Subject: HOLOCAUST FAQ: Auschwitz-Birkenau: A Layman's Guide - Parts 1 and 2 Archive-name: holocaust/auschwitz/part01 Last-modified: 1993/02/25 Auschwitz: A Layman's Guide to Auschwitz-Birkenau 1.0 Introduction & Editorial Notes............................. 1 1.1 Copyright Notice......................................... 2 1.2 Geographic Description................................... 2 2.0 Gas Chambers............................................... 2 2.1 Krema I.................................................. 2 2.2 Krema II, III, IV, and V................................. 4 2.3 Zyklon B................................................. 4 3.0 Crematoria................................................. 7 4.0 Compiling the estmates on numbers exterminated............. 9 4.1 How many people died at Auschwitz?.......................10 5.0 Administration.............................[See Part Two]..12 5.1 Command Staff............................................12 5.2 Medical Staff............................................13 5.3 Selection................................................13 5.4 Tattooing................................................14 5.5 Medical Experimentation..................................14 5.5.1 Clauberg...............................................15 5.5.2 Mandel.................................................15 5.5.3 Mengele................................................15 5.5.4 Oberhauser.............................................16 5.5.5 Schumann...............................................16 6.0 Research Sources & Other Useful Appendices.................16 6.1 Recommended Reading......................................17 6.2 Abbreviations Used in Citations..........................18 6.3 Glossary.................................................18 6.4 Works Cited..............................................19 1.0 Introduction & Editorial Notes A recent newspaper article (Foner - see below) presents a series of lies and distortions regarding events at the Auschwitz concentration camp as historical fact. The article illustrated the increasing effort on the part of world-wide neo-Nazi political organizations to deny that the collective events commonly known as the Holocaust did occured. Conot addressed the need for a continuing effort to combat such material in his introduction (Justice at Nuremberg): Speaking to the Nuremberg tribunal in his opening address, "Justice Jackson remarked; `What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners represent sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust.' These influences, in fact, have regenerated like a poisonous week. Anti-Semitism and the euphemistic catchwords that led to `the Final Solution of the Jewish Question' have reappeared hand in hand. A world-wide cult has arisen claiming that the Holocaust never happened. A hundred books, booklets, and pamphlets have been printed alleging that the slaughter was imaginary or exaggerated, and is but a Jewish invention. All of this might be dismissed as the frustrated thrashing about of a radical, irrational fringe were it not for the haunting parallels to the pre-Hitler era, and the continuing employment of Nazi propaganda methodology. A leader of the French neo-Nazis, for example, asserts that those Jews who died had merely been victims of the wartime food shortage. The Nazis had, in fact, originally planned to starve the Jews to death, allocating 186 calories per capita daily for their sustenance, but had abandoned the scheme for more direct methods after the ensuing epidemics had decimated not only the Jews but threatened to spread to the relatively well-fed German population. Similar in nature is the assertion that Zyklon B gas was employed only as a disinfectant at Auschwitz. This had been the case until the fall of 1941, when an enterprising SS officer had concluded that if Zyklon B killed lice it could kill people just as well. Thereafter, the gas had been used, first to murder thousands of Soviet prisoners of war, and then hundreds of thousands of Jews - nearly all of them women, children, and old people unfit for `extermination through work.' Hitler's dictum that `the magnitude of a lie always contains a certain factor of credibility, since the great masses of the people ... more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a little one' has once more come into vogue. The most effective means to combat such distortions is to make the facts accessibile, and, with them, expose the statements for what they are. At Nuremberg, General Telford Taylor, the prosecutor of more war criminals than any other man, said: `We cannot here make history over again. But we can see that it is written true.' (Conot, xii-xiii) This article is presented in that spirit, and in lasting memory of those who were ruthlessly destroyed during the Holocaust. It is the result of the combined effort of many, and contains data from myriad sources. I would like to acknowledge the contributions from Danny Keren (dzk@cs.brown.edu) in particular, and the subscribers to the Holocaust Research Information List in general. Without their contributions, this document could not have been written. The appearance of a quotation mark within a proper name indicates that the previous letter should be read as an umlaut, although some quoted material appends a trailing 'e' instead. (I.e. Hoess and Hoess reference the same name.) Documents cited in this work which are available from our listserver are noted in the form (Request ). In order to obtain any document in this group, send a message to listserv@oneb.almanac.bc.ca and include the command GET , where is the actual archive, and is the given filename. Example: You read (Request eichmann eichmann.005), and you send: GET EICHMANN EICHMANN.005 to retrieve the cited file. 1.1 Copyright This post, as a collection of information, is Copyright 1993 Ken McVay, as a work of literature. Distribution by any electronic means is granted with the understanding that the article not be altered in any way. Permission to distribute in printed form must be obtained in writing. The removal of this copyright notice is forbidden. 1.2 Geographic Location AUSCHWITZ: (Polish: Oswiecim) Located approximately 60km (37mi) west of Krakow, in Eastern Upper Silesia, which was annexed to Nazi Germany following the defeat of Poland, in September, 1939. Site of Nazi death camp. The first camp was built shortly after Poland's defeat, in a suburb of Oswiecim (Zalsole), and held about 10,000 prisoners. The second site, known as Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, was built 3km from the original camp, in March of 1941. 