147-667: The Auschwitz Protocols , also known as the Auschwitz Reports , and originally published as The Extermination Camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau , is a collection of three eyewitness accounts from 1943–1944 about the mass murder that was taking place inside the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland during the Second World War. The eyewitness accounts are individually known as
294-582: A German gynecologist, Carl Clauberg , and another German doctor, Horst Schumann . Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany Following the Invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War II , nearly a quarter of the entire territory of the Second Polish Republic was annexed by Nazi Germany and placed directly under the German civil administration. The rest of Nazi-occupied Poland
441-578: A car with a Red Cross symbol that carried the Zyklon B, as well as an SS doctor in case officers were poisoned by mistake. Inmates arriving at night, or who were too weak to walk, were taken by truck. Work on a new railway line and ramp (right) between sectors BI and BII in Auschwitz II, was completed in May 1944 for the arrival of Hungarian Jews between May and early July 1944. The rails led directly to
588-412: A child or infant was left without care and incidents and infant deaths soared. The supply of dairy and fat products for Polish children were just one-fifth of that for German children. Likewise, the winter brought many deaths, as Germans limited the available heating supplies to 1/4 of that available to Germans. A strict ban on collecting coal left by trucks and supply wagons on the streets by non-Germans
735-565: A finger into the water of the washbasin. Under the first is written: " So bist du rein " (like this you are clean), and under the second, " So gehst du ein " (like this you come to a bad end); and lower down, in doubtful French but in Gothic script: " La propreté, c'est la santé " [cleanliness is health]. Prisoners received half a litre of coffee substitute or a herbal tea in the morning, but no food. A second gong heralded roll call, when inmates lined up outside in rows of ten to be counted. No matter
882-606: A gas chamber in bunker 2, and a tour of the building site of Auschwitz III, the new IG Farben plant being constructed at Monowitz . Use of bunkers I and 2 stopped in spring 1943 when the new crematoria were built, although bunker 2 became operational again in May 1944 for the murder of the Hungarian Jews. Bunker I was demolished in 1943 and bunker 2 in November 1944. Plans for crematoria II and III show that both had an oven room 30 by 11.24 m (98.4 by 36.9 ft) on
1029-409: A gassing facility; the windows had been bricked up and its four rooms converted into two insulated rooms, the doors of which said " Zur Desinfektion " ("to disinfection"). A second brick cottage, the "little white house" or bunker 2, was converted and operational by June 1942. When Himmler visited the camp on 17 and 18 July 1942, he was given a demonstration of a selection of Dutch Jews, a mass-murder in
1176-591: A group of Soviet prisoners of war—took place around August 1941. By the end of that year, during what most historians regard as the first phase of the Holocaust, 500,000–800,000 Soviet Jews had been murdered in mass shootings by a combination of German Einsatzgruppen , ordinary German soldiers, and local collaborators. At the Wannsee Conference in Berlin on 20 January 1942, Reinhard Heydrich outlined
1323-549: A group of male prisoners arrived to set up an infirmary in October 1942, their first task, according to researchers from the Auschwitz Museum, was to distinguish the corpses from the women who were still alive. Gisella Perl , a Romanian-Jewish gynecologist and inmate of the women's camp, wrote in 1948: There was one latrine for thirty to thirty-two thousand women and we were permitted to use it only at certain hours of
1470-494: A joint Polish-German scholarly publication on the aspect of population changes during the war. Eberhardt estimates that the total influx from the Altreich was about 500,000 people. Duiker and Spielvogel note that up to two million Germans had been settled in pre-war Poland by 1942. Eberhardt gives a total of two million Germans present in the area of all pre-war Poland by the end of the war, 1.3 million of whom moved in during
1617-572: A letter on 12 July 1940, Höss told Glücks that the local population was "fanatically Polish, ready to undertake any sort of operation against the hated SS men". By the end of 1940, the SS had confiscated land around the camp to create a 40-square-kilometer (15 sq mi) "zone of interest" ( Interessengebiet ) patrolled by the SS, Gestapo and local police. By March 1941, 10,900 were imprisoned in the camp, most of them Poles. An inmate's first encounter with Auschwitz, if they were registered and not sent straight to
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#17327808518591764-595: A month after the invasion of Poland , Nazi Germany annexed an area of 92,500 square kilometres (35,700 sq mi) (23.7% of pre-war Poland ) with a population of about 10,000,000 people (30% of the pre-war Polish population). The remainder of the Polish territory was either annexed by the Soviet Union (201,000 km or 51.6% of pre-war Poland as per the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact ) or made into
1911-579: A near-term complete Germanization of the annexed territories, measures there differed from those implemented in the General Government. Germans and the remaining Poles and Jews were strictly segregated. In case of the Jews, this was achieved by ghettoization . The German administration classified people based on political and racial criteria with Poles and Jews being considered " untermenschen " (subhumans) as opposed to Germans who according to
2058-550: A new women's camp ( Frauenkonzentrationslager or FKL) in Auschwitz II. This consisted at first of 15 brick and 15 wooden barracks in sector ( Bauabschnitt ) BIa; it was later extended into BIb, and by October 1943 it held 32,066 women. In 1943–1944, about 11,000 women were also housed in the Gypsy family camp , as were several thousand in the Theresienstadt family camp . Conditions in the women's camp were so poor that when
2205-521: A portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust . It consisted of Auschwitz I , the main camp ( Stammlager ) in Oświęcim ; Auschwitz II-Birkenau , a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers ; Auschwitz III-Monowitz , a labour camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben ; and dozens of subcamps . The camps became a major site of the Nazis' Final Solution to
2352-485: A railway station or at one of several dedicated trackside ramps, including one next to Auschwitz I. The Altejudenrampe (old Jewish ramp), part of the Oświęcim freight railway station, was used from 1942 to 1944 for Jewish transports. Located between Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II, arriving at this ramp meant a 2.5 km journey to Auschwitz II and the gas chambers. Most deportees were forced to walk, accompanied by SS men and
2499-492: A serial number, on their left breast for Soviet prisoners of war and on the left arm for civilians. Categories of prisoner were distinguishable by triangular pieces of cloth (German: Winkel ) sewn onto on their jackets below their prisoner number. Political prisoners (Schutzhäftlinge or Sch), mostly Poles, had a red triangle, while criminals ( Berufsverbrecher or BV) were mostly German and wore green. Asocial prisoners ( Asoziale or Aso), which included vagrants, prostitutes and
