Daily Life in Auschwitz-BirkenauDr. Na’ama Shik

The international School for Holocaust Studies

Auschwitz IAuschwitz II – BirkenauAuschwitz III – Buna-Monowitz+ More then 40 sub-camps

• Concentration Camp

• Concentration Camp + Work Camp

• Concentration Camp + Work Camp + Extermination Camp

Birkenau and the other components of the Auschwitz complex combined in a single

place and time the functions of concentration camps like Mauthausen or Dachau with those

of direct extermination centers like Treblinka or Bełżec.

It represented a new category of Nazi camp, intended to carry out the economic and

exterminationist tasks of the Nazi state simultaneously and in the most efficient manner possible.

The Auschwitz Album

Auschwitz I: Stammlager:Main Dates1940

• 27 April – Following a number of inspections at various sites, Heinrich Himmler, Commander of the SS, gives out the order to establish a concentration camp in the former artillery barracks in Oświęcim, known at the time as Auschwitz.• 14 June – German authorities direct the first transport of political prisoners to Auschwitz – 728 Poles, including a small group of Polish Jews. This day is recognized as the day the camp started functioning. In the period 1940-1945 about 405,000 prisoners are registered at the camp, of which 270,000 were men.

• 19 June – First relocation of local people in order to prevent them from witnessing the crimes, contacting prisoners and helping them escape. The next waves of relocation were connected with plans to develop Auschwitz. In total, the Germans moved at least 5,000 Poles from Oświęcim and its nearby villages. In addition, they deported to nearby ghettos the entire Jewish population of Oświęcim(approx. 7,000). Eight villages are destroyed and more than a hundred buildings demolished, located in Oświęcim and the direct vicinity of the camp. • Autumn – Polish resistance informs the Polish Government in exile in London about the camp.

Auschwitz II – Birkenau:Main Dates:1941

• 1 March – Commander of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, pays his first inspection visit to Auschwitz.

His gives out orders to expand the camp and to supply IG Farbenindustrie with 10,000 prisoners to build

industrial plants.

• 6 June – First transport of Czech political prisoners. The start of deportation to Auschwitz of

non-Polish prisoners.

• 3 September – First mass murder of people with the use of Cyclone B. About 600 Soviet and

250 Polish prisoners die.

• Autumn – Camp authorities start operating the first gas chamber in Auschwitz I.

• October – Establishment of a Soviet POWs camp in Auschwitz I - 10,000 POW’s - In that same month, they

began being marched every day to the construction site in the village of Brzezinka (Until January

1942 – they were all dead)

• Work starts on building the second part of the camp, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, in place of the

Demolished village of Brzezinka.

Turning Point – Late 1941 – Early 1942

In reality, the camp never served its original function. While construction was still underway, in February 1942 at the latest, the Germans decided to change the nature of the camp and make it an integral part of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

This decision would seem to have been made for two reasons:First place, the collapse of the German drive on Moscow and the entry into the war of the USA, with its vast economic and military potential, radically altered the German strategic situationin political, economic, and military terms. This situation compelled the leaders of the Third Reich to begin treating the POWs as a labor resource, and to exploit them more widely in German industry – mainly in Industry armament. The Birkenau camp did not meet these conditions, sincethere were no industrial facilities in the Oświęcim area where the POWs could be employed. Because of this change in policy towards Soviet POWs, the German leadership no longer directedincoming transports from the front to Birkenau, distributing them instead to POW camps and their labor details, such as the POW camp in Cieszyn, which supplied POWs to plants in Upper Silesia.

Second place, the decision to send mass transports of Jews to the concentration camps in order to exploit them in the German war economy, and the designation of Auschwitz as one of the centers for their extermination as well as a distribution point for Jewish labor resources, meant that quarters had to be prepared in which they could be held temporarily. The Birkenau camp was under construction, and, since it was no longer to be used as a POW camp, this must have seemed like the best solution to the problem. Auschwitz II, in turn, was above all a center for the extermination of Jews brought there to be killed.

Auschwitz II – Birkenau: Main Dates: 1942

1 March – Auschwitz II-Birkenau starts functioning. The first of the camps to be founded inside

Birkenau, in March 1942, was the men’s camp for prisoners of various nationalities.