2.0 Gas Chambers "There was a sign 'to disinfection'. He said 'you see, they are bringing children now'. They opened the door, threw the children in and closed the door. There was a terrible cry. A member of the SS climbed on the roof. The people went on crying for about ten minutes. Then the prisoners opened the doors. Everything was in disorder and contorted. Heat was given off. the bodies were loaded on a rough wagon and taken to a ditch. The next batch were already undressing in the huts. After that I didn't look at my wife for four weeks." (From the testimony of SS private Boeck (Langbein, quoted in Pressac, 181)) 2.1 Krema I - The Experimental Gas Chamber David Cole has produced a videotape which filmed the director of the Auschwitz State Museum admits that the gas-chamber known as "Krema I" was constructed after the war ended, on the direct order of Stalin. Foner (Foner, Samuel P. "Major Historical Fact Uncovered" SPOTLIGHT Vol. XIX, Number 2, January 11, 1993) tells us: The videotape on which Piper makes his revelations was taken in mid-1992 by a young Jewish investigator, David Cole. It has just been released, on January 1, 1993, although Cole announced his project at the 11th International Revisionist Conference at Irvine, California last October. The small gas chamber of Krema I was used for gassing for a short time, and then converted into an air-raid shelter; after the war, it was reconstructed to look as it did when it was used for gassing. This is one of the testimonies about gassing in Krema I: Testimony of SS-Unterscharfuehrer Pery Broad, describing gassing in Krema I in Auschwitz (Museum, 176) ".... The `disinfectors' were at work. One of them was SS-Unterscharfuehrer Teuer, decorated with the Cross of War Merit. With a chisel and a hammer they opened a few innocuously looking tins which bore the inscription `Cyclon, to be used against vermin. Attention, poison! to be opened by trained personnel only!'. The tins were filled to the brim with blue granules the size of peas. Immediately after opening the tins, their contents was thrown into the holes which were then quickly covered. Meanwhile Grabner gave a sign to the driver of a lorry, which had stopped close to the crematorium. The driver started the motor and its deafening noise was louder than the death cries of the hundreds of people inside, being gassed to death." Muellers eyewitness account of gassings in Krema I, in April, 1942, is recounted in Hilberg's "The Destruction of the European Jews,": The Auschwitz procedure evolved in stages. In April 1942, Slovak Jews were gassed in Crematorium I, apparently with their clothes on. Later, deportees from nearby Sosnowiec were told to undress in the yard. The victims, faced by the peremptory order to remove their clothes, men in front of women and women in front of men, became apprehensive. The SS men, shouting at them, then drove the naked men, women and children into the gas chamber. In The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Jozef Buszko (Jagiellonian University, Krakow) writes: "The first, relatively small gas chamber was built in Auschwitz I. Here the experimental gassing using Zyklon B gas first took place, on September 3, 1941. The victims were 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 other prisoners. After that experiment, the firm J. A. Topf and Sons received a contract to build much larger, permanent gas chambers connected with very large crematoria in Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the mass exterminations were mainly carried out. Altogether four such installations -- II, III, IV, and V -- were built in Birkenau." (Encyclopedia, Vol. I, 113) 2.2 Krema II, III, IV, and V - The Birkenau Gas Chambers Foner continues: "What Piper said, in effect - and on camera - was that the explosive Leuchter Report was correct: No homicidal gassings took place in the buildings designated `homicidal gas chambers' at Auschwitz." (As to the "Leuchter report", we refer you to the Leuchter Report FAQ, coming soon to alt.revisionism). Foner omits mention of the larger gas chambers of Kremas II-V, in which over a million people were murdered. Hilberg (Destruction) provides the following: At Birkenau, illusion was the rule. It was not always simple or possible, inasmuch as at least some of the deportees had observed the sign "Auschwitz" as the train passed through the railway yards, (Wiesel, 36) or had seen flames belching from the chimneys, or had smelled the strange, sickening odor of the crematoria. (Lengyel, 22) Most of them, however, like a group from Salonika, were funneled through the undressing rooms, were told to hang their clothes on hooks and remember the number, and promised food after the shower and work after the food. The unsuspecting Greek Jews, clutching soap and towels, rushed into the gas chambers. (Mueller, 80-81) Nothing was allowed to disturb this precarious synchronization. When a Jewish inmate revealed to newly arrived people what was in store for them, he was cremated alive. [Mueller, 80) Only in the case of victims who were brought in from nearby ghettos in upper Silesia (Sosnowiec and Bedzin) and who had had intimations of Auschwitz was speed alone essential. These people were told to undress quickly in their "own best interest." (Mueller, 69-71) And finally, consider these remarks, from the SS Doctor Kremer, made during a hearing held on 18 July, 1947. (Klee, 258) I remember I once took part in the gassing of one of these groups of women [from the women's camp in Auschwitz]. I cannot say how big the group was. when I got close to the bunker I saw them sitting on the ground. They were still clothed. As they were wearing worn-out camp clothing they were not left in the undressing hut but made to undress in the open air. I concluded from the behavior of these women that they had no doubt what fate awaited them, as they begged and sobbed to the SS men to spare them their lives. However, they were herded into the gas chambers and gassed. As an anatomist I have seen a lot of terrible things: I had had a lot of experience with dead bodies, and yet what I saw that day was like nothing I had ever seen before. Still completely shocked by what I had seen I wrote on my diary on 5 September 1942: "The most dreadful of horrors. Hauptscharfuherer Thilo was right when he said to me today that this is the 'anus mundi', the anal orifice of the world". I used this image because I could not imagine anything more disgusting and horrific. 2.3 Zyklon B "Two German firms, Tesch/Stabenow and Degesch, produced Cyclone B gas after they acquired the patent from Farben. Tesch supplied two tons a month, and Degesch three quarters of a ton. The firms that produced the gas already had extensive experience in fumigation. "In short, this industry used very powerful gases to exterminate rodents and insects in enclosed spaces; that it should now have become involved in an operation to kill off Jews by the hundreds of thousands is not mere accident." (Hilberg, Commandant, 567) After the war the directors of the firms insisted that they had sold their products for fumigation purposes and did not know they were being used on humans. But the prosecutors found letters from Tesch not only offering to supply the gas crystals but also advising how to use the ventilating and heating equipment. Hoess testified that the Tesch directors could not help but know of the use for their product because they sold him enough to annihilate two million people. Two Tesch partners were sentenced to death in 1946 and hanged. The director of Degesch recieved five years in prison." (Feig) From the statement of Hans Stark, registrar of new arrivals, Auschwitz (Klee, 255): At another, later gassing -- also in autumn 1941 -- Grabner* ordered me to pour Zyklon B into the opening because only one medical orderly had shown up. During a gassing Zyklon B