Auschwitz from A to Z. An Illustrated History of the Camp - ebook

From the Authors

To meet the expectations of the more than one million people who come to the Auschwitz Memorial each year, we have endeavored to compile a historical glossary, for the general reader, on the subject of the largest Nazi German concentration camp and extermination center, Auschwitz. This book encapsulates knowledge about the camp in more than 300 concise, accessible entries. It was not our aim to describe everything conveyed by the eyewitnesses, nor to present the entirety of the knowledge attained in decades of historical research. We wanted this publication to reach out to every reader interested in the history of Auschwitz, and not exclusively to the narrow circle of specialists in the history of the Third Reich.

We wanted this book to contain clear alphabetical entries on the subject, making it easy to look up the crucial problems, but not only. We have also included a wealth of fascinating illustrations that complement the entries. Consisting predominantly of archival photographs and documents, they give this book an added dimension. We think the visual material will prove not only interesting but also useful to readers in their own investigations into, and reflections on, the history of Auschwitz.

Choosing the entries was the phase of our work on this collection that required the most discussion. After prolonged editorial deliberations, we arrived at a list of entries that struck us as essential to the history of the camp. We also drew on the experience of educators and guides at the Memorial in assessing which topics to take up. As a result, aside from the standard issues in the history of Auschwitz, there are descriptions here of all the camps and sub-camps that made up the complex, the largest and most important labor Kommandos, the SS administrative structure, and the most significant buildings and installations. In choosing biographical sketches of the members of the camp SS garrison, we considered not only the positions they held, but also their impact on the fate of the prisoners. We explicate the main points in the prisoners’ daily routine. We also describe the unfolding of the Holocaust, as understood through its successive stages—beginning with the principal places where the transports departed, through the deportees’ last moments of life within the Auschwitz-Birkenau space.

The choice of entries about the prisoners and victims of Auschwitz constituted our biggest problem. Naturally, we would have preferred to publish at least a brief entry on every victim and every prisoner, if only that were possible. Unfortunately, it could not be so—if for no other reason than the fact that we know nothing, or practically nothing, about the vast majority of them. Many Jewish families were murdered in their entirety, leaving no one to write down the stories of the individual people. The SS burned most of the records before the evacuation of the camp in 1945, leaving us unable to reconstruct even a full list of the prisoners. We therefore settled on a symbolic set of biographical sketches. These are people who made the greatest mark on the fate of the prisoner community—in a heroically positive sense, or in an abjectly negative sense. The reader will find here biographies of resistance movement members, the best known prisoners, and escapees who informed the world on what was happening behind the barbed wire. We intentionally restricted ourselves to the biographies of prisoners whose deportment and acts were noteworthy at the time when the camp was in operation. We could not publish the more than one million life stories of Auschwitz victims here, but we dedicate this book to all of them.

We faced a major linguistic conundrum: Which terms should be left in the original German—the language of the founders and operators of the camp—and which should be translated into English? We decided, in the titles of our entries, to retain the original versions that were used exclusively in German when the camp was functioning. These included, for instance, titles, place names, and the names of organizational units such as Kommandos. Only in postwar publications were these terms translated into other languages.

In releasing this handy compendium of knowledge about the largest camp and extermination center of the German Third Reich, we are aware that it can never replace the reading of the countless memoirs, published in many languages, by Auschwitz survivors. Nor can it replace the historical studies of what SS-Obersturmführer Heinz Thilo called the “anus mundi.” It may, nevertheless, aid individuals in their own reading and reflections, and in the attempt to understand events that occurred barely a few decades ago.

Piotr M. A. Cywiński,

Jacek Lachendro, Piotr SetkiewiczA

Administrative Department

(Abteilung IV, Verwaltung)

In the Auschwitz organizational structure, this department was responsible for supplying the camp with food and clothing, managing prisoner property on deposit, various types of storage, and the operation of the laundry, baths, kitchens, the camp printing press, and, for a time, the SS farms. Its directors included SS-Sturmbannführer Willi Burger and SS-Obersturmbannführer Karl Möckel; over the lengthy period they held this post, the two of them oversaw a significant expansion of the department structure. Appearances aside, the SS men working here often played key roles in extermination operations in addition to their routine office work. The office for the administration of prisoner property, enlarged to three bureaus and nine sections, was responsible for the *plunder of the property of *Jews deported to the camp—including clothing, footwear, suitcases, money, jewelry, and gold teeth extracted from the victims (*dental gold).

Other organizational units in the department allotted food products, usually of low quality and partially spoiled, to the prisoner kitchens, and distributed striped camp garments.