Until July 1943, it was located in sector BIb.

20 March - Start of mass extermination of Jews in the gas chambers. (“Bunker I” – “Red House”)

26 March – First 2,000 women arrive in Auschwitz (out of about 130,000 registered in the

camp to the end of its existence).

March-June - Start of deportation to Auschwitz of Jews from France and Belgium

March-June – Start-up of temporary gas chambers alongside Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

Spring – So-called Judenrampe, located between Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau

starts functioning.

The women’s camp opened in August 1942. Located in sector BIa

May – Start of deportation to Auschwitz of 300,000 Jews from Poland and 23,000 Jews

from Germany and Austria.

July – Start of deportation to Auschwitz of 60,000 Jews from Holland.

The construction of a complex of four gigantic gas chambers and crematoria began in mid-1942.

• Jews

• Poles

• Sinti and Roma

• Soviet POWs

• Jehovah’s Witnesses

• Other ethnic groups: Czechs; Byelorussians; Germans; French; Russians;

Yugoslavians; Ukrainians; and other nationalities: There were prisoners in Auschwitz

from almost every country in Europe, and even some non-Europeans.

Numbers of murdered people in the camp

• Jews: 1.2-1.3 million

• Poles: 80-70 thousands

• Sinti and Roma : 23-25 thousands

•Soviet POWs: 15 thousands

•Jehovah’s Witnesses

•Homosexuals:

•Other ethnic groups: Germans, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Yugoslav

•Registered prisoners: 405,000

Countries, Ghettos and Camps from Whom Jews were deported to Auschwitz

“People arrive. They look through the crowd of those whoare waiting, those who await them. They kiss them and saythe trip exhausted them. People leave. They say good-bye to those who are not leaving and hug the children…But there is a station where those who arrive are those who are leaving, a station where those who arrive have never arrived, where those who have left never came back…And when they arrive They believe they have arrivedIn HellPossibly. And yet they did not believe it.They had no idea you could take a train to Hell but since they were there they got their courage up and got ready to face what was comingTogether with their children, their wives and their old parents with their family memories, and family papers.They expect the worst – they do not expect the unthinkable…”(Charlotte Delbo)

Selection

“When we arrived in Auschwitz,

we were already numb: the

bones, the legs were not moving

anymore. Two men in striped

uniforms, because they heard

us speaking Ladino, they told us

in Ladino, 'We are Greeks from Saloniki.

Give the children to the old people,' they told us. Again, we didn't [understand]

what this meant. How can you understand, 'Give the children to the old people?' And then

they were afraid to talk to us and that's all, 'Give the children to the old people.'"

(Laura Varon)

Johann Paul Kremer

Johann Paul Kremer, was born in 1883, Germany. He had three Doctor degrees: MD and two PhD. He joined the Nazi party in July 1932, and became an SS member in 1935. In August 29th, 1942, he appointed to be a doctor in Auschwitz, where he stayed three month. He then was send back toMünster university were he stayed until the war ended. Couth by the British who also find his diary. He was sent to Krakow for the first Auschwitz trial in 1947 and sentence to death. He was saved from death because of his age and was imprisoned 10 years in Poland. After his relies in January 1958, he came back to Germany and began to present himself as victim. This raise public attention and eventually he was trial again and sentenced to 10 more years. But, the Germans took of the years he served in the Polish prison, so he was sent free. He died as a free man in January 1965.

Three days later he perform selection in the women camp:"September 5, 1942: At noon was present at special action in the women's camp (Moslems) – the most horrible of all horrors […] Because of the special ration that comes with it, consisting of a liter of liquor, five cigarettes, 100 grams of sausage, and bread, the men are eager for such operations."

The day after he described his superb dinner and another selection that was performed immediately after: "September 6, 1942: Today an excellent Sunday dinner: tomato soup, one half chicken with potatoes and red cabbage, dessert and magnificent vanilla ice-cream […] In the evening at 8 o'clock attended another special action outdoors."

