, 1944, letters were handed out and people were ordered to write the date March 25th, 1944 on them. Apparently, this was how long it took for the letters to be censored before they were sent.

On about March 4th, we started hearing about the liquidation of the Czech camp since the 6 month quarantine was coming to an end. On March 5th, commander Schwarzhuber came to the camp’s writing room in person and announced that part of the camp would be transported, specifically all of the members of the September transport from the previous year. The next day, he came to the camp at night in a state of drunkenness and demanded to be shown naked women. He announced that they would go to Heydebreck in Upper Silesia. He ordered the writing room to prepare a list of all the members of the September transport, which was the usual way to get ready for a transport. He remarked that prisoners who were also functionaries should be highlighted on the list because they would keep their functions in the new camp.

We suspected that something fishy was underfoot, because they never transported children or women with children. The same day, we learned a confidential terrible fact. Kateřina Singerová, the secretary of the head SS female guard, accidentally overheard a telephone call between SS officers and Berlin that ordered to directly proceed to SB, i.e. Sonderbehandlung – the entire September transport was sent to the gas chamber.

The officers hesitated in carrying out this order, because even for them this was too much – killing all at once so many innocent, young, and healthy people that they had gotten used to seeing around and whose advanced culture and way of life they respected. One of them, Hessler, proposed to Berlin that at least the able bodied men and women who worked and were needed in the camp should be spared. For his efforts, he was immediately disciplined and punished, and Schwarzhuber received an order to carry out the original order to the letter.

We let the leaders and capable people in the Czech camp know, and they couldn’t believe it. They couldn’t understand this coming danger when they had a special status and benefited from exceptions that others didn’t receive. On March 7th, 1944, Schwarzhuber ordered all members of the September transport (about 3,800 people) to be transferred to neighboring camp A.

He again emphasized and assured that this was a labor transport to a new family camp in Heydebreck. They were to take packages, food, blankets, etc. with them. He requested the head functionary to confirm his statement to his fellow prisoners and calm people down. He reiterated that only the healthy would be departing, the sick and elderly would remain in Birkenau.

During the night of March 7th-8th, 1944 23Note 23: March 8th-9th 1944, 3,800 people were killed. After the evening roll call, at about 6 p.m., Schwarzhuber ordered all of the head kapos and block leaders in the main camp B-II-d (where we were) to assemble. He told them that he needed reliable men for a difficult job and selected 40 of the cruelest. A German political prisoner, who apparently knew what was going to happen, refused to participate. He was punished. The rest were ordered to arm themselves with sticks. Led by the leader of the camp Franz Danisch, they marched off at 8 p.m. towards camp A, where the Czech prisoners were waiting to be transported. After half an hour, trucks and strong SS guards with dogs arrived.

In all of the other camps in Birkenau, the blocks were on lockdown and for the first time in the history of Birkenau guards were stationed in front of the blocks within the camp. They were ordered to shoot anyone leaving the block on sight.

There was a sense of excitement in the camp. Many prisoners lay in their bunks fully clothed; an uprising was expected. At about 9 p.m. they started loading people onto trucks in camp A. Right at that moment, some of the leading functionaries of the Czech camp poisoned themselves (Fredy Hirsch, Jockl). A truck stood in front of the entrance to the block, SS guards with dogs surrounded the block, and kapos together with block leaders chased people onto the cars with sticks.

The trucks took the men to crematorium I., and the women and children to crematorium II. Even here there was heightened security. Guards were armed with grenades and machine guns. The gassing process was uneventful. Victims waited for hours for others to be trucked in and in the meantime wrote good-bye letters to their relatives in other camps and gave the letters to the prisoners in the Sonderkomanndo to send.

Here is a poem written by an unknown woman who sent it in a letter she gave to a member of the Sonderkommando

Song of the Dead

No, no crosses rot on our graves

No gravestones stretch over them,

No wreaths or wrought iron grates,

Nor angels with bowed heads

Willows and wreaths with a golden thread,

A candle that never goes out,

We rot in pits, covered in lime,

The wind rattles our bones.