had to be poured through both openings of the gas-chamber room at the same time. This gassing was also a transport of 200-250 Jews, once again men, women and children. As the Zyklon B -- as already mentioned -- was in granular form, it trickled down over the people as it was being poured in. They then started to cry out terribly for they now knew what was happening to them. I did not look through the opening because it had to be closed as soon as the Zyklon B had been poured in. After a few minutes there was silence. After some time had passed, it may have been ten to fifteen minutes, the gas chamber was opened. The dead lay higgledy-piggedly all over the place. It was a dreadful sight. * Maximillian Grabner, Head of Political Department, Auschwitz Zyklon-B is a powerful insecticide which serves as a carrier for the gas Hydrocyanic acid, or HCN. It usually comes in the shape of small pellets or disks. HCN is the cause of death following the application of Zyklon-B. While interacting with iron and concrete, it creates Hydrocyanic compounds, which Leuchter admitted were found in the ruins of the gas chamber in Krematoria II. His finding was confirmed by findings of the Polish government. HCN is *extremely poisonous* to humans. It is used in execution gas chambers in the US; the first was built in Arizona in 1920. Holocaust denial often includes the claim that Germany in the 1940's could not handle the "technical difficulties" inherent in using HCN for execution - "difficulties" that were easily solved in 1920. Moreover, the Germans had a lot of experience with HCN, as it was extensively used for delousing. There were two types of gas chambers in Auschwitz: those used for delousing clothes ("delousing gas chambers") and those used for killing people on a massive scale ("extermination gas chambers"). The delousing gas chambers were a standard feature, and were left intact by the SS (the extermination gas chambers were dynamited in an effort to conceal criminal traces). Holocaust denial asserts that because more Hydrocyanic compounds were found in the delousing chambers in Auschwitz than in the ruins of the extermination gas chambers, mass murder using the gas could not have taken took place within, because the reverse would be true. HCN is much more effective on warm-blooded animals, including humans, than it is on insects. The exposure period (to HCN) is much greater in delousing operations than in homicidal gassings. This means that a much lower concentration is necessary to kill people than to get rid of lice, etc. In delousing, concentrations of up to 16,000 ppm (parts per million) are sometimes used, and exposure time can be up to 72 hours; while 300 ppm will kill people in fifteen minutes or so. Therefore, the HCN in the extermination chambers hardly had time to form compounds on the walls. While some claim that the gas would need a lot of time to kill, because it would have to spread all over the chamber, it simply is not true; the gas chambers were not that large (those in Krematoria II and III were about 210 square meters), and the Zyklon-B was dropped from four openings (still visible in the ruins of the gas chambers). Since the concentration used was higher than the lethal one, death was very swift. Furthermore, the delousing chambers are intact while the extermination chambers were blown up (a .GIF picture of the one of Krema II is available). Therefore, their walls have been exposed to the elements for the last 45 years. The ruins of the gas chamber of Krema II are covered with about 3 feet of water during certain periods of the year; HCN compounds easily dissolve in these surroundings. Nonetheless, so much gassing took place that some of the compound remained. Summarizing, the walls of the extermination gas chambers were in contact with HCN for a much shorter time then those of the delousing chambers, and for the last 45 years were exposed to surroundings which dissolve the compounds, while the delousing rooms were not. Therefore it is obvious that less traces of compounds would remain in them. This fact - that all, or most, of the compounds would vanish during 45 years of exposure - is clearly stated in the report written by the experts of the Cracow Institute of Forensic Research. Holocaust deniers once claimed that the gas chamber in Krema I was left intact, and therefore its walls were not exposed to the elements. But - as they admit themselves - the gas chamber of Krema I was used only for a short time, and than it was changed to an air-raid shelter. After the liberation of the camp, it was reconstructed to its original shape. This, and the fact that "only" about 10,000 people were murdered inside it (compared to 350,000 and 400,000 in Kremas II and III) explain why relatively small amounts of cyanide compounds remain. As for Kremas IV and V, they were completely destroyed by the SS before the Soviets liberated the camp. Finally, cyanide compounds were found on the ventilation grills of the extermination chambers, proving beyond doubt that gassing did take place inside them (see claim 4). The claim that it would have been impossible to use the gas chambers for killing, because they were too close to the furnaces, and the gas would explode, is often found in Holocaust denial literature. The concentration of HCN necessary to cause death is nearly 200 times lower than that which causes explosion. Although the SS used a concentration higher than the lethal one, it was far below that causing explosion. As a reference, one can look at "The Merck Index" and the "CRC handbook of Chemistry and Physics", or consult any manual dealing with toxicity and flammability of chemicals. For HCN, a concentration of 300 ppm (parts per million) kills humans within a few minutes, while the minimal concentration that can result in an explosion is 56,000 ppm. Another common claim is that it takes 20 hours to air a room which has been disinfected with Zyklon-B, and therefore the eyewitness accounts giving a time of 20-30 minutes from when the gassing started to when the bodies where carried out is impossible, because the people carrying out the bodies would perish. If one disinfects a building in ordinary commercial use, it should not be reentered within 20 hours. That figure, however, has no meaning in relation to the extermination chambers, because they were forcibly ventilated. Fifteen minutes were enough to replace the air. When ventilation was not used, the Sonderkommando (prisoners used as forced labor) who took the bodies out had gas masks on. The Germans had plenty of experience with gas, especially HCN, which was widely used for delousing. They knew how to work with it without getting hurt. It is absurd to use the 20 hour figure in this context, which does not assume forced ventilation and takes a huge safety factor into account. The SS didn't care much for the safety of the Sonderkommando who had to enter the gas chambers to take the corpses out. Furthermore, what makes ventilation difficult and lengthy is the presence of rugs, furniture, curtains, etc. Needless to say, these were not present in the gas chambers - there was just bare concrete, making ventilation fast and efficient. If the "20 hours ventilation period" above was true, this would mean that the