Aid to prisoners

During the time Auschwitz was in operation, some of the residents of *Oświęcim and the nearby localities rendered disinterested aid to prisoners, in spite of the penalties of death or imprisonment in the camp for doing so. They helped prisoners laboring outside the camp by covertly supplying them with food, medicine, and warm clothing, and by serving as intermediaries in their secret correspondence with their families. Some of the *civilian workers employed by the camp authorities acted in a similar way.

Important forms of action for the sake of the prisoners were help in organizing *escapes and hiding escapees, as well as receiving documents from prisoners that attested to the crimes committed by the SS. The conveying of valuable reports about the situation in the camp to the headquarters of the Polish Underground State and the Polish government-in-exile in London is one of the greatest accomplishments of the Polish resistance movement. The fact that the Allies never made the proper use of this information is another matter entirely.

At first, individuals rendered aid in a spontaneous reflex of empathy and out of a heartfelt need, but over time whole families and groups of acquaintances began doing so in an organized way. The scale and significance of the aid grew even larger when clandestine organizations active in the area around the camp—the Union of Armed Struggle/Home Army, the Peasant Battalion, and Polish Socialist Party groups—became involved.

Auschwitz prisoners appreciated these actions by people “on the other side of the barbed wire.” As tokens of gratitude, they smuggled out drawings, paintings, and ornamental objects made secretly in the camp. According to findings by historians, more than a thousand people were involved in aiding prisoners. About 190 of them were arrested by the German authorities; almost 70 paid with their lives, mostly after being imprisoned in the camp.

In 1942, a prisoner of the Jawischowitz sub-camp gave this ring woven from horse hair to a Polish woman living in Brzeszcze in gratitude for her clandestine help

Allgemeine Körperschwäche

(Overall bodily exhaustion)

The diagnosis for many prisoners admitted to the camp *hospital and also listed as the cause of death on death certificates. Many such entries can be found on the transport lists of prisoners transferred from the *sub-camps to *Auschwitz I and *Birkenau, which usually meant that, as “unfit for labor,” they were sentenced after *selection to death in the *gas chambers. The term was a euphemism used by SS physicians for prisoners terminally exhausted by hunger and hard labor, the so-called *Muselmänner.

Altdorf

A small *sub-camp in Stara Wieś (German: Altdorf) near Pszczyna, in existence from mid-November 1942 to April 1943, with a winter break from mid-January to early March. The number of prisoners fluctuated from 15 to 30. They were quartered in the cellars of a building in the middle of the village. There were two rooms there—the larger containing bunk beds with blankets and straw mats, and the other a kitchen with two stoves for cooking meals. The prisoners were locked in at night. One SS man stood guard on the cellar stairs while the other patrolled around the building. The prisoners worked in the nearby woods, cutting down trees and planting tree nurseries.

A liberated Auschwitz prisoner with clear signs of emaciation

Order for cleaning products needed at the Altdorf sub-camp

Althammer

A *sub-camp in Stara Kuźnia (German: Althammer) near Halemba, now within the city limits of Ruda Śląska. The first prisoners were taken there in mid-September 1944. At the beginning of October there were about 500, mostly Jews from Poland, France, and Hungary. They stayed in eight wooden barracks (earlier occupied by Italian prisoners of war) surrounded by a double barbed-wire fence, with the inner fence electrified. The prisoners worked digging foundations and drainage ditches, and laying cable, for an electric power station. The camp director was SS-Oberscharführer Hans Mirbeth. The SS men at the places where prisoners labored were reinforced by older Wehrmacht and Kriegsmarine reservists and industrial watchmen. At least 20 prisoners died in the camp, and the number taken to *Birkenau is not known. In January 1945, the majority of the prisoners were evacuated on foot to Gliwice, and next by train to other concentration camps. Several dozen, left behind, were liberated by Soviet soldiers.

Anus mundi

A metaphorical term for Auschwitz, meaning “anus of the world” in Latin. Its originator is thought to be SS doctor Heinz *Thilo. He supposedly used it when speaking to Johann Paul *Kremer in connection with the murder in the *Birkenau *gas chamber on September 5, 1942, of 800 women chosen for death during a *selection in the camp. Kremer wrote the words in his diary, found by British soldiers after his arrest in August 1945. “Today at noon attended a special operation in the women’s camp: the worst of the most repulsive worst,” Kremer wrote. “Hauptsturmführer Thilo, the garrison physician, told me today that we are at the anus mundi.”

After the war, former prisoner Wiesław Kielar chose the phrase as the title for his book, regarded as one of the most interesting camp memoirs.