Whitened skulls hopelessly

Tremble on barbed wires

Our ashes are scattered everywhere

And in thousands of urns dispersed.

We form a chain around the world

Seeds blown by the wind,

We count the days, months, years

And wait, we’re in no hurry.

More and more of us are down here

We’re swelling up, growing every day

We’re sprouting up in your fields

And one day your earth will burst.

And then we’ll emerge, a terrible row,

skull on top of skull, limb on limb

and everyone will hear us scream,

WE, THE DEAD, ARE CRYING

OUT FOR JUSTICE.

In the gas chamber they also sang the hymn: Where is my homeland... but couldn’t finish. The German gas asphyxiated them.

Schwarzhuber and all the other SS officers personally participated and observed the victims die through the glass windows in the walls of the chamber. The elderly and sick who remained in the original camp were taken to the crematorium, and so the total number of victims that night rose to 4,000. Out of the entire September transport, only several sick people in the infectious diseases section, several doctors, and twins that were at Dr. Mengele’s disposal for his experiments were still alive.

At the time, we gave a detailed report of this crime to Mr. Josef Mařák from Kostel u Uh. Hradiště, who sent it to Mrs. Olga Kulková, Nový Hrozenkov no. 20, Morava.

In the following weeks, most of the Czech camp didn’t believe that the September transport was annihilated and they were convinced by the news from Dachau dated March 25th, in which they got word that letters had been received. These were the letters written on March 2nd, 1944, dated March 23rd, 1944, in Birkenau.

Right before the extermination of the first transport, the head of the camp, Arno Böhm, left and joined the ranks of the SS. A new head arrived, also a German professional criminal named Willy Brachmann, who treated prisoners more leniently.

In May 1944, more transports arrived from Theresienstadt carrying about 10,000 people. They were again placed in the so-called Czech camp. These transports were given new numbers and tattooed with the number series starting with the letters A and B.

The Second Extermination of the Czech Camp

Based on our experiences with the first transport, we expected that after the half-year break that would end on June 26th, 1944, the December transport would also be exterminated. The second extermination was less violent and took place 14 days later. Men who were able to work and childless women were selected and placed on a transport that took them to the inner Reich. 80 young boys aged 14 to 16 were also selected to be apprentices in the Reich. The rest, women with children and the elderly as well as the sick were killed in the same manner as the first transport on July 12th, 1944.

The only escape attempt occurred around May 1944 24Note 24: April 1944. Jaroslav Lederer 24Note 24: Vítězslav Lederer, supposedly a captain in the Czechoslovak Army, together with SS-Blockführer Pestek, who was a Romanian citizen, changed into SS uniforms and escaped on bicycles. SSman Pestek returned to the area of the camp as a partisan. He tried to help other prisoners, but was captured and shot.

On June 20th, 1944, exactly half a year after the arrival of Edelstein and his associates from Theresienstadt, a police car arrived in block 11 in Auschwitz I and took him and his colleagues away. The SS apparently told him to get ready to join his family. They took all of them to the crematorium. Then they drove to the camp to pick up their families and promised them that they would see their fathers. They then shot them all in the crematorium.

This is how the Czech family camp ended, without anybody explaining why the people had to suffer through half a year in the camp.

Every other transport from Theresienstadt was processed in the usual way, i.e. with the selection process taking place on the ramp, with the majority sent to be gassed and a small percentage sent to the camp.

In September and October, about 18,000 people arrived in Birkenau from Theresienstadt. These transports were processed so strictly that for some barely 10% were sent to the camp.

Erich Schön from Vsetín submitted this to the Documentation Campaign.

Mentally Disabled Transports

The Germans also often transported mentally disabled persons from all over Europe to Birkenau. Entire institutions for the mentally disabled were emptied out, loaded onto train cars, and taken to Auschwitz to be exterminated. They didn’t try to determine the racial background of the people on these transports, but killed anyone they found within the institutions.