corpses of people executed using cyanide gas in US gas chambers would remain tied to the chair 20 hours after they were killed... Another common claim is that the "alleged" extermination chambers are actually morgues, and that Zyklon-B was used in them as a disinfectant. This claim stems from the fact that Hydrocyanic compounds were found on the ventilation grills of the gas chambers in Krematoria II and III (the chemical analysis was carried out by Dr. Jan Robel of the Cracow Forensic Institute in December 1945, and was part of the evidence in the trial of Auschwitz commander Hoess). This proves that gassing did take place in that chamber. Zyklon-B cannot kill anaerobic bacteria - it kills only aerobic organisms. That means it would be useless for disinfecting corpses. In closing, consider the testimony of SS private Hoeblinger: (Langbein) I was detailed to the transport service and I drove the Sanka [abbreviation for Sanitatskraftwagon/medical truck] which was to carry the prisoners.... Then we drove to the gas chambers. The medical orderlies climbed a ladder, they had gas masks up there, and emptied the cans. I was able to observe the prisoners while they were undressing. It always proceeded quitely and without them suspecting anything. It happened very quickly. 3.0 Crematoria Connilyn Feig provides an overview of the operation of the crematoria (Request auschwitz auschwitz.01), and describes the process by which the stoking gangs sorted bodies into combustability catagories as the result of earlier experiments by the SS staff to reduce fuel consumption. In this effort, they had the assistance of the firm of Topf and Sons, who had built the crematoria. In essence, well-nourished corpses were burned with emaciated ones in order to determine the most efficient combination. Three to four bodies were burned at a time, and different kinds of coke were used, then the results were recorded: Afterwards, all corpses were divided into the above-mentioned catagories, the criterion being the amount of coke required to reduce them to ashes. Thus it was decreed that the most economical and fuel-saving procedure would be to burn the bodies of a well-nourished man and an emaciated woman, or vice versa, together with that of a child, because, as the experiments had established, in this combination, once they had caught fire, the dead would continue to burn without any further coke being required. (Mueller, 60-61; Klarsfield, 99-100) The need for large-scale efficiency, to cope with the astounding number of corpses produced by the gas chambers, eventually led to the design and construction of new crematoria, and daily capacity rose from as low as six hundred forty eight per day (Mueller's 1942 figure) to a high of over ten thousand (Hoess, Gricksch. Request auschwitz deathcamp.03, auschwitz Gricksch.rpt, and auschwitz jahrling.may43), but, as Feig tells us, the SS eventually had to employ large pyres and pits to dispose of the mounting pile of corpses: As early as June 13, 1943, all was not well with the new installation. ... Eventually the ovens seemed to fall apart. Crematorium Four failed completely after a short time and Crematoria Five had to be shut down repeatedly. (TWC, V:624) (Between 1945 and 1962 Polish officials found five manuscripts written by Sonderkommando members before their deaths. The published manuscripts and documents relate to the specific process of extermination at Birkenau, and provide detailed descriptions of the crematoria and gas chambers.) The scientifically planned crematoria should have been able to handle the total project, but they could not. The whole complex had forty-six retorts, each with the capacity for three to five persons. The burning in a retort lasted about half an hour. It took an hour a day to clean them out. Thus it was theoretically possible to cremate about 12,000 corpses in twenty four hours or 4,380,000 a year. But the well-constructed crematoria fell far behind at a number of camps, and especially at Auschwitz in 1944. In August the total cremation reached a peak one day of 24,000, but still a bottleneck occurred. Camp authorities needed an economic and fast method of corpse disposal, so they again dug six huge pits beside Crematorium Five and reopened old pits in the wood. Thus, late in 1944, pit burning became the cheif method of corpse disposal. The pits had indentations at one end from which human fat drained off. To keep the pits burning, the stokers poured oil, alcohol, and large quantities of boiling human fat over the bodies. 4.0 Compiling Estimates of the Numbers Exterminated When the extermination camps failed to achieve their objective, the total extermination of European Jewry, by the end of 1942, Heinrich Himmler commissioned a statistical report in order to determine what 'progress' had been made. In January of 1943, Dr. Richard Korherr, a noted statistician who was outside SS circles, working with Adolf Eichmann and camp commanders, began compiling reports and figures to present to Himmler. As Breitman relates, Korherr's job was complicated by the fact that, even in a report designed for Himmler, he was not supposed to spell out the facts in black and white. It was easier to state how many Jews were still alive than what had happened to the others. To be sure, Korherr could state that through various means the Jewish population in the Reich and the Government General had diminished by 3.1 million between 1933 and 1942. In spite of his generous use of the term "evacuation," however, which Himmler seconded, to mislead those who would read the document in later years, Himmler had to correct Korherr's wording in one place. Where Korherr had written of the "special treatment" of the Jews, Himmler had insisted on either the "transportation of the Jews from the Eastern provinces to the Russian East" or the "sifting of the Jews through the camps." These were among the officially approved terms to camouflage the realities of the Final Solution. (Korherr's reports in NA RG 238, NO-5193 and 5194, Himmler's correction of wording in Brandt to Korherr, 20 April 1943. NA RG 238, NO-5196. Raul Hillberg, The Destruction of the European Jews {Chicago, 1961}, 2nd expanded ed., 3 vols. {New York, 1985},I, 322-23, reviews the whole range of Nazi terms that veiled the realities.) (Breitman, 242) Note that Himmler was successful in his attempts to camouflage reality to the degree that present-day Holocaust denial insists that Jews were simply "relocated to the East," and not exterminated. Eichmann's interrogation regarding this issue supports Fleming's total of about five million (Request eichmann eichmann.005), while figures compiled by Yehuda Bauer, of Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, are somewhat higher (request holocaust program.07) . Bauer's figures are in the right-most column: German Reich (boundaries of 1938) 130,000 125,000 Austria 58,000 65,000 Belgium 26,000 Belgium & Luxembourg 24,700 Bulgaria 7,000 Czechoslovakia (boundaries of 1938) 245,000 277,000 France 64,000 83,000 Greece 58,000 65,000 Hungary & Carpatho-Ukraine 300,000 402,000* Italy 8,000 7,500* Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia 200,000 Luxembourg 3,000 Netherlands 101,800 106,000 Norway 677 760 Poland (boundaries of 