2646-519: A telegraph wire, so close together that we could not help soiling one another. Langefeld was succeeded as Lagerführerin in October 1942 by SS Oberaufseherin Maria Mandl , who developed a reputation for cruelty. Höss hired men to oversee the female supervisors, first SS Obersturmführer Paul Müller, then SS Hauptsturmführer Franz Hössler . Mandl and Hössler were executed after the war. Sterilisation experiments were carried out in barracks 30 by
2793-440: A thousand people were crammed into the superimposed compartments of each barracks. Unable to stretch out completely, they slept there both lengthwise and crosswise, with one man's feet on another's head, neck, or chest. Stripped of all human dignity, they pushed and shoved and bit and kicked each other in an effort to get a few more inches' space on which to sleep a little more comfortably. For they did not have long to sleep. Sunday
2940-680: A time, the Sonderkommando were able to burn some 8,000 bodies a day. This maximum capacity was rarely needed; the average between 1942 and 1944 was 1,000 bodies burned every day. After examining several sites for a new plant to manufacture Buna-N , a type of synthetic rubber essential to the war effort, the German chemical conglomerate IG Farben chose a site near the towns of Dwory and Monowice (Monowitz in German), about 7 km (4.3 mi) east of Auschwitz I. Tax exemptions were available to corporations prepared to develop industries in
3087-476: A transport of Polish Jews from Silesia and Zagłębie Dąbrowskie was taken straight from the station to the Auschwitz II gas chamber, which had just come into operation. On 26 and 28 March, two transports of Slovakian Jews were registered as prisoners in the women's camp , where they were kept for slave labour; these were the first transports organized by Adolf Eichmann 's department IV B4 (the Jewish office) in
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#17327808518593234-661: Is also given by the Institute of National Remembrance . Heinemann and Łuczak as cited by Eberhardt detail the expulsions as follows: 81,000 Poles were displaced from their homes in East Upper Silesia, 22,000 of whom were deported to the General Government. They were replaced with 38,000 ethnic Germans primarily from Bukovina . From the Zichenau and Suwałki areas of South East Prussia , 25,000 to 28,000 Poles were "evacuated", an additional 25,000 to 28,000 from
3381-435: Is not drinkable; it has a revolting smell and often fails for many hours. The walls are covered by curious didactic frescoes : for example, there is the good Häftling [prisoner], portrayed stripped to the waist, about to diligently soap his sheared and rosy cranium, and the bad Häftling, with a strong Semitic nose and a greenish colour, bundled up in his ostentatiously stained clothes with a beret on his head, who cautiously dips
3528-508: Is to be rebuilt to hold approximately 30,000." Construction of Auschwitz II-Birkenau—called a Kriegsgefangenenlager (prisoner-of-war camp) on blueprints—began in October 1941 in Brzezinka , about three kilometers from Auschwitz I. The initial plan was that Auschwitz II would consist of four sectors (Bauabschnitte I–IV), each consisting of six subcamps (BIIa–BIIf) with their own gates and fences. The first two sectors were completed (sector BI
3675-774: The Wehrmacht delegated civil administrative powers to Chiefs of Civil Administration (CdZ). Hitler appointed Arthur Greiser to become the CdZ of the Posen military district, and Danzig 's Gauleiter Albert Forster to become the CdZ of the West Prussian military district. On 3 October 1939, the military districts centered on and named " Lodz " and " Krakau " were set up under command of major generals Gerd von Rundstedt and Wilhelm List , and Hitler appointed Hans Frank and Arthur Seyß-Inquart as civil heads, respectively. Thus
3822-570: The 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million were murdered. The number of victims includes 960,000 Jews (865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival), 74,000 non-Jewish Poles , 21,000 Romani , 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war , and up to 15,000 others. Those not gassed were murdered via starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions, or beatings. Others were killed during medical experiments . At least 802 prisoners tried to escape, 144 successfully, and on 7 October 1944 , two Sonderkommando units, consisting of prisoners who operated
3969-606: The 1st Ukrainian Front of the Red Army . Several other German industrial enterprises, such as Krupp and Siemens-Schuckert , built factories with their own subcamps. There were around 28 camps near industrial plants, each camp holding hundreds or thousands of prisoners. Designated as Aussenlager (external camp), Nebenlager (extension camp), Arbeitslager (labor camp), or Aussenkommando (external work detail), camps were built at Blechhammer , Jawiszowice , Jaworzno , Lagisze , Mysłowice , Trzebinia , and as far afield as
4116-644: The Auschwitz Protocols , but Randolph L. Braham may have been the first to do so. He used that term for the document in The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (1981). The contents of the Protocols was discussed in detail by The New York Times on 26 November 1944. Also see "The Auschwitz Protocol: The Vrba–Wetzler Report" (PDF) . Vrba–Wetzler Memorial. Archived from
4263-546: The Durchschleusung process in which they were assigned to the categories RuS I ("most valuable") to IV ("not valuable"). Only RuS I to III were allowed to settle, those who found themselves in RuSIV were either classified as "A"-cases and brought to the Altreich for "non-selfdetermined work and re-education", or classified as "S"-cases who were either sent back to their original Eastern European homelands or "evacuated" to
4410-658: The Final Solution to the Jewish Question to senior Nazis, and from early 1942 freight trains delivered Jews from all over occupied Europe to German extermination camps in Poland: Auschwitz, Bełżec , Chełmno , Majdanek , Sobibór , and Treblinka . Most prisoners were gassed on arrival. A former World War I camp for transient workers and later a Polish army barracks, Auschwitz I was the main camp ( Stammlager ) and administrative headquarters of
4557-617: The Jewish question . After Germany initiated World War II by invading Poland in September 1939, the Schutzstaffel (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp . The initial transport of political detainees to Auschwitz consisted almost solely of Poles (for whom the camp was initially established). For the first two years, the majority of inmates were Polish. In May 1940, German criminals brought to
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4704-618: The Nazi German invasion of the Soviet Union, 1941 Before the Nazi German invasion in September 1939 and the subsequent annexation in October, the territories held up to 10,568,000 people or some 30% of pre-1939 Poland 's population. Due to flights, war losses, natural migration and the lack of contemporary reliable data, demographics especially in the border regions can only be estimated. Heinemann (2003) gives identical numbers for Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia and Warthegau . For East Upper Silesia , Heinemann gives numbers based on
4851-571: The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in Czechoslovakia. Industries with satellite camps included coal mines, foundries and other metal works, and chemical plants. Prisoners were also made to work in forestry and farming. For example, Wirtschaftshof Budy , in the Polish village of Budy near Brzeszcze , was a farming subcamp where prisoners worked 12-hour days in the fields, tending animals, and making compost by mixing human ashes from
