I had learned enough about all this at first hand in Dachau and Sachsenhausen, as block leader, Rapportführer, and commander of the protective custody camp. I know very well how easy it is in a camp for unwelcome orders to be deliberately misinterpreted, and even to be given an entirely opposite construction, without the issuing authority ever being aware of this. In Auschwitz I was very soon quite sure that this was being done.
Such a state of affairs could only be radically altered by an immediate change of the entire protective custody camp staff. And the Inspector of Concentration Camps would never in any circumstances have permitted this.
It was impossible for me personally to see that my orders were carried out down to the smallest detail, since this would have meant diverting my attention from my main task, the building of a serviceable camp as rapidly as possible, and acting as officer in charge of the protective custody camp myself.
It was during the early period, when the prison camp was being got under way, that I should have spent my whole time in the camp, just because of this attitude of mind of the camp staff.
But it was precisely then that I was compelled to be almost always away from the camp owing to the inefficiency of most of the officials with whom I had to deal.
In order to get the camp started I had already had to negotiate with various economic offices, and with the local and district authorities. My executive officer was a complete half-wit and I was thus forced to take matters out of his hands and to organize the entire provisioning of troops and prisoners myself.
Whether it was a question of bread or meat or potatoes, it was I who had to go and find them. Yes, I even had to visit the farms in order to collect straw. Since I could expect no help of any kind from the Inspectorate, I had to make do as best I could on my own. I had to “organize” the trucks and lorries I needed, and the fuel for them. I had to drive as far as Zakopane and Rabka[43] to acquire cooking utensils for the prisoners’ kitchen, and to the Sudetenland for bedsteads and paillasses.
Since my architect could not acquire the materials he needed most urgently, I had to drive out with him to look for them. In Berlin they were still quarreling about the responsibility for the construction of Auschwitz, for it had been agreed that the whole project was an army affair and had only been handed over to the SS for the duration of the war.
The RSHA, the Commander of the Security Police in Cracow, and the Inspector of the Security Police and the Security Service in Breslau were repeatedly inquiring when ever-larger groups of prisoners could be accepted at the camp.[44]
Yet I still could not lay my hands on a hundred yards of barbed wire. There were mountains of it in the Engineer Depot at Gleiwitz. But I could not touch it without first getting authority to have it decontrolled from the Senior Engineer Staff in Berlin. The Inspectorate of Concentration Camps refused to help in this matter. So the urgently needed barbed wire just had to be pilfered. Wherever I found old field fortifications I ordered them to be dismantled and the pillboxes broken up, and thus I acquired the steel they contained. Whenever I came across installations containing material I urgently needed, I simply had it taken away at once without worrying about the formalities. I had to help myself.
Furthermore, the evacuation of the first zone of the area assigned to the camp was going on.[45]
The second zone had also begun to be cleared. I had to work out how all this additional agricultural land was to be used.
At the end of November 1940 the first progress report was submitted to the Reichsführer SS, and an expansion of the whole camp area was begun as ordered.[46]
I thought that the construction and completion of the camp itself were more than enough to keep me occupied, but this first progress report served only to set in motion an endless and unbroken chain of fresh tasks and further projects.
From the very beginning I was so absorbed, I might say obsessed, with my task that every fresh difficulty only increased my zeal. I was determined that nothing should get me down. My pride would not allow it. I lived only for my work.
It will be understood that my many and diverse duties left me but little time for the camp and the prisoners themselves.
I had to leave them entirely in the hands of individuals such as Fritzsch, Meier, Seidler, and Palitzsch, distasteful persons in every respect, and I had to do this even though I was well aware that they would not run the camp as I wished and intended.
But I could only dedicate myself completely and wholly to one task. Either I had to devote myself solely to the prisoners, or I had to use all my energies in the construction and completion of the camp. Either task required my entire and undivided attention. It was not possible to attempt both. But my job was, and always remained, to complete the construction and enlargement of the camp.
In the course of the years many other tasks occupied my attention, but the primary one remained the same throughout. All my thoughts and aspirations were directed toward this one end, and everything else had to take second place. I had to direct the whole undertaking from this standpoint alone. I therefore observed everything from this one point of view.
Glücks often told me that my greatest mistake was in doing everything myself instead of delegating the work to my responsible subordinates. The mistakes that they would make through incompetence I should simply accept. I should become reconciled to that. Matters cannot be expected to run just as one wants always.
He refused to accept the validity of my arguments when I objected that in Auschwitz I had certainly been given the worst type of human material to act as Capos and as junior officers; and that it was not only their incompetence, but far more their deliberate carelessness and malice that compelled me to handle all the more important and urgent tasks myself.
According to him, the commandant should direct and control the whole camp by telephone from his office desk. It should be quite enough if he took an occasional Walk through the camp. What innocence! Glücks was only able to hold this view because he had never worked in a concentration camp. That was why he could never understand or appreciate my real needs.
This inability on the part of my superior to understand me brought me to the verge of despair. I put all my ability and my will into my work; I lived for it entirely; yet he regarded it as though this were a game or even a hobby of mine, in which I had become too absorbed and which prevented me from taking the broader view.
When, as a result of the visit of the Reichsführer SS in March 1941,[47] new and larger tasks were assigned me without any extra help in the most vital matters being forthcoming, my last hope of obtaining better and more reliable assistants vanished.
I had to resign myself to the “bigwigs” and to my continuing quarrels with them. I had a very few good and reliable colleagues to support me, but unfortunately these were not in the most important and responsible positions. I was now forced to load and indeed to overload them with work, and I was often slow in appreciating that I was making the mistake of demanding too much of them.
44
The local regional representative of the RSHA (Reich Security Head Office) was the Inspector of the Security Police and the Security Service in Breslau. The Commander of the Security Police at Cracow, SS-Brigadeführer Bruno Streckenbach, was also responsible for the dispatch of prisoners to Auschwitz from all the former Polish territories which, during the German occupation, constituted the Government-General.
45
An area of 40 sq. kilometers, containing three Polish villages, including Brzezinka (Birkenau).