1939) 2,700,000 Polish-Soviet area 4,565,000 Romania (boundaries prior to 1940) 220,000 40,000 USSR (boundaries prior to 1939) 800,000 Yugoslavia 54,000 60,000* ----------------- 4,975,477 5,820,960 * May be underestimated 4.1 How many people died at Auschwitz? Foner's Spotlight article makes the following assertions regarding the number of people killed at the camp: Like most Americans, since his youth Cole had been instructed in the "irrefutable fact" that homicidal gassings had taken place at Auschwitz. The number of those so executed - also declared irrefutable - was 4.1 million. Then came the Leuchter Report in 1988. This was followed by a "re-evaluation" of the total deaths at Auschwitz (down to 1.1 million). As a budding historian - and a Jew - Cole was intrigued. Previous to 1992, anyone who publicly doubted the 4.1 million "gassing" deaths at Auschwitz was labeled an anti-Semite, neo-nazi skinhead (at the very least). Quietly, because of revisionist findings, the official figure was lowered to 1.1 million. No mention of that missing 3 million. Foner's assertions are simply not true, although it is correct to note that the Polish government did claim that four million people were exterminated at Auschwitz, historians (Feig, Reitlinger, Hilberg, et al) have never supported that figure. Consider the estimates provided by Buszko at the end of his article on Auschwitz, which appeared in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust: Of the 405,000 registered prisoners, 65,000 survived Of the 16,000 Soviet POW's, 96 survived Various estimates suggest 1.6 million were murdered Buszko's article, and the above estimates, appeared in the 1990 edition of the Encyclopedia, which clearly puts the lie to Foner's comment that "anyone who publicly doubted the 4.1 million ..." figure was "...labeled an anti-Semite..." Buszko is not only a Jewish historian, but Polish as well. Feig also provides evidence of the false nature of Foner's comment when she notes that `Hoess testified that the Tesch directors could not help but know of the use for their product because they sold him enough to annihilate two million people.' Feig's book was published in 1981. According to Snyder, Adolf Eichmann reported to Himmler, in 1944, that four million had been killed in the camps, and another million had been shot or killed by mobile units. (Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. 1989) Eichmann's report, which referenced _all_ the camps (most of which were in Poland), may have been the source of the Polish government's figures. (Snyder is a Professor of History at the City College and the City University of New York.) During the war crimes trials, Hoess was was asked if it was true that he had no exact numbers because he had been forbidden to compile them, and he agreed. He also agreed that Adolf Eichmann had told him that that more than two million people had been exterminated there. (von Lang, 120) The Institut Fuer Zeitgeschicthe, Munich, provided the following capsulated paragraph about Auschwitz a March, 1992, letter of inquiry. (Request auschwitz IFZ.report) The extermination camp in Birkenau, established in the second half of 1941, was joined to the concentration camp Auschwitz, existing since May 1940. From January 1942 on in five gas chambers and from the end of June 1943 in four additional large gassing-rooms gassings with Zyklon B have been undertaken. Up until November 1944 more than one million Jews and at least 4000 gypsies have been murdered by gas. (IFZ) While it is admittedly difficult to compile exact figures, since the Nazis did not maintain registration records for those who were to be exterminated immediately upon arrival at Auschwitz, it seems accurate to assert that the number of Jews killed fell somewhere between one and one-point-six million. Jews were not the only victims of the Auschwitz killing machine - estimates that from 200,000 (Gilbert, 22, Kendrick, 184) to 500,000 (Bubenickova, 190, Yoors, 34) Gypsies were ultimately destroyed are noted by Laska. Himmler signed the decree sending all of them to Auschwitz in 1942. (Request auschwitz gypsies.01, auschwitz gypsies.02, auschwitz gypsies.03) The Leuchter Report, which Foner alludes to extensively in his Spotlight article, has been thoroughly refuted. For detailed information about the report, see the Leuchter FAQ, published regularly in this newsgroup, and available upon request from listserv@oneb.almanac.bc.ca. (Request leuchter leuchter.faq) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5.0 Administration...........................................12 5.1 Command Staff............................................12 5.2 Medical Staff............................................13 5.3 Selection................................................13 5.4 Tattooing................................................14 5.5 Medical Experimentation..................................14 5.5.1 Clauberg...............................................15 5.5.2 Mandel.................................................15 5.5.3 Mengele................................................15 5.5.4 Oberhauser.............................................16 5.5.5 Schumann...............................................16 6.0 Research Sources & Other Useful Appendices...............16 6.1 Recommended Reading......................................17 6.2 Abbreviations Used in Citations..........................18 6.3 Glossary.................................................18 6.4 Works Cited..............................................19 5.0 Administration 5.1 Command Staff Grabner, Maximillian. Head of Political Department Hoess, Rudolf Franz (1900-1947). Hoess joined the Nazi party in 1922. In 1923, he was implicated in a murder and imprisoned to serve a life sentence. He was released as a result of Hitler's general amnesty, in 1928. After training during service at Dachau and Sachenhausen, he was rewarded for his loyalty with a promotion to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmfuehrer and the commandant's job at Auschwitz, where he remained until December of 1943, when he was promoted to chief of the Central Administration for Camps. (Sachar. Request auschwitz hoess.01, auschwitz hoess.02, auschwitz hoess.03) According to Snyder, " He performed his job so well that he was commended in a 1944 SS report that called him "a true pioneer in this area because of his new ideas and educational methods." Hoess was captured in May, 1945, and was a key witness at Nuremberg (Kaltenbrunner, I.G. Farben et al). During this period, he wrote his autobiography, "Commandant of Auschwitz: Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess." (Cleveland: World Publishing, 1959) His statement is available in the original German text, and in English translation. (Request hoess.statemen) According to Sachar, he, "...took pride in his exemplary family life, the devotion to his children and his pets. He recalled, wistfully, how he had been obliged to tear himself away from a Christmas gathering to attend to duties at the gas chambers. The daily death quota then was still a mere 1,500, but he was eager to make sure it was met. When one of his lieutenants was condemned to death for his part in the Auschwitz murders, Hoess and his family lamented `Such a compassionate man, too. When his pet canary died, he tenderly put the body in a small box, covered it with a rose, and buried it under a rose bush in the garden.'