The first transport arrived in October 1942 from the Netherlands, and numbered 1,000 people. Men and women were taken here on passenger trains. 20 prisoners from the Canada Kommando, who helped unload the transports, approached the train. The entire transport was taken to the gas chambers in Birkenau and exterminated.

Another transport arrived in January of 1943. It contained 700 mentally disabled persons, men and women from Germany. In February of the same year, a transport of 800 mentally disabled persons arrived from France, and, later, 150 mentally disabled persons arrived from Belgium. All were put to death in the same way.

Besides these transports, all year long smaller groups of 20-60 mentally disabled persons, mainly from Poland, arrived. These small transports consisted of one, two, or even three train cars that were attached to the larger, mass transport, or sometimes they arrived independently. The victims from the institutions for the mentally disabled also didn’t know what awaited them. Inside the train cars, they would often undress themselves, laugh, sing, cry. They would then be treated cruelly and callously. SS-men bashed would bash their heads in with rifle butts.

Erich Schön from Vsetín submitted this to the Doc. Campaign.

Hungarian Transports

Large-scale preparations for the arrival of transports of Hungarian Jews commenced in April 1944. The crematoriums were carefully restored; the ovens were re-lined with fireclay; the chimneys were reinforced with iron grids; the crematoriums were encircled with fences covered in blankets that obscured the view of the courtyard.

Huge pits were dug behind the crematoriums, and nobody knew what they would be used for. Day and night, intense work continued on the construction of a track from the Auschwitz train station to the area between Crematorium I and II. Between sections I and II, a perfect unloading ramp with four tracks and switches was constructed, laid, and secured. The ranks of the Sonderkommando and Canada were augmented.

The first transports from Hungary arrived in June from Carpatho-Ukraine. The train cars were overcrowded and contained the bodies of people who had died of thirst. In July, the number of transports increased and so the camps B II c, and later the Czech camp B II b had to be opened, and when even that wasn’t enough, the unfinished section III, called Mexico, was used.

Transports continued to arrive both day and night. Rows of trains were backed up all the way to the Auschwitz train station. Cars were so laden with luggage that they could barely make their way from the ramp to the Effektenlager. SSmen were exhausted from working around the clock on the selection process. At the time, the Russian offensive was in full force and it seemed like the Germans wanted to destroy anything they could as quickly as possible.

The crematoriums couldn’t gas such an enormous amount of people at once. Thousands of people awaited their turn on the streets in front of the crematoriums. The flames of the crematoriums shot up into the sky both day and night, and at times thick smoke poured out of them.

The old gas chambers that were used in 1942 (thatched houses) were once again used to gas. Since the crematoriums didn’t have the capacity to incinerate the tens of thousands of corpses, the dead bodies were stacked in prepared pits and burned on pyres. The space was full of smoke and the stench of burnt bones. Moll employed his ingenuity. He ordered the digging of ditches around the pyres. Fat from the burning bodies would trickle down into these ditches. The fat was then poured over the new pyres that were piled high with dead bodies in order to help them burn. Since he was often drunk, he entertained himself by throwing small children and old women into the boiling fat and into the fire. Transports of people continued to march into the crematoriums, into the disinfection station, and groups of slaves continued to go from the place of disinfection into the camps.

Daily, thousands of shorn, tortured, and tattered women filled up new camps where nothing was ready for them. Blocks were overfilled. One had a capacity of 500 people, but had to contain 1,200 women, who were organized into two shifts to share the block. The most terrible conditions were in camp B II c, where there were 26,000 Hungarian women.

Without any access to hygiene or clothes, they were infested with lice in several days. There was no hospital, only a primitive sick room with no equipment. Treatment was simple. For headaches, women were sent to stand with a group that waited all day by the gate and in the evening the women who said that they were sick were sent for special treatment – to the crematorium.

Representatives of German companies visited the camps accompanied by the SS and selected women and men for labor as if they were buying slaves. They had various requirements. Some wanted beautiful women, others women with delicate hands, etc. They took them away by train into the heartland of the Reich.

