UP IN SMOKE
The German
concentration camps employed a thousand-and-one lethal techniques to promote
the "final solution": hard labor; undernourishment; disease; killings
of individual prisoners by S.S. men, Kapos and others; punitive executions;
suicides induced by the arduous conditions and the depression they brought on;
shootings of prisoners attempting to escape; and inhuman "scientific"
experiments. These methods were
complemented by systematic, wholesale killings in the gas chambers.
Anyone feeling
unwell and reporting sick was admitted, supposedly, to the hospital; in fact,
he was consigned to the gas chambers.
As "rookies", we were as yet in ignorance about what became of
those taken away. Pointing to the
columns of smoke visible day and night, seasoned prisoners with assigned tasks
in the camp would tell us: "Those are the people who were taken 'to the
other side' ." Indignantly declining to believe in such a possibility, we
refused to lend credence to their words.
Only with, the passage of time, as the stench of charred corpses filled
the air day and night, did we begin to believe.
Camp veterans
pointed out a distant farmhouse as the location where people were gassed. Once again, we refused to believe them. "After all, we are in a quarantina," we sought to reassure
ourselves, "From here, we'll be sent on to a labor camp." The sole
witnesses of what went on in the gas chambers and the crematoria were the
inmates employed in their vicinity and those Germans engaged in wholesale
extermination.
A unique and
devastating eyewitness account of the death machine, with its gas chambers and
crematoria, was submitted by an S.S. officer, Captain Kurt Gerstein initially
to the Papal Nuncio in Berlin, then to a Swedish diplomat and, ultimately, to
the Nuremberg war crimes court.
Gerstein's
sister-in-law, a psychiatric patient, had been among the 60,000 mentally
disturbed Germans put to death by gas at Brandenburg, as part of Hitler's
euthanasia plan which closely foreshadowed the genocide that was soon to follow. Shocked by his sister-in-law's death,
Gerstein resolved to expose the Nazi extermination machine. To this end, he volunteered for service in
the concentration camps - "a step which called for the utmost
courage," to cite Auschwitz escapee Rudolf Vrba. Having compiled a thick file of evidence, Gerstein composed a
report which he submitted to the Papal Nuncio in Berlin. The office of the ecclesiastical dignitary
denied Gerstein entry, on the grounds that he was wearing military uniform ...
Gerstein then
approached a Swedish diplomat, who transmitted the report to Stockholm. On August 7, 1945, the Swedish embassy in
London confirmed that the report was still filed in its government's archives. Sweden's anxiety to safeguard its neutrality
had evidently outweighed the urgency of a public exposure of Nazi atrocities.
Gerstein himself,
having fallen into Allied captivity at war's end, committed suicide in his
prison cell.
This is how
Captain Gerstein recorded his impressions of the extermination camp:
"S.S.
Hauptsturmfuehrer Obermeyer ... showed me the installations. No dead were to be seen that "day, but
the smell of the whole region, even from the main road, was pestilential.
"Next to the
small station there was a large barrack marked "Cloakroom", and a
door marked "Valuables". Next
to that, a chamber with a hundred "barber's" chairs. Then carne a corridor 150 "meters long,
in the open air and with barbed wire on both sides.
"There was a
sign: "To baths and installations".
Before us we saw a house, like a bathroom, with "concrete troughs
to the right and left containing geraniums and other flowers. After climbing a small "staircase, we
carne to three garage-like rooms on each side, four by five meters in size and
1.90 "meters high. At the back
were invisible wooden doors. On the
roof was a Star of David made out of "copper. At the entrance to the building was the inscription
"Heckenholt Foundation". That
was all I "noticed on that particular afternoon.
"Next
morning, a few minutes before seven, I was informed that in ten minutes the
first train would "arrive. And
indeed a few minutes later the first train carne in from Lemberg (Lvov);
forty-five cars, "containing 6,700 persons, 1,450 of whom were already
dead on arrival. Behind the little
barbed-wire "openings were children, yellow, half scared to death, women
and men.
"The train
stopped; 200 Ukrainians, forced to do this work, opened the doors and drove all
the people "out of the coaches with leather whips. Then, through a huge loudspeaker.
instructions were given "to them to undress completely and to hand over
false teeth and glasses - some in the barracks, "others right in the open
air. Shoes were to he tied together
with a little piece of string handed to "everyone by a small Jewish boy of
four years of age; all valuables and money were to be handed in "at the
window marked "Valuables", without receipt.
