I regard a total of two and a half million as far too high. Even Auschwitz had limits to its destructive possibilities.
Figures given by former prisoners are figments of the imagination and lack any foundation.
“Action Reinhardt” was the code name given to the collection, sorting, and utilization of all articles which were acquired as the result of the transports of Jews and their extermination.
Any member of the SS who laid hands on this Jewish property was, by order of the Reichsführer SS, punished with death.
Valuables worth many millions of dollars were seized.
An immense amount of property was stolen by members of the SS and by the police, and also by prisoners, civilian employees, and railway personnel. A great deal of this still lies hidden and buried in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp area.
When the Jewish transports unloaded on arrival, their luggage was left on the platform until all the Jews had been taken to the extermination buildings or into the camp. During the early days all the luggage would then be brought by a transport detachment to the sorting office, Canada I, where it would be sorted and disinfected. The clothing of those who had been gassed in bunkers I and II or in crematoriums I to IV was also brought to the sorting office.
By 1942, Canada I could no longer keep up with the sorting. Although new huts and sheds were constantly being added and prisoners were sorting day and night, and although the number of persons employed was constantly stepped up and several trucks (often as many as twenty) were loaded daily with the items sorted out, the piles of unsorted luggage went on mounting up. So in 1942, the construction of Canada
II warehouse was begun at the west end of building sector II at Birkenau. A start was also made on the erection of extermination buildings and a bathhouse for the new arrivals. Thirty newly built huts were crammed to capacity immediately after completion, while mountains of unsorted effects piled up between them. In spite of the augmented labor gangs, it was out of the question to complete the job during the course of the individual actions, which always took from four to six weeks. Only during the longer intervals was it possible to achieve some semblance of order.
Clothing and footwear were examined for hidden valuables (although only cursorily in view of the quantities involved) and then stored or handed over to the camp to complete the inmates’ clothing. Later on, it was also sent to other camps.
A considerable part of the clothing was passed to welfare organizations for re-settlers and later for victims of air raids. Large and important munition plants received considerable quantities for their foreign workers.
Blankets and mattresses, etc. were also sent to the welfare organizations. In so far as the camp required articles of this nature they were retained to complete their inventory, but other camps also received large consignments.
Valuables were taken over by a special section of the camp command and sorted out by experts, and a similar procedure was followed with the money that was found.
The jewelry was usually of great value, particularly if its Jewish owners came from the West: precious stones worth thousands of dollars, priceless gold and platinum watches set with diamonds, rings, earrings, and necklaces of great rarity. Currency from all countries amounted to many thousands of dollars. Often tens of thousands of dollars in value, mostly in thousand-dollar notes, were found on single individuals. Every possible hiding place in their clothes and luggage and on their bodies was made use of.
When the sorting-out process that followed each major operation had been completed, the valuables and money were packed into trunks and taken by truck to the Economic Administration Head Office in Berlin and thence to the Reichsbank, where a special department dealt exclusively with items taken during actions against the Jews. Eichmann told me on one occasion that the jewelry and currency were sold in Switzerland, and that the entire Swiss jewelry market was dominated by these sales.
Ordinary watches were likewise sent in their thousands to Sachsenhausen. A large watchmaker’s shop had been set up there, which employed hundreds of prisoners and- was directly administered by Department DII (Maurer). The watches were sorted out: and repaired in the workshop, the majority being later dispatched for service use by front-line SS and army troops.
Gold from the teeth was melted into bars by the dentists in the SS hospital and forwarded monthly to the Sanitary Head Office.
Precious stones of great value were also to be found hidden in teeth that had been filled.
Hair cut from the women was sent to a firm in Bavaria to be used in the war effort.
Unserviceable clothing was sent for salvage, and useless footwear was taken to pieces and remade as far as possible, what was left over being converted into leather dust.
The treasures brought in by the Jews gave rise to unavoidable difficulties for the camp itself. It was demoralizing for the members of the SS, who were not always strong enough to resist the temptation provided by these valuables which lay within such easy reach. Not even the death penalty or a heavy prison sentence was enough to deter them.
The arrival of these Jews with their riches offered undreamed-of opportunities to the other prisoners. Most of the escapes that were made were probably connected with these circumstances. With the assistance of this easily acquired money or watches and rings, etc., anything could be arranged with the SS men or the civilian workers. Alcohol, tobacco, food, false papers, guns, and ammunition were all in the day’s work. In Birkenau the male prisoners obtained access to the women’s camp at night by bribing some of the female supervisors. This kind of thing naturally affected the whole camp discipline. Those who possessed valuables could obtain better jobs for themselves, and were able to buy the good will of the Capos and block seniors, and even arrange for a lengthy stay in the hospital where they would be given the best food. Not even the strictest supervision could alter this state of affairs. Jewish gold was a catastrophe for the camp.
In addition to Auschwitz there existed, so far as I am aware, the following extermination centers for Jews:
Culenhof, near Litzmannstadt — Engine exhaust gases
Treblinka on the Bug — Engine exhaust gases
Sobibor near Lublin — Engine exhaust gases
Belzec near Lemberg — Engine exhaust gases
Lublin (Maidenek) — Cyclon B
I myself have only seen Culenhof and Treblinka. Culenhof had ceased to be used, but in Treblinka I saw the whole operation.
The latter had several chambers, capable of holding some hundreds of people, built directly by the railroad track. The Jews, went straight into the gas chambers without undressing, by way of a platform which was the height of the cars. A motor room had been built next to the gas chambers, equipped with various engines taken from large trucks and tanks. These were started up and the exhaust gases were led by pipes into the gas chambers, thereby killing the people inside. The process was continued for half an hour until all was silent inside the rooms. In an hour’s time the gas chambers were opened up and the bodies taken out, undressed and burnt on a framework made of railroad ties.
The fires were stoked with wood, the bodies being sprayed every now and then with oil refuse. During my visit all those who had been gassed were dead. But I was told that the performance of the engines was not always uniform, so that the exhaust gases were often insufficiently strong to kill everyone in the chambers. Many of them were only rendered unconscious and had to be finished off by shooting. I heard the same story in Culenhof and I was also told by Eichmann that these defects had occurred in other places.
In Culenhof, too, the Jews sometimes broke the sides of the trucks in an attempt to escape.