4998-739: The Reich Security Head Office (RSHA). On 30 March the first RHSA transport arrived from France. "Selection", where new arrivals were chosen for work or the gas chamber, began in April 1942 and was conducted regularly from July. Piper writes that this reflected Germany's increasing need for labour. Those selected as unfit for work were gassed without being registered as prisoners. There is also disagreement about how many were gassed in Auschwitz I. Perry Broad , an SS-Unterscharführer , wrote that "transport after transport vanished in
5145-878: The Reichstag passed the Nuremberg Laws . One, the Reich Citizenship Law , defined as citizens those of "German or related blood who demonstrate by their behaviour that they are willing and suitable to serve the German People and Reich faithfully", and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor prohibited marriage and extramarital relations between those with "German or related blood" and Jews. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, triggering World War II, Hitler ordered that
5292-694: The SS planned and executed the war-time resettlement and extermination process in the annexed territories. In October 1939, Himmler ordered the immediate expulsion of all Jews from the annexed territories, all "Congress Poles" from Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia , and all "Reich's enemies" from the Warthegau, South East Prussia and East Upper Silesia. The term "Reich enemies" was applied to all Poles with higher education, engaged in pre-war in any patriotic organisations or initiatives and generally those who manifested Polish patriotism. Those expelled were to be deported to
5439-535: The Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg , Germany, to inspect it. Around 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) long and 400 metres (1,300 ft) wide, Auschwitz consisted at the time of 22 brick buildings, eight of them two-story. A second story was added to the others in 1943 and eight new blocks were built. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler , head of the SS , approved the site in April 1940 on
5586-490: The Star of David , overlaid by a second triangle if they also belonged to a second category. The nationality of the inmate was indicated by a letter stitched onto the cloth. A racial hierarchy existed, with German prisoners at the top. Next were non-Jewish prisoners from other countries. Jewish prisoners were at the bottom. Deportees were brought to Auschwitz crammed in wretched conditions into goods or cattle wagons, arriving near
5733-667: The Vistula river basin before the Barbarian migrations . In late 1939 a sixteen-man commission was also active to chart the boundaries of a projected Reichsgau Beskidenland (named after the Beskid mountain range ), which would have encompassed the areas lying west of Kraków up to the San river to the east of it. Nazi Party Secretary Martin Bormann on the other hand proposed that
5880-702: The Vrba–Wetzler report , Polish Major's report , and Rosin-Mordowicz report. The reports were compiled by prisoners who had escaped from the camp and presented in their order of importance from the Western Allies' perspective, rather than in chronological order. The escapees who authored the reports were Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler (the Vrba–Wetzler report ); Arnošt Rosin and Czesław Mordowicz (the Rosin-Mordowicz report); and Jerzy Tabeau (the "Polish Major's report"). The Vrba–Wetzler report
6027-603: The " Jewish question ". Both during and immediately after the Nazi seizure of power in Germany in 1933, acts of violence against German Jews became ubiquitous, and legislation was passed excluding them from certain professions, including the civil service and the law. Harassment and economic pressure encouraged Jews to leave Germany ; their businesses were denied access to markets, forbidden from advertising in newspapers, and deprived of government contracts. On 15 September 1935,
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6174-649: The Altreich and the annexed territories as well as the Nazi-Soviet population exchanges . For his new office, Himmler chose the title Reichskommissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums ("Reich's commissioner for strengthening Germandom", RKF). The RKF staff ( Stabshauptamt RKF ) through the Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VOMI) and the 'Main Department of Race and Settlement' ( Rasse- und Siedlungs-Hauptamt , RuSHA ) of
6321-514: The Altreich. "Racially valuable" Poles were to be exempted from deportation and " racially valuable " ethnic Germans were also to be settled. Himmler said he wanted to "create a blonde province here". Responsible for "racial evaluation" were 'Central Bureau for Immigration' ( Einwandererzentralstelle , EWZ) and 'Central Bureau for Resettlement' ( Umwandererzentralstelle , UWZ) of the SS' RuSHA. The annexed territories were to be Germanised in rural areas within 5 years and in urban areas within 10 years,
6468-725: The Auschwitz II Sonderkommando , who had been forced to dig up and burn the remains of that camp's mass graves, thought to hold over 100,000 corpses. After visiting Auschwitz I in March 1941, it appears that Himmler ordered that the camp be expanded, although Peter Hayes notes that, on 10 January 1941, the Polish underground told the Polish government-in-exile in London: "the Auschwitz concentration camp ...can accommodate approximately 7,000 prisoners at present, and
6615-520: The Auschwitz [I] crematorium." In the view of Filip Müller , one of the Auschwitz I Sonderkommando , tens of thousands of Jews were murdered there from France, Holland, Slovakia, Upper Silesia, and Yugoslavia, and from the Theresienstadt , Ciechanow , and Grodno ghettos. Against this, Jean-Claude Pressac estimated that up to 10,000 people had been murdered in Auschwitz I. The last inmates gassed there, in December 1942, were around 400 members of
6762-614: The Baltic States prior to the Soviet Union's take-over, and subjected to Germanization . In addition, other Germanic settlers such as Dutch, Danes and Swedes were envisioned to settle these lands. A small Dutch artisan colony was already established in Poznań in 1941. The Jewish and Polish population was subject to mass murder and expulsions already during the September invasion , triggering mass flight. The Jewish population
6909-651: The Bialystock area attached in 1941. In Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia , 123,000 to 124,000 were displaced until the end of 1942, 53,000 of whom were deported to the General Government, the others were forced into camps where they were "racially evaluated". In the Warthegau , 630,000 were displaced between 1939 and 1944. Additionally, Łuczak estimates that between 30,000 and 40,000 were subject to "wild" expulsions primarily in Pomerelia . Poles due be deported to
7056-477: The General Government in 15 years In practice, the war-time population shift in the annexed territories did not take on its planned extent, either in regard to the number of expelled Poles and the resettled Germans, or in regard to the origin of the settled Germans which was the Soviet Union. Plans for a resettlement of Germans from Nazi Germany were upheld in the Generalplan Ost but postponed to after
7203-455: The General Government or to the Altreich for forced labour . The remaining Polish population was strictly segregated from the German population and subject to a variety of repressive measures. These included forced labour and their exclusion from all political and many cultural aspects of society. At the same time, the local German minority was granted several privileges, and their number
7350-567: The General Government were first put in camps where they were subject to racial evaluation ( Durchschleusung ) by the UWZ similar to the Durchschleusung of ethnic Germans ( see below ). Those deemed "capable of re- Germanization " ( wiedereindeutschungsfähig ) were not deported to the General Government, but instead to the Altreich. Those that resisted Germanization were to be put in concentration camps, or executed; their children might be taken for Germanization and adoption. A total of 1.5 million people