"Then the
women and girls were allowed to go to the hairdresser who cut off their hair in
one or two "strokes, after which it vanished into huge potato bags,
"to be used for special submarine equipment, "doormats, etc." as
the S.S. Unterscharfuehrer on duty told me.
"Then the
march began. To the right and left,
barbed wire; behind, two dozen Ukrainians with guns. "Led by a young girl of striking beauty, they
approached. With Police Captain Wirth,
I stood right in "front of the death chambers. Completely naked, they marched by, men, women, girls, children,
"babies, even a one-legged person, all of them naked. In one corner, a strong S.S. man told the
poor "devils in a strong voice: "Nothing whatever will happen to
you. All you have to do is to breathe
"deeply; it strengthens the lungs.
This inhalation is a necessary measure against contagious "disease;
it is a very good disinfectant."
"Asked what
was to become of them, he answered: "Well, of course, the men will have to
work, "building streets and houses.
But the women do not have to. lf they wish. they can help in the house "or
the kitchen." Once more, a little hope for some of these poor people,
enough to make them march "on without
resistance to the death chambers.
Most of them, though, knew everything, the smell had "given them a
clear indication of their fate. And
then they walked up the little staircase - and behold "the picture:
Mothers with babies at their breasts, naked; lots of children of all ages,
naked too; they "hesitate, but they enter the gas chambers, most of them
without a word, pushed by the others "behind them, chased by the whips of
the S.S. men.
"A Jewess of
about forty years of age, with eyes like torches, calls down the blood of her
children on "the heads of their murderers. Five lashes in her face, dealt by the whip of Police Captain
Wirth, drive "her into the gas chamber.
Many of them said their prayers, others ask: "Who will give us
water "before our death?" Within the chamber, the S.S. press the
people closely together; Captain Wirth has "ordered: Crowd them in, as
many as possible." Naked men stand on the feet of others. 700 to 800
"crushed together in 25 square meters, in 45 cubic meters! The doors are closed!
"Meanwhile
the rest of the transport, all naked, waited.
Somebody said to me: "Naked in winter! "Enough to kill them!" The answer was: "Well,
that's just what they are here for." At that moment I "understood why
it was called the Heckenholt Foundation.
Heckenholt was the man in charge of the "diesel engine, the exhaust
gases of which were to kill these poor devils.
"S.S.
Unterscharfuchrer Heckenholt tried to set the diesel engine going, but it would
not start. "Captain Wirth came
along. It was obvious that he was afraid because I was a witness of this
"breakdown. Yes, indeed, I saw
everything and waited. Everything was
registered by my stopwatch. "50 minutes... 70 minutes ... the diesel
engine did not start!
"The people
waited in their gas chambers - in vain.
One could hear them cry.
"Just as in a "synagogue," says S. S. Sturmbahnfuehrer
Professor Doctor Plannenstiel, Professor for Public "Health at the
Universlty of Marburg/Lahn, holding his ear close to the door.
"Captain
Wirth, furious, dealt the Ukrainian who was helping Heckenholt eleven or twelve
lashes in "the face with his whip.
After two hours and forty-nine minutes - as registered by my stopwatch -
the "diesel engine started. Up to
that moment, the people in the four chambers already filled were still
"alive - four times seven hundred and fifty persons in four times
forty-five cubic meters! Another
"twenty-five minutes went by. Many
of the people, it is true, were dead by that time. One could see "that through the little window as the
electric lamp revealed for a moment the inside of the chamber. "After twenty-eight minutes, only a few
were alive. After thirty-two minutes,
all were dead.
"From the
other side, Jewish workers opened the wooden doors. In return for their terrible job, they "had been promised
their freedom and a small percentage of the valuables and the money found. The "dead were still standing like
stone statues, there having been no room for them to fall or bend over. "Though dead, the families could still
be recognized, their hands still clasped.
"It was
difficult to separate them in order to clear the chamber for the next
load. The bodies were "thrown out
blue, wet with sweat and urine, the legs covered with excrement and menstrual
blood. "Everywhere among the
others were the bodies of babies and children.
"But there is
no time! - two dozen workers were busy checking the mouths, opening them with
iron "hooks "Gold on the left, no gold on the right!" Others
checked anus and genitals to look for money, "diamonds, gold, etc. Dentists with chisels tore out gold teeth,
bridges or caps. In the center of
"everything was Captain Wirth. He
was on familiar ground here. He handed
me a large tin full of teeth "and said: "Estimate for yourself the
weight of gold! This is only from
yesterday and the day before! "And
you would not believe what we find here every day! Dollars, diamonds, gold!
But look for "yourself!"