Arbeit macht frei

(Work will set you free)

The inscription over the gate of the *Auschwitz I camp comes from the title of a 19th-century novel by the German writer and clergyman Lorenz Diefenbach. The title derives from the Gospel of John 8:32, “the truth will set you free” (German: Die Wahrheit macht frei). The slogan was used for propaganda purposes in a program to reduce mass unemployment during the economic crisis in Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s. After the Nazis took power, the phrase appeared at the entrances to other concentration camps and ghettos aside from Auschwitz, including Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Flossenbürg, Gross-Rosen, and Theresienstadt.

In 1940, the Germans placed the slogan “Arbeit macht frei” (work will set you free) over the Auschwitz concentration camp gate

The Auschwitz inscription was made in mid-1940. The *Kapo of the camp metal workshop, Kurt Müller, “designed” it by drawing its characteristic shape on the ground. It was made from pipes being used to expand the camp’s running-water network. A Polish prisoner, the master artistic blacksmith Jan Liwacz, made the letters.

The letter B was attached upside down, which some prisoners interpreted as an act of resistance aimed at the duplicity of the slogan above the gate. It is more probable, however, that the reversed welding of the letter was merely accidental.

The prisoners who walked beneath the inscription on their way to and from work every day composed ironic couplets about it, such as “Arbeit macht frei durch den Schornstein” (work will set you free through the chimney) or “Arbeit macht frei durch Krematorium Nummer drei” (work will set you free through crematorium number three).

After the liberation of Auschwitz, Soviet military authorities ruled the grounds of the camp. They treated the property there as spoils of war and sent it to the Soviet Union. According to an account by Eugeniusz Nosal, a former prisoner, Soviet soldiers loaded the inscription on a train car and prepared to ship it along with other items.

Nosal claimed to have bribed a guard with a bottle of moonshine vodka, recovered the inscription, and hid it.

The inscription returned to its place when the Museum was set up. In December 2009, it was stolen and cut up into pieces on orders from a Swedish neo-Nazi. Secured 48 hours later, it was repaired, reassembled, and conserved. A replica of the original now hangs above the gate.

Army barracks

The Auschwitz camp arose on the grounds of a former Polish Army base. The buildings there had previously been part of what was known as an emigration station. They were built by the Austrian government in 1916–1917, when *Oświęcim was under Austrian rule, to meet the needs of seasonal workers and people emigrating to find work, mostly in Germany and the United States.

The Auschwitz camp was founded on the site of a prewar Polish Army base

In independent Poland, about 4,000 refugees from Cieszyn Silesia were quartered there in 1920. In the first half of the 1920s, some of the buildings were taken over by the Polish Tobacco Monopoly, and others formed an infantry and artillery base.

In the fall of 1939, the German military authorities created a transit camp for Polish POWs there. In the spring of 1940, the SS took over the barracks from the army and founded a concentration camp. The German name for the street running past the camp, Kasernstrasse (Casern Street), recalls the old military base.

Asocial (prisoner category)

Marked with a black triangle and designated in the records as Aso, Asoziale. The decision to incarcerate them in the camp was made by criminal police posts (Office V in the *RSHA) on the basis of charges of vagrancy, alcoholism, prostitution, pimping, dodging work, and in fact many other deeds and behaviors that the police treated rather loosely. The position of asocial prisoners in the camp differed little from that of *criminal prisoners—the SS appointed them equally frequently to the functionary posts of *Kapo and *block elder. For other reasons, Gypsies (*Roma) were also formally classed as asocial and marked with the black triangle, although their status in the camp was completely different. In August 1944, Auschwitz held 437 Germans, 141 Poles, and 32 Czechs in the asocial category.

Aufseherin, SS

(Female SS overseer)

The need for women guards arose when the first female prisoners were incarcerated in Nazi German concentration camps in the 1930s. Given the patriarchal outlook of the Nazis, women could not be members of the SS, but they were generally expected to carry out tasks similar to those of SS men. Women usually chose to serve in concentration camps voluntarily, in view of the stable but not particularly high pay. They were recruited from various social strata—office workers or nurses, but also the unemployed. After signing contracts with the SS, they were sent for several weeks of training at the Ravensbrück camp, where they received uniforms with no insignia, consisting of buttoned-up jackets, skirts, capes, brimless caps, and high boots. When they reported for service, they received belts with holsters and a pistol. The attribute that prisoners remember most frequently, however, was their cane or leather riding crop.

Selection in Birkenau. About 180 women served as SS overseers in the women’s camp

They appeared in Auschwitz in March 1942, when the first women were deported to the camp. They were quartered in a building (Stabsgebäude) near *Auschwitz I, as well as in houses in the nearby Zasole district whose Polish owners had been *expelled. Formally, they reported to the Lagerführer; their direct superior, however, was the so-called head overseer—first Johanna Lagenfeld and, from October 1942, Maria *Mandl.