7497-521: The General Government would in the near future be turned into 3–5 Reichsgaue or Reichsobergaue , including the Galician district . Leaving such discussions open for the conclusion of the war, Hitler never officially adopted or implemented any of these suggestions, instead retaining the status quo of using the areas as a labor reservoir. the annexed parts are also referred to as "South East Prussia" ( German : Südostpreußen ) Gau Upper Silesia
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#17327808518597644-493: The General Government, 310,000 were displaced or forced into Polenlager camps within the respective Gau , and the others were subject to forced labour either within the annexed territories or in the Altreich. Heinemann says that according to Madajczyk, 987,217 were displaced in the annexed territories and the Zamość region, including Jews. People were sometimes arrested from the street in so-called łapanki . Heinemann further says that an additional 110,000 Jews were deported to
7791-427: The General Government. This directive was superseded by another RKF-directive of early 1940, ordering the immediate expulsion of the remaining Jews and the replacement of 3.4 million Poles with Germans settlers in the long run. This RKF scenario envisioned, as a first step, the settlement of 100,000 German families within the next three years. In this early stage, planners believed the settlers would be relocated from
7938-613: The General Government. Another more than 400,000 Jews were later deported to Auschwitz, Treblinka or Chelmno (Kulmhof) concentration camps , and thousands had died in the ghettos . Of the deported Jews, more than 300,000 were from Warthegau , 2,000 from Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia , 85,000 from East Upper Silesia , 30,000 from the Zichenau district and 200,000 from the Białystok district both in South East Prussia. Eberhardt cites numbers provided by Jastrzębski, 1968, who says that according to RKF documents, 365,000 were deported between 1939 and 1944. Jastrzębski notes that adding
8085-456: The General Government. Initially, people classified as RuS III were to be deported to the Altreich for forced labour, yet since January 1940 were allowed to settle on smaller farms (20 hectare compared to 50 hectare farms for RuS I and II). This change was based on a personal order by Himmler and led to a more restrictive categorization by the classifying officials. About a million ethnic Germans had been subjected to Durchschleusung by
8232-408: The German Reich. According to Esch, because of the lack of settlers from the Altreich, the colonists were primarily ethnic Germans from areas further East. These ethnic Germans were resettled during colonisation action " Heim ins Reich " in homes from which the Poles had been expelled, often so abruptly that they found half-eaten meals on tables and unmade beds where small children had been sleeping at
8379-492: The German policy was to create lowly educated slaves out of Poles for basic work. While in General Government all Poles from age of 14 to 65 were subject to forced labour on behalf of Nazi German state, in annexed territories children had to work from the age of 9 (and in rural areas from the age of 7–8), additionally the duty to perform slave labour for Germans was extended to the age of 70 for men in annexed territories. A network of outposts overseeing gathering of labour force
8526-556: The German-controlled General Government occupation zone (95,500 km or 24.5% of pre-war Poland). A tiny portion of pre-war Poland (700 km ) was annexed by Slovakia . Since 1935, Nazi Germany was divided into provinces ( Gaue ) which had replaced the former German states and Prussian provinces . Of the territories annexed, some were attached to the already existing Gaue East Prussia and Silesia (later Upper Silesia ), while from others new Reichsgaue Danzig-West Prussia and Wartheland were constituted. Wartheland
8673-441: The Monowitz concentration camp, it was the first concentration camp to be financed and built by private industry. Measuring 270 m × 490 m (890 ft × 1,610 ft), the camp was larger than Auschwitz I. By the end of 1944, it housed 60 barracks measuring 17.5 m × 8 m (57 ft × 26 ft), each with a day room and a sleeping room containing 56 three-tiered wooden bunks. IG Farben paid
8820-577: The Nazi census of December 1939, that claimed they were 2.43 million people, of whom ~1.08 million were ethnic Germans , ~930,000 Poles , and ~90,000 Jews . Heinemann and Encyclopaedia Judaica also give a higher estimate regarding the Jewish population, whose number they put between 560,000 and 586,628 people. Eberhardt (2006) confirms the number given by the Bureau for Racial Policy by saying about 600,000 people were Germans. Prof. Stanisław Waszak ( pl ) of Poznań University cited slightly differing estimates; first published in 1947: Census data
8967-985: The Nazi racial ideology were the ubermenschen " herrenvolk " (master race). This classification had not only ideological meaning but was expressed in all aspects of practical daily life and treatment of the population. Three main goals were formulated by German authorities in regards to Polish population: Gradual biological eradication of Polish nation, expulsion out of the annexed areas and use of Poles as forced labour, and changing remaining Poles into obedient low-skilled workers by draconian means. Many Polish owned buildings and enterprises were confiscated, and all jewelry , furniture , money, clothing were subject to forced confiscation. All executive positions which were formerly occupied by Poles and Jews were given to Germans. Poles were forbidden to own rural and industrial enterprises, transport firms, building firms, workshops. The Nazis seized tens of thousands of Polish enterprises, from large industrial firms to small shops, without payment to
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#17327808518599114-494: The Poles who remained were those with high birth rate, while those with few children were no longer present. Stripping Poles of all cultural activity by the Germans and leaving them to spend all time outside of work in homes, led to conditions favourable to sex and a rising birth rate. One practice that had terrible effects on Polish women was the refusal for female slave workers to travel home for birth. Pregnancies by Polish women-workers were subject to abortion, and in case of birth,
9261-424: The Polish leadership and intelligentsia be destroyed. The area around Auschwitz was annexed to the German Reich , as part of first Gau Silesia and from 1941 Gau Upper Silesia . The camp at Auschwitz was established in April 1940, at first as a quarantine camp for Polish political prisoners. On 22 June 1941, in an attempt to obtain new territory, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union . The first gassing at Auschwitz—of
9408-461: The Polish population, a German official Krumey ( de ) from occupied Łódź demanded that Polish women be kept at work until reaching 8.5 months of pregnancy . The aim was to help in miscarriage and provoke ‘accidents’ that would result in failed birth. Nevertheless, German officials remained extremely worried about Polish birth rate and various other ideas floated among German leadership how to not only reduce pregnancy, but to prevent it. Among
9555-406: The Roma, wore black. Purple was for Jehovah's Witnesses ( Internationale Bibelforscher-Vereinigung or IBV)'s and pink for gay men, who were mostly German. An estimated 5,000–15,000 gay men prosecuted under German Penal Code Section 175 (proscribing sexual acts between men) were detained in concentration camps, of whom an unknown number were sent to Auschwitz. Jews wore a yellow badge , the shape of