(Hoess, 25)(Sachar) During his trial, the evidence "...repeated...what he had written..." in his autobiography. "He described, with the dispassion of a robot, how he had gradually stepped up executions, beginning with a few hundred a day and then, as methods were perfected, rising to 1,200. By mid-1942, facilities had been sufficiently enlarged to dispatch 1,500 people over a twenty-four-hour period for the smaller ovens, and up to 2,500 for the larger ones. By 1943, ... a new daily peak of 12,000 was achieved. Hoess described the final routines of the extermination process. These were assigned to squads of Jewish prisoners, the Sondercommandos. They marched the victims to the gas chambers, helped to undress them, removed the corpses after the gassing, extracted gold from their teeth and rings from their fingers, searched the orifices of their bodies for hidden jewelry, cut off the hair of the women, and then carted the bodies to the crematoria. Usually after several weeks of such service they were executed, first because they were Jews but also so that they would not be witnesses if ever testimony were required." (Sachar) Hoess was tried in Warsaw, in March, 1947, and condemned to death. (Hanged on April 7 at Auschwitz.) Kramer, Josef. Commandant at Birkenau. Mandel, Maria. Head of the women's camp at Auschwitz after serving at Ravensbruck. 5.2 Medical Staff Clauberg, Karl. Pursued his experiments on live specimens in Auschwitz. Involved in sterilization projects there. (Laska, 222) Dr. Wladyslav Dering. Dering was a Polish prisoner Gebhardt, Karl. Involved in vivisection projects at both Ravensbruck and Auschwitz. Shot as war criminal in 1948. (Laska, 225) Kremer, Johannes Paul. Vivisection. Hanged. (Klee, 258) Mengele, Josef (1911- ?). Mengele was appointed chief doctor at Auschwitz by Himmler in 1943. He joined Drs. Klein, Koenig, and Thilon in running the selection process. Bibliography: Gerald L. Posner and John Ware, "Mengele: The Complete Story", New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1986.(Snyder) Mengele is believed dead, but his fate remains unknown. Oberhauser, Herta. Schumann, Horst. 5.3 Selection In a report entitled "Resettlement of Jews," SS-Sturmbannfuehrer Gricksch provided the following information for SS-Col. von Herff and Reichsfuehrer-SS Himmler, after inspection between the 14th. and 16th. of May, 1943. (Fleming, 142) The Auschwitz camp plays a special role in the resolution of the Jewish question. The most advance methods permit the execution of the Fuehrer-order in the shortest possible time and without arousing much attention. The so-called "resettlement action" runs the following course: The Jews arrive in special trains (freight cars) toward evening and are driven on special tracks to areas of the camp specifically set aside for this purpose. There the Jews are unloaded and examined for their fitness to work by a team of doctors, in the presence of the camp commandant and several SS officers. At this point anyone who can somehow be incorporated into the work program is put in a special camp. The curably ill are sent straight to a medical camp and are restored to health through a special diet. The basic principle behind everything is: conserve all manpower for work. The previous type of "resettlement action" has been thoroughly rejected, since it is too costly to destroy precious work energy on a continual basis. The report then describes the fate of those unlucky enough to have been considered incurably ill or unfit for slave labour, and provides some details with regard to the killing process. (Request auschwitz Gricksch.rpt). The results of this "resettlement action" to date: 500,000 Jews. Current capacity of the "resettlement action" ovens: 10,000 in 24 hours. 5.4 Tattooing Buszko (see above), writing in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, explains why some prisoners were tattooed, while others were not: Prisoners were registered and received numbers tattooed on their left arm upon leaving the quarantine in Birkenau for forced labor in Auschwitz or in one of the subcamps. The same procedure applied to those prisoners who were directed straight to Auschwitz I: 405,000 prisoners were registered in this way. [Ed. Note: Buszko later notes that only 65,000 of those so registered and tattooed survived. knm] Not included in any form of registration were the vast majority of the Auschwitz victims, those men and women who, upon arrival in Auschwitz II, were led to the gas chambers and killed there immediately. Also not included in the registration were those prisoners who were sent to work in other concentration camps not belonging to the Auschwitz system. ... Still another group of unregistered prisoners were those who were designated for execution after a short stay in the camp. That group consisted mainly of hostages, Soviet army officers, and partisans." (Encyclopedia, Vol. I, 110-111) 5.5 Medical Experimentation Several of the seventy or more medical-research projects conducted by the Nazis between the fall of 1939 and spring of 1945 were conducted at Auschwitz. These projects involved experiments conducted with human beings against their will, and at least seven thousand were so treated, based upon existing documents and personal testimonies; there were undoubtedly many more for which no documentation or personal testimony remains. About two hundred German medical doctors were involved in the concentration camp experiments, conducting 'Selektionen,' medical services, and research. They maintained close professional ties with the German medical establishment, and used the universities and research institutes in Germany and Austria in their work. Dr. Ernst Robert Grawitz, SS Chief Medical Officer, received all requests for authority to perform experimentation, and obtained two opinions before passing them to Himmler with his recommendation. Grawitz used Dr. Karl Gebhardt, Himmler's personal physician, for one optinion, and Richard Gluecks and Arthur Nebe for the other. He then passed his report to Himmler, who took great interest in the experiments and often interfered with them. There were three broad classes of experiments. The German Air Force conducted experiments at Dachau (and elsewhere) dealing with survival and rescue, including research into the effects of high altitude, freezing temperatures, and drinking seawater. Medical treatment constituted a second class, and involved research into the treatment of battle injuries, gas attacks, and the formulation of immunization compounds to treat contageous and epidemic diseases. Finally, there were racial experiments, including research into dwarfs and twins, serological research, and skeletal examination. It ai this class of horrors that returns us to Auschwitz. (Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, 957-958) 5.5.1 Clauberg Professor Carl Clauberg performed experiments into sterilization at both Auschwitz and Ravensbrueck. This was done on Hitler's initiative, as he had been convinced by several doctors that mass sterilization could provide a powerful weapon against German's enemies during total war. Clauberg injected chemical substances into wombs during normal gynochological examinations. Thousands of Jewish and Gypsy women were subjected to this treatment. Clauberg sought to answer Himmler's query about how long it would take to sterilize one thousand women, and eventually informed him that, using methods he developed, a staff of one doctor and ten assistants could do the job in a single day. The injections totally destroyed the lining membrane of the womb and seriously damaged the ovaries of the victims, which were then removed and sent to Berlin to test the effectiveness of the method. 