The political department mounted a propaganda campaign and gave people a temporary alibi. In the dressing room of the crematorium, those who were sent to the gas chamber were given letters and ordered to write greetings to be sent to Hungary. The sender’s address was the Waldsee labor camp – a place that only existed in the minds of the leaders of the political department of Birkenau.

When problems arose during the gassing process, i.e. when victims didn’t want to enter into the gas chambers voluntarily, the SS first tried to trick them. This is what happened during the Hungarian transports:

Among the victims there were many frontline soldiers with medals of honor received for fighting against the Bolsheviks. The soldiers were home on leave when the Germans invaded and took them to Birkenau. There was unrest in front of the entrance into the chamber and some began to sense something. All of a sudden an SS officer spoke to them:

I call on you as members of an allied nation who fights side by side with us. I know that it is painful for you to have been brought to a labor camp, but the front is now here and you are still our allies. You will be treated differently and given priority. We are assigning tens of thousands of your compatriots to work, but we can’t bathe and disinfect everyone separately in wartime conditions. You must bear this small sacrifice and content yourselves with a group bath and disinfection. I hope that you will understand and exhibit a soldier's self-control and discipline, and go peacefully through this disinfection without which you will not be allowed into the camp. Can one of you kindly translate this into Hungarian?

One of the Hungarian officers volunteered and said: Friends, let’s show our German allies not only that we are brave fighters, but we’re also a disciplined nation, that we can deal with any situation without complaint. I ask you to be completely calm so that all of us can fit into this small disinfection room. They loudly shouted Bravo!, clapped their hands, and squeezed themselves into the chamber. The doors closed, the SSman poured the gas through a small window, and the valiant allies were soon self-disciplined corpses that received their promised special treatment in the ovens.

There was even a man who proudly marched toward the crematorium dressed in the uniform of a Hungarian general…

We often asked the Hungarian Jews who arrived in the camp whether they had heard the news from London about Auschwitz on the radio. They answered that they considered the information to be mendacious propaganda.

One even told us that a runaway from the concentration camp had visited him and told him about the gassing and burning of dead bodies. He thought the man was exaggerating, and so he gave him some money and was happy to be rid of him.

Mr. Erich Schön from Vsetín submitted this to the Documentation Campaign.

How Letters Were Written in Auschwitz and Birkenau

The administrations of the Auschwitz camps wanted to keep secret at all costs the connection and identicalness of Auschwitz and Birkenau. They deceived the world by ordering prisoners to write letters with a false address.

For example, in the main Auschwitz I camp they wrote this address:

Name, prisoner's tattooed number, Konzentrationslager Auschwitz, Block 10 or 10 A.

In Birkenau, they wrote this address with one small detail changed:

Name, prisoner's tattooed number, Konzentrationslager Auschwitz, Block 10 or 10 B.

Jews didn’t write letters regularly and only on normal civilian letter-writing paper. They wrote from Auschwitz I and Birkenau from the same address. The mail arrived in Auschwitz I, and from there it was sorted according to the information in the central files and sent into the separate camps. From Birkenau they wrote this:

Name, no prisoner number (although they were numbered and tattooed like the others) Arbeitslager Birkenau bei Neu-Berun, Haus Nr. 10, Ostoberschlesien, Hungarian Jews even wrote Arbeitslager Waldsee. In Auschwitz I they added the letter A (which stood for Auschwitz) to the number, and in Auschwitz III - Buna they added the letter B.

The number of letters that Jewish prisoners had to write was predetermined and the block leaders forced their fellow prisoners to write more letters. With these letters, the Germans wanted to prove that the English propaganda about the extermination of the Jews was a lie. They printed and publicly exhibited them.

Experiments on Live Humans

In the winter of 1942, prof. Schuhmann from Berlin created an x - rayexperimental station in the women’s camp B I a, where young men and women were exposed to harsh x-rays in order to sterilize them. He had at his disposal as many Jewish prisoners as he needed.