9702-404: The SS ordered that the site be evacuated, sending 9,000 inmates, most of them Jews, on a death march to another Auschwitz subcamp at Gliwice . From Gliwice, prisoners were taken by rail in open freight wagons to the Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps. The 800 inmates who had been left behind in the Monowitz hospital were liberated along with the rest of the camp on 27 January 1945 by
9849-850: The SS personnel, were members of the SS-Totenkopfverbände ( death's head units). Other SS staff worked in the medical or political departments, or in the economic administration, which was responsible for clothing and other supplies, including the property of dead prisoners. The SS viewed Auschwitz as a comfortable posting; being there meant they had avoided the front and had access to the victims' property. Certain prisoners, at first non-Jewish Germans but later Jews and non-Jewish Poles, were assigned positions of authority as Funktionshäftlinge (functionaries), which gave them access to better housing and food. The Lagerprominenz (camp elite) included Blockschreiber (barracks clerk), Kapo (overseer), Stubendienst (barracks orderly), and Kommandierte (trusties). Wielding tremendous power over other prisoners,
9996-408: The SS three or four Reichsmark for nine- to eleven-hour shifts from each worker. In 1943–1944, about 35,000 inmates worked at the plant; 23,000 (32 a day on average) were killed through malnutrition, disease, and the workload. Within three to four months at the camp, Peter Hayes writes, the inmates were "reduced to walking skeletons". Deaths and transfers to the gas chambers at Auschwitz II reduced
10143-420: The United States War Refugee Board on 26 November 1944 under the title The Extermination Camps of Auschwitz (Oświęcim) and Birkenau in Upper Silesia . They were submitted in evidence at the Nuremberg Trials as document number 022-L, and are held in the War Refugee Board archives in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York . It is not known when they were first called
10290-464: The absentee was found or the reason for the absence discovered, even if it took hours. On 6 July 1940, roll call lasted 19 hours because a Polish prisoner, Tadeusz Wiejowski , had escaped; following an escape in 1941, a group of prisoners was picked out from the escapee's barracks and sent to block 11 to be starved to death. After roll call, prisoners retired to their blocks for the night and received their bread rations. Then they had some free time to use
10437-435: The annexation of western Polish areas and the Free City of Danzig . A separate by-law stipulated the inclusion of the area around Suwalki (the Suwalki triangle ). The first two paragraphs of the decree established " Reichsgau Posen " in Greater Poland with the government regions ( Regierungsbezirk ) Hohensalza , Posen , and Kalisch, as well as " Reichsgau West Prussia " ( German : Westpreußen ) in Pomerelia with
10584-555: The annexed territories, and details the areas of colonists' origin as follows: 93,000 were from Bessarabia , 21,000 from Dobruja , 98,000 from Bukovina , 68,000 from Volhynia , 58,000 from Galicia , 130,000 from the Baltic states , 38,000 from eastern Poland , 72,000 from Sudetenland , and 13,000 from Slovenia . Additionally some 400,000 German officials, technical staff, and clerks were sent to those areas in order to administer them, according to "Atlas Ziem Polski", citing
10731-541: The area around the gas chambers. The day began at 4:30 am for the men (an hour later in winter), and earlier for the women, when the block supervisor sounded a gong and started beating inmates with sticks to make them wash and use the latrines quickly. There were few latrines and there was a lack of clean water. Each washhouse had to service thousands of prisoners. In sectors BIa and BIb in Auschwitz II, two buildings containing latrines and washrooms were installed in 1943. These contained troughs for washing and 90 faucets;
10878-428: The border of Reich was extended eastwards by some 150–200 km on average. Despite this fact, Germany used old Prussian propaganda of creating a "German living wall" in Polish territories. On 29 January 1940, Reichsgau Posen was renamed " Reichsgau Wartheland " (Warthegau). Reichsgau West Prussia was renamed "Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia". The remaining annexed areas were not made separate provinces but included in
11025-445: The camp as functionaries established the camp's reputation for sadism. Prisoners were beaten, tortured, and executed for the most trivial of reasons. The first gassings —of Soviet and Polish prisoners—took place in block 11 of Auschwitz I around August 1941. Construction of Auschwitz II began the following month, and from 1942 until late 1944 freight trains delivered Jews from all over German-occupied Europe to its gas chambers. Of
11172-529: The camp be established. Living with his wife and children in a two-story stucco house near the commandant's and administration building, he served as commandant until 11 November 1943, with Josef Kramer as his deputy. Succeeded as commandant by Arthur Liebehenschel , Höss joined the SS Business and Administration Head Office in Oranienburg as director of Amt DI, a post that made him deputy of
11319-606: The camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. In 1947, Poland founded the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on the site of Auschwitz I and II, and in 1979 it was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO . Auschwitz is the site of the largest mass murder in a single location in history. The ideology of Nazism combined elements of " racial hygiene ", eugenics , antisemitism , pan-Germanism , and territorial expansionism, Richard J. Evans writes. Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party became obsessed by
11466-706: The camp complex. Fifty kilometres (31 mi) southwest of Kraków , the site was first suggested in February 1940 as a quarantine camp for Polish prisoners by Arpad Wigand , the inspector of the Sicherheitspolizei (security police) and deputy of Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski , the Higher SS and Police Leader for Silesia. Richard Glücks , head of the Concentration Camps Inspectorate , sent Walter Eisfeld , former commandant of
11613-459: The camp, including with the SS. Nevertheless, their life expectancy was short; they were regularly murdered and replaced. About 100 survived to the camp's liquidation. They were forced on a death march and by train to the camp at Mauthausen , where three days later they were asked to step forward during roll call. No one did, and because the SS did not have their records, several of them survived. Uniquely at Auschwitz, prisoners were tattooed with
11760-536: The camp. Only two Jewish calendars made in Auschwitz survived to the end of the war. Prisoners kept track of the days in other ways, such as obtaining information from newcomers. About 30 percent of the registered inmates were female. The first mass transport of women, 999 non-Jewish German women from the Ravensbrück concentration camp , arrived on 26 March 1942. Classified as criminal, asocial and political, they were brought to Auschwitz as founder functionaries of
11907-502: The camps inspectorate. Richard Baer became commandant of Auschwitz I on 11 May 1944 and Fritz Hartjenstein of Auschwitz II from 22 November 1943, followed by Josef Kramer from 15 May 1944 until the camp's liquidation in January 1945. Heinrich Schwarz was commandant of Auschwitz III from the point at which it became an autonomous camp in November 1943 until its liquidation. Höss returned to Auschwitz between 8 May and 29 July 1944 as