"Then he led
me to a jeweler who was in charge of all these valuables. After that, they took me to one "of the
managers of the big stores, Kaufhaus des Westens, in Berlin, and to a little
man whom they "made play the violin.
Both were chiefs of the Jewish worker units. "He is a captain of the Royal and "Imperial Austrian
Army, and has the German Iron Cross, First Class," I was told by
"Hauptsturmbannfuehrer Obermeyer.
"The bodies
were then thrown into large ditches about 100 by 20 by 12 meters located near
the gas "chambers. After a few days
the bodies would swell up and the whole contents of the ditch would "rise
two to three meters high because of the gases which developed inside the
bodies. After a few "more days the
swelling would stop and the bodies would collapse. The next day the ditches were "filled again, and covered
with ten centimeters of sand. A little
later, I heard, they constructed grills "out of rails and burned the
bodies on them with diesel oil and gasoline in order to make them
"disappear.
"Nobody
bothered to take anything approaching an exact count of the persons
killed. Actually, not "only Jews,
but many Poles and Czechs, who, in the opinion of the Nazis, were of bad stock,
were "killed. Most of them died
anonymously. Commissions of so-called
doctors, who were actually "nothing but young S.S. men in white coats,
rode in limousines through the towns and villages of "Poland and
Czechoslovakia to select the old, tubercular and sick and have them done away
with "shortly afterwards in the death chambers. They were the Poles and Czechs of the third category, "
who
did not deserve to live because they were unable to work.
This testimony
depicts the annihilation machine in its cruder phase. Having commenced with mass executions by shooting, a method they
found inefficient, the Germans set about developing the gas chamber crematoria
complex. "Zyklon B", chosen
as the most effective poison gas, was shipped to Auschwitz from Hamburg, one of
the centers of Germany's chemical industry.
The innovative sophistication of their gas chambers gave the Germans a
capacity for killing thousands at a time.
Electric elevators hoisted the corpse from the gas chambers to the
crematorium. Here, gold teeth were
extracted, and hair shorn from the bodies of women and children, whereupon the
corpses were loaded onto trolleys - two adults and one child on each. Prisoners of the Sonderkommando would push
the loaded trolley to the crematoria, where the corpses were swiftly reduce to
ashes. The ash was buried in pits -
until August 1944 when the Red Army's counter-offensive rapidly pushed the
front line closer to the "death factory". The Germans aware of having perpetrated a terrible crime against
humanity, hastened to cover their tracks; they reopened the pits, and, after
grinding the bone residue to a fin powder, loaded the ash on trucks, to be
dumped into the river Vistula.
Most of the work
in processing the corpses of those killed was carried out by Jewish prisoners
enrolled willy-nilly into the Sonderkommando.
In the summer of 1944, they were reinforced by 19 Soviet war prisoners.
Sonderkommando
personnel were given better food and clothing, to keep them fit for their
arduous task. Nevertheless, no one took
on the assignment voluntarily. First,
because the work was atrocious - far worse than any other job available in the
camp; second, because it was common knowledge that those employed in the
Sonderkommando were not long-lived.
After keeping them in isolation from the other prisoners, the Germans,
anxious to forestall leaks about what went on in the gas chambers and
crematoria, would ultimately procure their eternal silence by killing them and
swiftly enlisting replacements.
One day, the camp
commandant arrived to pick out some 300 of the more feeble-looking of the
Sonderkommando personnel. "We are
going to transfer you to lighter work," he assured them. But they grasped
the true intention: when the Germans carne to take away the first hundred-man
group, a revolt broke out, and no. 3 crematorium was set ablaze. Seeing the flames and hearing the shouts,
the crew of no. 1 crematorium - some 150 men, including the 19 Soviet war
prisoners - likewise mutinied. They
attacked the S.S. guards and disarmed them, hurling the German officer into the
crematorium. They disconnected the
power-line of the electric fence separating them from the neighboring women's
camp, and began fleeing with their weapons.
The mutineers were headed by KAMINSKY from Poland, and JOSEF BARUCH from
Greece.
They didn't have a
chance. S.S. men from the neighboring
camps rushed after them in pursuit. In
the exchange of fire, about ten of the S. S. were killed, as were all of the 300
prisoners employed at no. 3 crematorium.
The 19 Soviet war prisoners likewise fell in the unequal engagement.
The systematic,
wholesale nature of the extermination process was known only to the Germans
engaged therein, and to the prisoners likewise required to lend a hand - the
Auschwitz Sonderkommando. Initially
numbering no more than ten men, the Sonderkommando's task was to burn the
corpses of prisoners who had died or been executed. At the time, the camp crematorium comprised only two ovens.