Men and women from Birkenau were taken to Auschwitz I to undergo experiments, such as the artificial insemination of women.

Sylvia Friedmannová, prisoner number 1818 from Prešov, who worked as an x-ray assistant, had the opportunity to observe all of the experiments that were conducted on the prisoners. She worked during these experiments until January 18th, 1945, when Auschwitz was evacuated and she returned home. Dr. Vilém Judkovič, a doctor who was a prisoner in Auschwitz for 3 years and now works in Prague in the na Bulovce hospital, confirmed her information for us. The organization of all of the experimental stations and prisoners was overseen by Sturmbannführer Dr. Wirtz 26Note 26: Wirths, who was also Auschwitz’s main head doctor (Standortarzt). His coworkers and assistants were Obersturmführ Dr. Weber, who mainly conducted experiments and led the laboratory in Rajsko, and in his experiments he was assisted by Oberscharführer Bünning (SDG) Dr. prof. Klauberg, who was also the owner in Königsdorf and Köningshütte near Berlin. Dr. chem. Foebbel of Berlin was in charge of chemical experiments.

In Auschwitz I on block no. 10, preparations were underway for the sterilization of women, artificial insemination, and experiments to create Salpingo, which was previously imported from Great Britain and was unavailable to Germans during the war. The actual experiments began on December 18th, 1943. For these purposes, 350 young women, most of them Dutch and Greek Jews, were sent to block 10. The women were placed on operating tables and injected with iodiprin. Right after the injection, x-rays images were taken. In 3 weeks the experiment was repeated, except that they were injected with a solution called F 12a, and 3 weeks after that were injected with citobaryum diluted with water. 20-40% iodiprin was used, the F 12a solution was a contrast medium with an added 10 cm3 of water and 10 cm3 of novocaine. After each injection, the women suffered high fevers, infected ovaries, and horrible pain and cramps that often led to unconsciousness. One or both ovaries were removed from the women and sent to Berlin. Preparations for artificial insemination experiments had already finished, but the experiments never started due to the evacuation. The women’s other reproductive organs were surgically removed and also sent to Berlin. Images of them were made by Dr. Wirtz 27Note 27: Wirths and colonoscopies were also performed. Dr. Klauberg carried all of the images, about 5,000 in total, in his briefcase at all times, and he had them with him still on January 18th, 1945.

Of the prisoners, prof. Samuel was forced to collaborate on these experiments. He was a German Jew who had emigrated to the Netherlands, where he was arrested and taken to Auschwitz I. In May 1944, all of his notes and the results of his work were confiscated and he was shot. All of his solutions in test tubes labelled with chemical symbols were sent out of the camp illegally. They were accepted by Dr. Frank, a Jewish Belgian doctor. His wife worked with Dr. Goebel and experiments were conducted on her as well. Blood samples were also taken from the women and sent to Dr. Weber at the institute to be experimented on. In the discussions between the aforementioned doctors, they mentioned several times that the purpose of the experiments was the sterilization of Europe, which they were preparing to carry out after the end of the war. The proof of this planned sterilization was provided by several individuals from the Roma camp who were released.

In Birkenau, sterilization with x-ray machines, built and supplied by the Siemens company, was conducted by Dr. Schumann. Prisoners aged 20 to 30 years, most of them Dutch and Greek, were selected and sent to him, all together several thousand. They stayed in block 15, in section B I b, from where groups led by block leaders were led every day to the experimentation station located in the women’s hospital camp B I a. Several thousand prisoners were used in this way, and many of them died soon after being sterilized. The sterilization procedure involved naked prisoners being made to stand between 2 cone-shaped x-ray lamps. The radiation took several minutes and was then repeated. It must have been extremely painful, and the prisoners would scream. We witnessed the radiation ourselves when we repaired the operating table in the room next door in December 1942. We observed what was happening in the next room through a keyhole and heard prof. Schumann rudely insulted the prisoners.