5.5.2 Mandel ... after Ravensbruck ... was the head of the women's camp at Auschwitz; the prisoners referred to her as `the beast.' For her share in the selections for the gas chambers and medical experiments and for her torture of countless prisoners, she was condemned to death in 1947 as a war criminal. (Laska) 5.5.3 Mengele Mengele promoted medical experimentation on inmates, especially dwarfs and twins. He is said to have supervised an operation by which two Gypsy children were sewn together to create Siamses twins; the hands of the children became badly infected where the veins had been resected. (Snyder) Cohen tells us: "The only firsthand evidence on these experiments comes from a handful of survivors and from a Jewish doctor, Miklos Nyiszli, who worked under Mengele as a pathologist. Mengele subjected his victims - twins and dwarfs aged two and above - to clinical examinations, blood tests, X rays, and anthropological measurements. In the case of the twins, he drew sketches of each twin, for comparison. He also injected his victims with various substances, dripping chemicals into their eyes (apparently in an attempt to change their color). He then killed them himself by injecting chloroform into their hearts, so as to carry out comparative pathological examinations of their internal organs. Mengele's purpose, according to Dr. Nyiszli, was to establish the genetic cause for the birth of twins, in order to facilitate the formulation of a program for doubling the birthrate of the 'Aryan' race. The experiments on twins affected 180 persons, adults and children. Mengele also carried out a large number of experiments in the field of contageous diseases, (typhoid and tuberculosis) to find out how human beings of different races withstood these diseases. He used Gypsy twins for this purpose. Mengele's experiments combined scientific (perhaps even important) research with the racist and ideological aims of the Nazi regime. which made use of government offices, scientific institutions, and concentration camps. From the scanty information available, it appears that his research differed from the other medical experiments in that the victims' death was programmed into his experiments and formed a central element in it." (Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, 964) 5.5.4 Oberhauser Dr. Herta Oberhauser killed prisoners with oil and evipan injections, removed their limbs and vital organs, rubbed ground glass and sawdust into wounds. She drew a twenty-year sentence as a war criminal, but was released in 1952 and became a family doctor at Stocksee in Germany. Her license to practice medicine was revoked in 1960. (Laska, 223) 5.5.5 Schumann Himmler, writing to SS-Oberfuehrer Brack, on August 11, 1942, expressed an interest in sterilization experiments involving the use of x-rays (Request auschwitz sterilization). In April of 1944, he received a report of the work of Dr. Horst Schumann "on the influence of X-rays on human genital glands" at Auschwitz. The report included the following statement: Previously you have asked Oberfuehrer Brack to perform this work, and you supported it by providing the adequate material in the concentration camp Auschwitz. I point especially to the second part of this work, which shows that by those means castration of males is almost impossible or requires an effort which does not pay. As I have convinced myself, operative castration requires not more than 6 to 7 minutes, and therefore can be performed more reliably and quicker than castration by X-rays. Schumann set up an X ray station at Auschwitz in 1942, in the woman's camp Bla. Here men and women were forcibly sterilized by being positioned repeatedly for several minutes between two x-ray machines, the rays aiming at their sexual organs. Most subjects died after great suffering, or were gassed immediately because the radiation burns from which they suffered rendered them unfit for work. Men's testicles were removed and sent to Breslau for histopathological examination. The frequently following ovariotomies were performed also by the Polish prisoner, Dr. Wladyslav Dering. Dering once bet with an SS man that he could perform ten ovariotomies in an afternoon, and won his bet. Some of his victims survived. Dering was declared a war criminal but eluded justice and for a time practiced medicine in British Somaliland. (Laska, 223. Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, 965) 6.0 Research Materials & Sources Vera Laska notes that there are over ten-thousand printed sources relating to Auschwitz alone, and offers this guidance for those pursuing Holocaust research: Yad Vashem Martyrs' and Heroes' Memorial Authority in Jerusalem is a depository of documents and memoirs on the Holocaust, mostly in German, Hebrew and Yiddish. It also issues the Yad Vashem Studies on the European Jewish Catastrophe and Resistance. The Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine in Paris and the Wiener Library in London are major sources of information. The Wiener Library's catalogue series published a bibliography, Persecution and Resistance Under the Nazis (London: Valentine, Mitchell, 1960). ... In the United States the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (1048 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10028) houses several collections of ghetto documents and related primary source materials. It publishes the YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science. Since 1960, Yad Vashem and the YIVO Institute have been engaged in preparing a multivolume bibliographical series on the Holocaust; one of the volumes, Jacob Robinson, ed., The Holocaust and After: Sources and Literature in English (Jerusalem: Israel University Press, 1973) is most helpful. The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (823 United Nations Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10017) supplies teaching materials at reasonable prices, for instance The Record - The Holocaust in History, 1933-1945, published in cooperation with the National Council for Social Studies in 1978. The Library of Congress and the National Archives are rich sources for researchers, containing among others the transcripts of war crime trials. This in itself is an immense documentation; for instance, the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial of twenty-three defendents alone takes up 11,538 pages in nineteen volumes. Indexes can be consulted about various concentration camps. ... In addition to the massive amount of information Laska notes, additional bibliographic sources are available through the Holocaust bibliographic files available on oneb.almanac.bc.ca and elsewhere. To obtain the most recent revision of the Almanac's bibliography, send an email request to kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca and use the word BIBLIO as the subject of your message. 