12054-460: The ceiling to resemble showerheads. The daily capacity of the crematoria (how many bodies could be burned in a 24-hour period) was 340 corpses in crematorium I; 1,440 each in crematoria II and III; and 768 each in IV and V. By June 1943 all four crematoria were operational, but crematorium I was not used after July 1943. This made the total daily capacity 4,416, although by loading three to five corpses at
12201-506: The ceiling. Historians have disagreed about the date the all-Jewish transports began arriving in Auschwitz. At the Wannsee Conference in Berlin on 20 January 1942, the Nazi leadership outlined, in euphemistic language, its plans for the Final Solution . According to Franciszek Piper , the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss offered inconsistent accounts after the war, suggesting the extermination began in December 1941, January 1942, or before
12348-443: The children were taken by SS Lebensborn . Polish slave labourers naturally were forbidden to marry. The harsh nature of the German occupation however reduced the birth rate. In Poznań, at the end of the war, the birth rate was near zero; in Łódź and Inowrocław there were more deaths than births. In comparison, the birth rate of Germans rose until the end of the war. From 1939's birth rate survival of 850 live births per 1000 births,
12495-477: The crematoria with sod and manure. Incidents of sabotage to decrease production took place in several subcamps, including Charlottengrube, Gleiwitz II , and Rajsko . Living conditions in some of the camps were so poor that they were regarded as punishment subcamps. Rudolf Höss , born in Baden-Baden in 1900, was named the first commandant of Auschwitz when Heinrich Himmler ordered on 27 April 1940 that
12642-465: The day. We stood in line to get in to this tiny building, knee-deep in human excrement. As we all suffered from dysentry, we could barely wait until our turn came, and soiled our ragged clothes, which never came off our bodies, thus adding to the horror of our existence by the terrible smell that surrounded us like a cloud. The latrine consisted of a deep ditch with planks thrown across it at certain intervals. We squatted on those planks like birds perched on
12789-558: The end of 1944. RuS I and II were assigned to between 60% and 70% of the Baltic Germans and 44% of the Volhynian Germans, while many ethnic Germans from the Soviet Union were put in the lower categories. The segregation of Germans and Poles was achieved by a variety of measures limiting their social interaction. Łuczak described the segregation: Nazi Germany viewed Poles as subhuman, and such views were spread in
12936-499: The end of June or beginning of July 1940. Initially intended not for mass murder but for prisoners who had been executed or had otherwise died in the camp, the crematorium was in operation from August 1940 until July 1943, by which time the crematoria at Auschwitz II had taken over. By May 1942 three ovens had been installed in crematorium I, which together could burn 340 bodies in 24 hours. The first experimental gassing took place around August 1941, when Lagerführer Karl Fritzsch , at
13083-404: The end of the war, the SS sent most of the camp's population west on a death march to camps inside Germany and Austria. Soviet troops entered the camp on 27 January 1945, a day commemorated since 2005 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day . In the decades after the war, survivors such as Primo Levi , Viktor Frankl , Elie Wiesel , and Edith Eger wrote memoirs of their experiences, and
13230-449: The entirety of occupied Poland was divided into four military districts (West Prussia, Posen, Lodz, and Krakau). Frank was at the same time appointed "supreme chief administrator" for all occupied territories. After Hitler's peace offer was rejected by French prime minister Édouard Daladier on October 7 (rejected by British prime minister Neville Chamberlain on October 12) a decree was issued by Hitler on 8 October 1939, provided for
13377-422: The establishment of the women's camp in March 1942. In Kommandant in Auschwitz , he wrote: "In the spring of 1942 the first transports of Jews, all earmarked for extermination, arrived from Upper Silesia." On 15 February 1942, according to Danuta Czech , a transport of Jews from Beuthen, Upper Silesia ( Bytom , Poland), arrived at Auschwitz I and was sent straight to the gas chamber. In 1998 an eyewitness said
13524-560: The existing provinces of East Prussia and Upper Silesia per § 4 of Hitler's decree. Arthur Greiser was made Gauleiter of Reichsgau Posen, and Albert Forster of Reichsgau West Prussia. After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the district of Białystok , which included the Białystok , Bielsk Podlaski , Grajewo , Łomża , Sokółka , Volkovysk , and Grodno Counties,
13671-477: The factory; and that Auschwitz prisoners be used in the construction work. Auschwitz inmates began working at the plant, known as Buna Werke and IG-Auschwitz, in April 1941, demolishing houses in Monowitz to make way for it. By May, because of a shortage of trucks, several hundred of them were rising at 3 am to walk there twice a day from Auschwitz I. Because a long line of exhausted inmates walking through
13818-509: The frontier regions under the Eastern Fiscal Assistance Law, passed in December 1940. In addition to its proximity to the concentration camp, a source of cheap labour, the site had good railway connections and access to raw materials. In February 1941, Himmler ordered that the Jewish population of Oświęcim be expelled to make way for skilled laborers; that all Poles able to work remain in the town and work on building
13965-524: The functionaries developed a reputation as sadists. Very few were prosecuted after the war, because of the difficulty of determining which atrocities had been performed by order of the SS. Although the SS oversaw the murders at each gas chamber, the forced labor portion of the work was done by prisoners known from 1942 as the Sonderkommando (special squad). These were mostly Jews but they included groups such as Soviet POWs. In 1940–1941 when there
14112-534: The gas chamber, was at the prisoner reception centre near the gate with the Arbeit macht frei sign, where they were tattooed, shaved, disinfected, and given a striped prison uniform. Built between 1942 and 1944, the center contained a bathhouse, laundry, and 19 gas chambers for delousing clothing. The prisoner reception center of Auschwitz I became the visitor reception center of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum . Construction of crematorium I began at Auschwitz I at
14259-480: The gas chambers, launched an unsuccessful uprising. After the Holocaust ended, only 789 Schutzstaffel personnel (no more than 15 percent) ever stood trial. Several were executed, including camp commandant Rudolf Höss . The Allies ' failure to act on early reports of mass murder by bombing the camp or its railways remains controversial. As the Soviet Red Army approached Auschwitz in January 1945, toward
14406-511: The government regions Bromberg , Danzig , and Marienwerder . These government regions were named after the German language names of their chief cities: Hohensalza ( Inowrocław ), Posen ( Poznań ), Kalisch ( Kalisz ), Bromberg ( Bydgoszcz ), Danzig ( Gdańsk ), and Marienwerder ( Kwidzyn ). The annexed territories were twice as large as former Prussian conquests in the Partitions of Poland , also contained twice as many people. Compared to 1914,
14553-434: The ground floor, and an underground dressing room 49.43 by 7.93 m (162.2 by 26.0 ft) and gas chamber 30 by 7 m (98 by 23 ft). The dressing rooms had wooden benches along the walls and numbered pegs for clothing. Victims would be led from these rooms to a five-yard-long narrow corridor, which in turn led to a space from which the gas chamber door opened. The chambers were white inside, and nozzles were fixed to