Every day, pieces of flesh would be cut off from the bodies of executed prisoners in the crematorium right after they had been shot and taken to the laboratory in Rajsko, where they cooked this meat in order to grow bacteria on it.

Mr. Erich Schön from Vsetín submitted this to the Documentation Campaign.

How Birkenau Ended

The last transport that was gassed contained 2,000 Czech Jews from Theresienstadt who had arrived in Birkenau on October 28th, 1944. Only about 159 were selected for the camp, and the rest were exterminated immediately. On November 2nd, a transport of Slovak Jews from Bratislava arrived. This was the first time that all of the people and their luggage were sent to camp B II a. Nobody from this transport was violently killed. Within the next few days, the men were sorted and sent to the men’s and the women to the women’s camps. Many of them died from the torture they suffered in the camps and during the evacuation.

On November 30th, gassing was officially prohibited and an order came down to take apart and demolish crematoriums I and II. Since we worked there, we saw everything.

In October, the SS began to intensify the deportation of all prisoners from Birkenau into the Reich. They were very nervous and constantly changed the size of the camp. They started having trouble transporting people and so transports sometimes waited for several days for trains to be ready.

The B I a and B I b section, which was under construction, was emptied and the women were moved to the unfinished section II, camps B, C, and E. Unfinished section III was liquidated. The buildings were taken apart, loaded onto trains, and sent to Gross Rosen. Larger and smaller transports continued to depart for the Reich until January 18th, 1945, when Birkenau and Auschwitz were completely evacuated. On this day, there were 11,000 prisoners in Birkenau. In the beginning, the evacuation proceeded in an orderly fashion. Transports of 1,000 to 2,000 people were deported and their numbers checked off in their files. Each was allowed to take a blanket and received a daily food ration.

At about 4 o’clock, we got word that the Russians were getting closer, and chaos erupted in the camps. 2,000 men, women, and children still remained in the camp. Food and clothing warehouses were broken into, and the prisoners grabbed what they could. The SS quickly burned the remaining camp books and papers. The road from Birkenau to Auschwitz I was lined with heavily armed SS guards with dogs. All of the prisoners were chased out of camps.

Crematorium IV, which still stood, was blown up, and Effektenlager B II g together with the disinfection station was set on fire. 1,500 prisoners remained in hospital camp B II f.

At 6 o’clock in the evening, the last remaining people left Birkenau and were hooked up to the transport in Auschwitz I. The last march contained about 6,000 prisoners. They were forced to march poorly clothed, frozen, hungry, and exhausted towards Ples, though Bad Jastr, and to Loslau. The tempo of the march was grueling, and those who fell behind because they were too tired to go on were mercilessly shot by the SSmen. Ditches on both sides were lined with the corpses of executed men and women wearing wooden shoes who couldn’t keep up with the tempo set by the SS.

The march to Loslau lasted 3 days. The majority had to sleep under the stars and the nights were freezing. Those who slept at the edge of the rows couldn’t get enough body heat from the others and froze to death.

Mr. Erich Schön from Vsetín submitted this to the Documentation Campaign.

Poem by an unknown author who sent it from the crematorium shortly before her death.

Birkenau, March 8th, 1944

Song of the Dead

No, no crosses rot on our graves

No gravestones stretch over them,

No wreaths or wrought iron grates,

Nor angels with bowed heads.

Willows and wreaths with a golden thread,

A candle that never goes out,

We rot in pits, covered in lime,

The wind rattles our bones.

Whitened skulls hopelessly

Tremble on barbed wires

Our ashes are scattered everywhere

And in thousands of urns dispersed.

We form a chain around the world

Seeds blown by the wind,

We count the days, months, years

And wait, we’re in no hurry.

More and more of us are down here

We’re swelling up, growing every day

We’re sprouting up in your fields

And one day your earth will burst.

And then we’ll emerge, a terrible row,

skull on top of skull, limb on limb

and everyone will hear us scream,

We, the dead, are crying

out for justice