PHILIP MILLER, an
Auschwitz survivor who published his memoirs in Germany long after the war, was
brought to Auschwitz in May 1942, and assigned to the Sonderkommando. One day, he was cleaning up the room of the
S.S. man in charge of operating the crematorium when a messenger delivered a
telegram; the S.S. man read it and promptly left the room. Hastening to the table, Miller read the
telegram. It said: "Report immediately on state of corpses. All burnt?
Prepare for large-scale action tonight.
"
Miller grasped
instantly that the reference was to the mass annihilation of thousands of Czech
Jews shipped to Auschwltz from Theresienstadt.
They had been permitted to bring their belongings and, on arriving at
the camp, were allowed to establish schools and arrange their affairs with a
considerable measure of autonomy. The
Germans encouraged them to write to relatives and friends, to tell them all was
well. Everything possible was done to
instill the prisoners with a sense of security, so as to facilitate their
ultimate annihilation with the utmost swiftness and ease.
Any prisoner
disclosing the secrets of the extermination process was summarily sentenced to
death and executed. Risking his neck, Miller nevertheless confided the secret
to one of the leaders of the Czech group.
Miller ran the
risk in vain. "Don't sow
panic!" the Czech Jew rebuked him.
Refusing like all the rest to believe the truth, he consequently failed
to transmit Miller's revelation to the members of his community. In this unwitting manner, he ultimately
aided the Germans in leading his people to the gas chambers, and was himself
executed the following day.
With a view to
facilitating the annihilation process as far as possible, the Germans
endeavored to reassure incoming transports right up to the very last moment
before they were herded into the gas chambers.
Among the inmates of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp were several
thousand Jews of foreign nationality: Palestinian, Argentinean, Mexican and
others. Prominent among them were two
thousand Jews with United States passports, most of them hailing originally
from Warsaw, Lodz, Krakow, etc. The
Bergen-Belsen "Americans" enjoyed favorable treatment, and the
Germans promised they would be transferred to neutral Switzerland. One day in October 1943, the
"Americans" were ordered to pack all their belongings and board a
train. In place of the usual freight
wagons, the train contained passenger cars, and was guarded by a small unit of
S.S. men - a fitting escort for a train to freedom.
Instead of
crossing the border into Switzerland, however, the transport was brought to
Auschwitz. When the train halted in the
camp, the passengers were ordered to dismount without their belongings, and
form up in lines of five. Since no
selection was performed, the members of the camp labor squads deduced that the
"Americans" were being dispatched directly to the gas chambers. They were indeed driven the one mile from
the station and lined up opposite no. 1 crematorium. Here they were surrounded by numerous armed S.S. men reinforced
by dogs, and ordered into the building.
"Undress!"
the command boomed out. Broken sobs and
cries were heard but, in their terror, many of them began taking off their
clothes. Suddenly, a woman's voice rang
out, clear and defiant: "Jews!
Brothers and sisters! Don't
undress! lf we are fitted to die - let us die like human beings!" It was
the voice of the Lodz actress-dancer
REGINA ZUCKER. Electrified by her
appeal, her colleagues stopped taking off their clothing, and many who had
stripped off some of their clothes began putting them back on.
Never having
encountered such defiance hitherto, the S.S. men hastily summoned
Rapportfuchrer Schilinger, who was notorious throughout Auschwitz for his
ferocity, and for devising "sporting" exercises in whose performance
numerous prisoners died. Schilinger
appeared, flushed with anger, a pistol in his grip. He marched up to REGINA ZUCKER, who was evidently the leader of
the mutiny. Proud and erect, REGINA
faced up to him. Intending to rip off
her clothes, he stretched out a hand to the décolletage of her dress, whereupon
Regina snatched the pistol, shooting him and his deputy before turning the gun
on herself. Schilinger was killed
instantly, and his deputy was severely injured. Regina suffered mortal wounds and restored her soul to its Maker
with the Nazi's gun in her hand.
Other prisoners
told me that, after the transport had been put to death in the gas chamber, the
men of the Sonderkommando rummaged through the corpses until they found REGINA
ZUCKER's body. They gave her the ritual
cleansing required by Jewish law, and wrapped her in a white sheet; in choked
tones, one of the men chanted the "Kaddish". Her photograph, discovered in her valise,
was passed from hand to hand like a sacred relic.
At the time, most
prisoners were still in ignorance of the horrendous secret of the
extermination; accordingly, we lived in eternal hope that, if we managed to
survive another day, tomorrow might be better.