This time he also attended the murder itself: "September 6, 1942: […] 1,013 Jewish men, women, and children arrive from Drancy […] 16 men and 38 women are admitted to the camp as prisoners […] If one assumes that the Schmelt Organization took about 200 men, about 759 people die in the gas chambers of Birkenau. Dr. Kremer is present at the gassing.“

(J. P. Kremer, "Diary of Johann Paul Kremer ", in KL Auschwitz Seen by the SS, Oświęcim, 2003.)

The Women Camp

• From the end of March until mid-August 1942, a total of 17,000 women, the majority of them Jewish,

were brought to Auschwitz.

• In mid-August 1942 the women camp transfer to Birkenau (probably around 5,000 died Before).

• About 131,000 female prisoners were registered and given serial numbers over the

history of the women’s camp:

1942: 28,000

1943: 56,000

1944: 47,000

• Nationalities:

The overwhelming majority of women registered in the camp were Jewish:

Jewish women: 82,000

Polish women: 31,000

Sinti and Roma: 11,000

Russians and Germans (and others): 6,000

• The evacuation of the camp: 18,672 women left with the last death march: More then 8,000 died on

the way. Many of them dead after they arrived to other camps.

• About 4,000 women were left in Auschwitz complex and were liberated by the Russian in 27.1.1945.

The Sauna

“They told us to get undressed and they shaved us. They shaved my beautiful blonde hair

and my two sister’s hair and we were standing naked before the soldiers.

For me it was a shock because I was a religious girl. I was never undressed

in front of a man and they made all sorts of dirty jokes about our bodies.

They stared at us and I was standing there shivering, naked, without a hair on my body,

exposed. I felt like an animal and I thought, “That’s the end.”

(Tova Berger)

Daily Life - Hygiene

"I want to say that even when we had free time during the war, in Auschwitz, for example, we would no t often think. One's head would be empty. Empty means nothing, there was nothing in it. Zero, there was no will, no desire for anything. If we wanted to bathe, we would not exert much effort in attempting to do it. We rarely bathed. It was glorious when we did. We did not know what a tooth brush was. There were no changes of underwear, not even one. Women missed their period. Under those circumstances, we were not saddened by this. It was even considered better that way, as there were no sanitary conditions. No bandages, no underwear. It seemed to me, and so we would tell each other, that the Germans probably put something in our food to sterilize us. They wanted, so we thought, to prevent us from bearing children. This feeling spread among all the women. When we had come from home everything was still normal, we were women in every sense, but here it had all gone wrong. Only later, when we had reached Sweden, and after treatment, did our periods return. We had lived in fear that we could not set up a family. [..] imagine conditions where a woman cannot takecare of her own hygiene. It was strangulation" (Bella Rozenblum)

Pregnancies

“We had a midwife in our block [..] and she

said ‘you have a boy’. And she took the baby.

To this day, I don’t know where the baby is. I begged her – I heard the baby crying,

and I begged her to give me the baby. I said, I don’t want to live, I want to die with my baby,

give me my baby.

I had no.. you know, I lost the strength for anything.

I can’t fight anymore, I want to die. She looked at me, sat down, and begged me to lower

my voice. She said, ‘you are so beautiful, you will find a husband, you will have children.’

and I said, I can’t live, I want to die. To this day, I don’t know where my baby is.”

(Arina B.)

“I delivered women pregnant in the eighth, seventh, sixth, fifth month,

always in a hurry, always with my five fingers, in the dark, under terrible

conditions. No one will ever know what it meant to me to destroy these

babies. After years and years of medical practice, childbirth was still to me

the most beautiful, the greatest miracle of nature. I loved those newborn

babies not as a doctor but as a mother and it was again and again my own

child whom I killed to save the life of a woman.”

(Dr. Gisella Perl)

“And so, the Germans succeeded in making murderers of even us. To this day the picture

of those murdered babies haunts me. Our own children had perished in the gas chambers

and were cremated in the Birkenau ovens, and we dispatched the lives of others before their

first voices had left their tiny lungs.”

(Olga Lengyel)

“I beg youdo somethinglearn a dance stepsomething to justify your existencesomething that gives you the rightto be dressed in your skin in your body hairlearn to walk and to laughbecause it would be too senselessafter allfor so many to have diedwhile you livedoing nothing with your life.”

(Charlotte Delbo)