A total of about 180 female supervisors served at Auschwitz, the majority of them transferred from the Ravensbrück and Majdanek camps. They distinguished themselves by their cruelty and zeal in beating and mistreating prisoners; Irma *Grese, Elisabeth Volkenrath, Margot Drechsler, and Johanna Bormann were regarded as particularly ruthless.

Aumeier, Hans

SS-Hauptsturmführer

Born in Amberg, Bavaria, in 1906, he dropped out of school after completing four years of gymnasium. After taking vocational courses and passing his journeyman’s examination, he found occasional work in factories and workshops, but was also frequently unemployed. In 1929, he joined the NSDAP and the SS. He was assigned to various concentration camps—to Dachau in 1934, Esterwegen and Lichtenburg in 1936, Buchenwald in 1937, and Flossenbürg in 1938. He arrived in Auschwitz in February 1942, where he became camp director with direct responsibility for *executions, *punishment, and the unrelenting exploitation of prisoners as slave laborers. He was notorious for brutally mistreating prisoners. He also supervised the operation to exterminate *Jews in the *gas chambers. He served in Auschwitz until August 1943; in October he became commandant of the Vaivara camp, where most of the prisoners were Jews from Vilnius and Kovno. After the evacuation of Vaivara a year later, he became director of the Kaufering camp complex, which was a branch of Dachau. In February 1945, he took the post of commandant of the Grini (Mysen) camp near Oslo. For his services he received War Merit Cross first and second class, both with swords. After the war, he was sentenced to death in the trial of 40 members of the Auschwitz garrison and hanged in Cracow in 1948.

Hans Aumeier, director of the Auschwitz camp. He was notorious for brutality and mistreatment of prisoners

Auschwitz

The Nazi German concentration camp and center for the extermination of Jews created during World War II on the outskirts of *Oświęcim. Initially it consisted only of *Auschwitz I, created in the spring of 1940, later also of the considerably larger *Birkenau camp, and later still of *Monowitz and almost 50 *sub-camps of various sizes on the territory of Upper Silesia, Western Małopolska, and Bohemia but comprising an integrally managed administrative whole. Among its over 1,000,000 victims, the overwhelming majority (about 900,000) were *Jews murdered in the *gas chambers immediately after arrival; the others were prisoners registered in the camp who died of starvation or fell victim to epidemics, hard labor, *executions, and *selection.

Auschwitz I

As early as December 1939, the Germans in the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps considered creating a “quarantine camp” in Silesia, where large numbers of arrested Poles could wait for transfer to concentration camps in the Third Reich. The choice finally fell on the former Polish *Army barracks on the outskirts of *Oświęcim. The location in the fork of the Soła and Vistula rivers was far from any built-up areas and near a railroad station at a large junction. When work on setting up the camp began in April, the original idea of a transit camp was rejected in favor of establishing a typical state concentration camp.

Initially, it was made up of 20 buildings (14 one-story and 6 two-story), as well as two SS administrative blocks. Expansion began in 1941: upper floors were added to the single-story structures, and eight additional two-story blocks were erected on part of the roll-call square. Later, several wooden barracks were built between existing masonry structures—a bathhouse, laundry, and a building for handling parcels. Another SS administrative building, a crematorium (in an adapted ammunition bunker), a complex of garages and workshops, an induction building and the *Bauhof were built outside the fence. The SS also used the nearby buildings that belonged before the war to the Polish Tobacco Monopoly as storehouses, offices, and housing. Prisoners did not live in all the 28 buildings inside the fence; for instance, block 24 housed offices, a music hall, the *Lagermuseum, a library, and a *bordello. There was clothing storage in block 27, an experimental station in *block 10, a *canteen in part of the ground floor of block 25, and a disinfection chamber, baths, and a photographic studio in block 26. More disinfection chambers were located upstairs in block 3. On the assumption that the peak camp population in 1944 was 18,000 prisoners, there must have been an average of about 750 housed in each block at that time (on earlier occasions, some blocks held 1,000 or even 1,200 prisoners).

German map titled “Auschwitz concentration camp and its sub-camps.” Overall, the complex comprised the three principal camps and almost 50 sub-camps

From 1940 to 1942, *Poles, as an ethnic group, predominated among the prisoners in Auschwitz I, with the first *Jews from *RSHA transports mostly placed from the spring of 1942 in the newly completed *Birkenau barracks. Nevertheless, by 1944 Auschwitz I had become more “Jewish” than “Polish,” and in August of that year, for example, it held over 9,000 Jews, almost 4,000 Poles, and almost 3,000 prisoners of other ethnicities.