6.1 Recommended Reading Suggested reading related to Auschwitz, from the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust: Friedman, P. "Crimes in the Name of Science," in "Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust." Edited by A.J. Friedman. Philadelphia, 1980 Gilbert, M. Auschwitz and the Allies. New York, 1981 Gutman, Y., and A. Saf, eds. The Nazi Concentration Camps: Structure and Aims; The Image of the Prisoner; The Jews in the Camps. Proceedings of the Fourth Yad Vashem International Historical Conference. Jerusalem, 1984 Ho"ss, R. Commandant of Auschwitz. London, 1959 Kielar, W. Anus Mundi: Fifteen Hundred Days in Auschwitz- Birkenau. New York, 1980 Kudlien, F., ed. Aerzte im Nationalsoczialismus. Cologne, 1985 Langbein, H. Auschwitz-Prozess: Eine Dokumentation. 2 Vols. Vienna, 1965 Langbein, H. Menschen in Auschwitz. Vienna, 1972 Lifton, R.J. The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychiatry of Genocide." New York, 1986 Levi, P. Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity. New York, 1981 Lukowski, J. Bibliografia obozu koncentracyjnego Oswiecim- Brzezinka. 5 vols. Warsaw, 1970 Mark, B. The Scrolls of Auschwitz. Tel Aviv, 1985 Mitscherlich, A., and F. Mielke. Doctors of Infamy: The Story of Medical Crimes. New York, 1949 Proctor, R. Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis. Cambridge, Mass., 1988 6.2 Abbreviations Used in Citations The following abbreviations may be used throughout this document: IFZ.........Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte, Munich IRR.........Investigative Repository Records NA..........United States National Archives RG 59.......NA Diplomatic Records RG 84.......Washington National Records Center, Diplomatic Post Records RG 153......Washington National Records Center, Records of the Office of the (Army) Judge Advocate RG 165......Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs, Washington National Records Center RG 208......Office of War Information Records, Washington National Records Center RG 226......Office of Strategic Services Records RG 238......War Crimes EC Series NG........Microfilm T-1139 NI........Microfilm T-301 NO Series NOKW Series PS Series RG 242......NA Record Group 242 - Captured German Records RG 319......Records of the Army Staff T...........NA Microfilm Series If you note any that are not explained above, please let me know, and I will try to run them down for you. 6.3 Glossary Einsatzgruppen: Battalion-sized, mobile, armed units of police, primarily Security Police and SD officials, which were used to attack and execute perceived enemies in conquered territories. (Brietman, 311) Einsatzkommando: Company-sized component of the Einsatzgruppen (Breitman, 311) Gauleiter: Supreme territorial or regional party authority(-ies) (The term is both singular and plural). The Nazi Party divided Germany and some annexed territories into geographical units called Gaue, headed by a Gauleiter. (Breitman, 311) General Government: The Nazi-ruled state in central and eastern Poland. Headed by Governor Hans Frank. (Breitman, 311) Final Solution: Euphemism for the extermination of European Jewry SD (Sicherheitsdienst): The SS Security Service Sonderkommandos: Division of Einsatzgruppen, generally smaller than Einsatzkommando, but also a more general term for special commando units assigned particular functions. (Breitman, 311) Military rank - here's a list from Breitman (314) which lists SS ranks and the Western military equivalent: Oberstgruppenfuehrer General Obergruppenfuehrer Lt. General Gruppenfuehrer Major General Brigadefuehrer Brigadier General Oberfuehrer between Brigadier & Colonel Standartenfuehrer Major Obersturmbannfuehrer Lt. Colonel Sturmbannfuehrer Major Hauptsturmfuehrer Captain Obersturmfuehrer 1st. Lieutenant Unterscharfuehrer Corporal Rottenfuehrer Private, First Class Sturmann Private SS-Mann no equivalent 6.4 Works Cited Breitman, Richard. The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Bubenickova, Ruzena. Tabory utrpeni a smrti. (Camps of Martyrdom and Death) Prague: Svoboda, 1969 Conot, Robert E. Justice at Nuremberg. New York: Harper and Row, 1983. ISBN 0-06-015117-X Encyclopedia - See Gutman Feig, Konnilyn G. Hitler's Death Camps. LOC D810.J4 F36, 1981 Fenelon, Fania, with Marcelle Routier. Playing For Time. New York:Athenium, 1977. ISBN 0-689-10796-X Fleming, Gerald. Hitler and the Final Solution. Berkeley, 1984 Foner, Samuel P. "Major Historical Fact Uncovered" SPOTLIGHT Vol. XIX, Number 2, January 11, 1993) Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust, Maps and Photographs. New York: Mayflower Books, 1978. Gutman, Israel, ed. in Chief, et al. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1990. ISBN 0-02- 896090-4 (set) (Referenced in this FAQ as "Encyclopedia") Hoess, Rudolf. Commandant of Auschwitz: Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess. (As quoted in Sachar) Hilberg, Raul. Commandant of Auschwitz (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1959) Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews. Holmes & Meier, 1985. See 967-976. IFZ. The Institut Fuer Zeitgeschicthe, Munich, as quoted in their letter to Dr. Keren, March, 1992 (Request auschwitz IFZ.report) Kenrick, Donald, and Grattan Puxon. Destiny of Europe's Gypsies. New York: Basic Books, 1972, as cited in Laska Klarsfield, Serge. The Holocaust and Neo-Nazi Mythomania, as quoted in Feig. Klee, Ernst, Willi Dressen, and Volker Riess, eds. `The Good Old Days' -- The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders. Forward by H. Trevor-Roper. The Free Press, A division of Macmillan, Inc, 1988, ISBN 0-02-917425-2 Langbein. Der Auschwitz Prozess. Vol. I, as quoted in Pressac. Laska, Vera, ed. Women in the Resistance and in the Holocaust: The Voices of Eyewitnesses. London: Greenwood Press, 1983. LOC 82-12018, ISBN 0-313-23457-4 Lengyel, Olga. Five Chimneys. Chicago: Ziff-Davis, 1947, as cited in Hilberg. Mueller, Filip. "Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers", as cited by both Feig and Hilberg. Museum w Oswiecimu. "KL Auschwitz seen by the SS Hoess, Broad, Kremer," 2nd. 1978 Naumann,. Auschwitz. Pressac, J. C. Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers. New York: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1989 Rogers, Perry M., ed. Aspects of Western Civilization Sachar, Abram L. The Redemption of the Unwanted. New York: St. Martin's/Marek, 1983. Snyder, Dr. Louis L. Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. (New York: Paragon House, 1989.) von Lang, Jochen, in collaboration with Claus Sibyll. Eichmann Interrogated: Transcripts from the Archives of the Israeli Police. Translated from the German by Ralph Manheim. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1983 Wiesel, Elie. Night. (New York, 1969), as cited in Hilberg. Yoors, Jan. A Journal of Survival and Resistance in World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971, as cited in Laska end.