14700-574: The higher number is probably attributable to the logistics of evacuating the camp. Female guards were known as SS supervisors ( SS-Aufseherinnen ). Most of the staff were from Germany or Austria, but as the war progressed, increasing numbers of Volksdeutsche from other countries, including Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and the Baltic states, joined the SS at Auschwitz. Not all were ethnically German. Guards were also recruited from Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. Camp guards, around three quarters of
14847-416: The instruction of Rudolf Höss, murdered a group of Soviet prisoners of war by throwing Zyklon B crystals into their basement cell in block 11 of Auschwitz I. A second group of 600 Soviet prisoners of war and around 250 sick Polish prisoners were gassed on 3–5 September. The morgue was later converted to a gas chamber able to hold at least 700–800 people. Zyklon B was dropped into the room through slits in
14994-646: The local SS garrison commander ( Standortältester ) to oversee the arrival of Hungary's Jews, which made him the superior officer of all the commandants of the Auschwitz camps. According to Aleksander Lasik , about 6,335 people (6,161 of them men) worked for the SS at Auschwitz over the course of the camp's existence; 4.2 percent were officers, 26.1 percent non-commissioned officers, and 69.7 percent rank and file. In March 1941, there were 700 SS guards; in June 1942, 2,000; and in August 1944, 3,342. At its peak in January 1945, 4,480 SS men and 71 SS women worked in Auschwitz;
15141-601: The media. For example, in October 1939, Nazi propaganda was issued instructing Germans to view Poles, Jews and Gypsies as subhumans. Occasionally, signs were posted in public places reading: "Entrance is forbidden to Poles, Jews, and dogs". When Germans wanted to silence Poles and Jews, they used such expressions, as "stop barking" or "shut your snouts". Part of the population was classified as Volksdeutsche , mostly German ethnic minority. Some Poles were classified as such as well, either by their own free will or by force which included death threats. Because Nazi Germany envisioned
15288-627: The minimum space needed to exist". The prisoners were forced to live in the barracks as they were building them; in addition to working, they faced long roll calls at night. As a result, most prisoners in BIb (the men's camp) in the early months died of hypothermia , starvation or exhaustion within a few weeks. Some 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war arrived at Auschwitz I between 7 and 25 October 1941, but by 1 March 1942 only 945 were still registered; they were transferred to Auschwitz II, where most of them had died by May. The first gas chamber at Auschwitz II
15435-459: The numbers retrieved from documents of local authorities yields a higher total of 414,820 deported, and estimates a total of about 450,000 including unplanned and undocumented expulsions. Eberhardt notes that on top of these numbers, many had fled, and cites numbers provided by Czesław Łuczak (1979), who estimates that between 918,000 and 928,000 were deported or evicted from the annexed territories between 1939 and 1944. A similar estimate (923,000)
15582-399: The original (PDF) on 27 July 2018. Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz concentration camp ( German : Konzentrationslager Auschwitz , pronounced [kɔntsɛntʁaˈtsi̯oːnsˌlaːɡɐ ˈʔaʊʃvɪts] ; also KL Auschwitz or KZ Auschwitz ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in
15729-430: The owners. Higher taxes and obligatory contributions were enforced on Polish population. Polish workers were stripped from any right to holidays or leave from work. Payment for overtime hours in work was abolished in general, only after working 61 hours in week were Poles allowed to receive a 10% higher compensation in pay (Germans were paid 100%). All employed Poles were given the lowest possible pay for their work. Overall
15876-459: The population by nearly a fifth each month. Site managers constantly threatened inmates with the gas chambers, and the smell from the crematoria at Auschwitz I and II hung heavy over the camp. Although the factory had been expected to begin production in 1943, shortages of labour and raw materials meant start-up was postponed repeatedly. The Allies bombed the plant in 1944 on 20 August, 13 September, 18 December, and 26 December. On 19 January 1945,
16023-525: The proposals were: garrisoning the population in labour camps, making the age of allowing marriage much higher, creating labour battalions out of the Polish population, introducing a child tax, performing abortions, an extended forced work duty during Polish lifetimes, combined with relocation to work camps, and finally sterilization of Polish women. Doubts about the ability to perform mass sterilization hindered this idea, however, as 55% of available doctors in certain parts of annexed territories were Poles and it
16170-517: The recommendation of SS- Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss of the camps inspectorate. Höss oversaw the development of the camp and served as its first commandant. The first 30 prisoners arrived on 20 May 1940 from the Sachsenhausen camp. German "career criminals" ( Berufsverbrecher ), the men were known as "greens" ( Grünen ) after the green triangles on their prison clothing. Brought to the camp as functionaries, this group did much to establish
16317-479: The report), sending married Poles to slave labour in Reich. An original idea was proposed by Karl Zieger, who believed those measures to be futile. Instead, he postulated that whole Polish villages should be moved and scattered into the Reich itself. The Nazis fell into a trap of perception—the seemingly high birth rate of Poles was a result of expelling all Poles from higher classes into the General Government; as such
16464-514: The sadism of early camp life, which was directed particularly at Polish inmates, until the political prisoners took over their roles. Bruno Brodniewicz , the first prisoner (who was given serial number 1), became Lagerälteste (camp elder). The others were given positions such as kapo and block supervisor. The first mass transport—of 728 Polish male political prisoners, including Catholic priests and Jews—arrived on 14 June 1940 from Tarnów , Poland. They were given serial numbers 31 to 758. In
16611-594: The same day. According to Danuta Czech , this was the first registered transport sent to Auschwitz by the Reich Security Head Office (RSHA) office IV B4, known as the Jewish Office, led by SS Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann . (Office IV was the Gestapo .) A third transport of 798 Jewish women from Bratislava , Slovakia, followed on 28 March. Women were at first held in blocks 1–10 of Auschwitz I, but from 6 August 1942, 13,000 inmates were transferred to
16758-474: The sound of " Arbeitskommandos formieren " ("form work details"), prisoners walked to their place of work, five abreast, to begin a working day that was normally 11 hours long—longer in summer and shorter in winter. A prison orchestra, such as the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz , was forced to play cheerful music as the workers left the camp. Kapos were responsible for the prisoners' behaviour while they worked, as
16905-547: The time of expulsion. Members of Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls were assigned the task of overseeing such evictions to ensure that the Poles left behind most of their belongings for the use of the settlers. Eberhardt cites estimates for the ethnic German influx provided by Szobak, Łuczak, and a collective report, ranging from 404,612 (Szobak) to 631,500 (Łuczak). Anna Bramwell says 591,000 ethnic Germans moved into
