I saw the same expression on the faces of the prisoners when they were paraded to watch the hangings. Only terror and a fear lest a similar fate overtake themselves were here more in evidence.
I must refer here to the court-martial tribunal, and to the liquidation of hostages, since these solely affected the Polish prisoners.
Most of the hostages had been in the camp for a considerable time, and the fact that they were hostages was unknown both to them and to the camp authorities. Then one day a teletype message would arrive from the Security Police or from the Reich Security Head Office, stating that the prisoners named therein were to be shot or hanged as hostages.
A report that the executions had been carried out had to be forwarded within a few hours. The prisoners concerned would be taken away from their work or called out during the roll call and placed in custody. Those who had been in the camp for some time usually knew what this meant, or had at least a very shrewd idea.
The order for their execution was made known to them after they had been arrested. At first, in 1940 and 1941, they were shot by a firing squad. Later they were either hanged or shot in the back of the neck with a small-caliber revolver. The bedridden were liquidated in the hospital building by means of an injection.
The Kattowitz military court visited Auschwitz every four or six weeks and sat in the punishment cell building.
The accused prisoners, most of whom were already camp inmates, although some had only recently been sent there for trial, were brought before the tribunal and interrogated through an interpreter concerning their statements and the admissions they had made. All the prisoners whom I saw tried admitted to their actions quite freely, openly, and firmly.
In particular, some of the women answered bravely for what they had done. In most cases the death sentence was pronounced and carried out forthwith. Like the hostages, they all met their death with calm and resignation, convinced that they were sacrificing themselves for their country. I often saw in their eyes a fanaticism that reminded me of Jehovah’s Witnesses when they went to their death.
But criminals condemned by the tribunal, men who had taken part in robberies with violence, gang crimes, and so on, died in a very different way. They were either callous and sullen to the last, or else they whined and cried out for mercy.
The picture here was the same as it had been during the executions in Sachsenhausen: those who died for their ideals were brave, upstanding, and calm, the asocials stupefied or struggling against their fate.
Although the general conditions in Auschwitz were far from good, none of the Polish prisoners was willingly transferred to another camp. As soon as they heard that they were to be moved, they did everything in their power to be left out of the transport and kept in the camp. When, in 1943, a general order was issued that all Poles were to be taken to camps in Germany, I was overwhelmed by every works department with requests for the retention of prisoners described as indispensable. No one could spare his Poles. Finally the transfer had to be carried out compulsorily, a fixed percentage being moved.
I never heard of a Polish prisoner voluntarily requesting transfer to another camp. I have never understood the reason for this desire to hang on in Auschwitz.
There were three main political groups among the Polish prisoners, and the adherents of each fought violently against the others. The strongest was the chauvinistic nationalist group. Each group competed with the others for the most influential posts. When one man managed to obtain an important position in the camp, he would quickly bring in other members of his own group and would remove his opponents from his domain. This was often accomplished by base intrigue. Indeed I dare say that many cases of spotted fever or typhus resulting in death, and other such incidents, could be accounted for by this struggle for power. I often heard from the doctors that this battle for supremacy was always waged most fiercely in the hospital building itself. It was the same story in regard to the control of work. That and the hospital building offered the most important positions of power in the entire life of the camp. Whoever controlled these, ruled the rest. And they did rule too, in no halfhearted fashion. A man who held one of these important positions could see to it that his friends were put wherever he wished them to be. He could also get rid of those he disliked, or even finish them off entirely. In Auschwitz everything was possible. These political struggles for power took place not only in Auschwitz and among the Poles, but in every camp and among all nationalities. Even among the Spanish Communists in Mauthausen there were two violently opposed groups. In prison and in the penitentiary I myself had experienced how right and left wing would fight each other.
In the concentration camps these enmities were keenly encouraged and kept going by the authorities, in order to hinder any strong combination on the part of all the prisoners. Not only the political differences, but also the antagonisms between the various categories of prisoners, played a large part in this.
However strong the camp authorities might be, it would not have been possible to control or direct these thousands of prisoners without making use of their mutual antagonisms. The greater the number of antagonisms and the more ferocious the struggle for power, the easier it was to control the camp. Divide et impera! This maxim has the same importance, which must never be underestimated in the conduct of a concentration camp as in high politics.
The next largest contingent consisted of the Russian prisoners of war who were employed on building the prisoner-of-war camp at Birkenau.
They arrived from the military prisoner-of-war camp at Lamsdorf in Upper Silesia, and were in very poor condition. They reached the camp after many weeks’ marching. They had been given hardly any food on the march, during halts on the way being simply turned out into the nearest fields and there told to “graze” like cattle on anything edible they could find. In the Lamsdorf camp there must have been about 200,000 Russian prisoners of war. This camp was simply a square area of ground on which most of them huddled as best they could in earth hovels they had built themselves. Feeding arrangements were completely inadequate and the distribution of food was irregular. They cooked for themselves in holes in the ground. Most of them—it could not be called eating—devoured their portion raw. The army was not prepared for the immense numbers of prisoners captured in 1941. The organization of the army department responsible for prisoners of war was too rigid and inflexible, and could not improvise speedily. Incidentally, it was the same story with the German prisoners of war after the collapse, in May 1945. The Allies, too, were unable to cope with such massive numbers. The prisoners were simply herded on a convenient patch of ground, enclosed with a few strands of barbed wire, and left to their own devices. They were treated exactly as the Russians had been.
It was with these prisoners, many of whom could hardly stand, that I was now supposed to build the Birkenau prisoner-of-war camp. The Reichsführer SS ordered that only the strongest of the Russian prisoners, those who were particularly capable of hard work, were to be sent to me. The officers who accompanied them said these were the best available at Lamsdorf. They were willing to work, but were incapable of doing so because of their weakened condition. I remember very clearly how we were continually giving them food when first they arrived at the base camp, but in vain.[49]
Their weakened bodies could no longer function. Their whole constitution was finished and done for. They died like flies from general physical exhaustion, or from the most trifling maladies which their debilitated constitutions could no longer resist. I saw countless Russians die while in the act of swallowing root vegetables or potatoes. For some time I employed 5,000 Russians almost daily unloading trainloads of turnips. The railway tracks were blocked, mountains of turnips lay on the lines, and there was nothing to be done about it. The Russians were physically all in. They wandered aimlessly about, crept into a safe corner to swallow something edible that they found—which was a great effort for them, or sought a quiet spot where they might die in peace. The worst time was during the mud period at the beginning and end of the winter of 1941-42. The Russians could endure the cold more or less, but not: the damp and being constantly wet through. In the unfinished, simple stone barracks, hastily constructed in the early days of Birkenau, the death rate constantly rose. Even those who had hitherto shown some powers of resistance now declined rapidly in numbers day by day. Extra rations were of no avail; they swallowed everything they could lay their hands on, but their hunger was never satisfied.
49
Approximately 10,000 Russian prisoners of war were moved from Lamsdorf (Stalag VIII B) to Auschwitz early in the October of 1941. They were originally put into nine blocks, stone buildings and barracks, of Auschwitz I, which were separated by wire from the remainder of the base camp. By February 1942 most of the Russian prisoners of war had died of typhus, undernourishment, and various ailments. Approximately 1,500 then remained alive, and these were moved to the new camp being built at Birkenau (Auschwitz II).