17052-526: The toilet facilities were "sewage channels" covered by concrete with 58 holes for seating. There were three barracks with washing facilities or toilets to serve 16 residential barracks in BIIa, and six washrooms/latrines for 32 barracks in BIIb, BIIc, BIId, and BIIe. Primo Levi described a 1944 Auschwitz III washroom: It is badly lighted, full of draughts, with the brick floor covered by a layer of mud. The water
17199-464: The town of Oświęcim might harm German-Polish relations, the inmates were told to shave daily, make sure they were clean, and sing as they walked. From late July they were taken to the factory by train on freight wagons. Given the difficulty of moving them, including during the winter, IG Farben decided to build a camp at the plant. The first inmates moved there on 30 October 1942. Known as KL Auschwitz III–Aussenlager (Auschwitz III subcamp), and later as
17346-597: The tragic plight of Jews and a Swiss press campaign of about 400 headlines protesting the atrocities against Jews. The unprecedented events in Switzerland and possibly other considerations led to threats of retribution against Hungary's Regent Miklós Horthy by President Roosevelt , Winston Churchill and others. This was one of the main factors which convinced Horthy to stop the Hungarian death camp transports. The full reports were published—with seven months delay—by
17493-594: The train contained "the women of Beuthen". Saul Friedländer wrote that the Beuthen Jews were from the Organization Schmelt labor camps and had been deemed unfit for work. According to Christopher Browning , transports of Jews unfit for work were sent to the gas chamber at Auschwitz from autumn 1941. The evidence for this and the February 1942 transport was contested in 2015 by Nikolaus Wachsmann . Around 20 March 1942, according to Danuta Czech,
17640-450: The war against Poland over prior to the annexation, which in their view made the convention non-applicable. On 8 and 13 September 1939, the German military district in the area of Posen , commanded by general Alfred von Vollard-Bockelberg [ de ] , and West Prussia , commanded by general Walter Heitz , were established in conquered Greater Poland and Pomerelia , respectively. Based on laws of 21 May 1935 and 1 June 1938,
17787-578: The war, adding to a pre-war population of 700,000. The increase of German population was most visible in the towns: in Poznań, the German population increased from ~6,000 in 1939 to 93,589 in 1944; in Łódź , from ~60,000 to 140,721; and in Inowrocław , from 956 to 10,713. In Warthegau , where most Germans were settled, the share of the German population increased from 6.6% in 1939 to 21.2% in 1943. Only those Germans deemed "racially valuable" were allowed to settle. People were "evaluated" and classified in
17934-555: The war. This plan envisioned the elimination of all Jews and, in the long run, the deportation of initially 31 million, later 51 million Slavs to Siberia from a large area designated for German settlement. The removal of Poles consisted of such actions as ethnic cleansing , mass executions, organised famine and eradication of national groups by scattering them in isolated pockets for labour. About 350,000 ethnic Germans were settled in Poland after Nazi propaganda persuaded them to leave
18081-485: The washrooms and receive their mail, unless they were Jews: Jews were not allowed to receive mail. Curfew ("nighttime quiet") was marked by a gong at nine o'clock. Inmates slept in long rows of brick or wooden bunks, or on the floor, lying in and on their clothes and shoes to prevent them from being stolen. The wooden bunks had blankets and paper mattresses filled with wood shavings; in the brick barracks, inmates lay on straw. According to Miklós Nyiszli : Eight hundred to
18228-469: The weather, they had to wait for the SS to arrive for the count; how long they stood there depended on the officers' mood, and whether there had been escapes or other events attracting punishment. Guards might force the prisoners to squat for an hour with their hands above their heads or hand out beatings or detention for infractions such as having a missing button or an improperly cleaned food bowl. The inmates were counted and re-counted. After roll call, to
18375-438: The women's camp. Rudolf Höss wrote of them: "It was easy to predict that these beasts would mistreat the women over whom they exercised power ... Spiritual suffering was completely alien to them." They were given serial numbers 1–999. The women's guard from Ravensbrück, Johanna Langefeld , became the first Auschwitz women's camp Lagerführerin . A second mass transport of women, 999 Jews from Poprad , Slovakia, arrived on
18522-436: Was 300 grams of bread, often moldy, part of which the inmates were expected to keep for breakfast the next day, with a tablespoon of cheese or marmalade, or 25 grams of margarine or sausage. Prisoners engaged in hard labour were given extra rations. A second roll call took place at seven in the evening, in the course of which prisoners might be hanged or flogged. If a prisoner was missing, the others had to remain standing until
18669-461: Was an SS escort. Much of the work took place outdoors at construction sites, gravel pits, and lumber yards. No rest periods were allowed. One prisoner was assigned to the latrines to measure the time the workers took to empty their bladders and bowels. Lunch was three-quarters of a litre of watery soup at midday, reportedly foul-tasting, with meat in the soup four times a week and vegetables (mostly potatoes and rutabaga ) three times. The evening meal
18816-516: Was attached to (not incorporated into) East Prussia . Other Polish territories, first annexed by Soviet Union and then by Germany, was incorporated into Reichskommissariat Ostland (in the north), Reichskommissariat Ukraine (in the south) and the General Government ( Distrikt Galizien in the utmost south). The Nazi government intended to continue its incorporation of pre-war Polish territory into Germany. The rump General Government region of occupied Poland already under complete German civil control
18963-496: Was compiled by Nazi Germany in Danzig-West Prussia on 3 December, and in Warthegau and Upper Silesia on 17 December. A number of Poles tried to present themselves as Germans ( Volksdeutsche ) hoping to avoid the anti-Polish atrocities or were classified as Germans to meet quotas. On October 7, 1939, Hitler appointed Heinrich Himmler as his settlement commissioner, responsible for all resettlement measures in
19110-528: Was created in 1941, before it was part of Gau Silesia the annexed parts are also referred to as "East Upper Silesia" ( German : Ostoberschlesien ) named after the chief city, Polish : Łódź . This area was joined into the Warthegau on 9 November 1939; on 12 April 1940 Łódź's name was rendered Litzmannstadt , thus the Regierungsbezirk's name was changed accordingly. not incorporated into, but administered by Gau East Prussia, attached after
19257-471: Was established by German authorities that coordinated forced labour together with German police units. To reduce the biological growth of the Polish people, a partial ban of marriage was introduced; Polish women were allowed to marry only at the age of 25 and men at the age of 28. Married couples were separated when subjected to forced labour in Germany , and calorie intake was lowered for Poles. The forced labour working hours for both parents often meant that
19404-415: Was expelled or deported, including those deported for slave labor in Germany or concentration camps. Eberhardt says a total of 1.053 million people were deported for forced labour from the annexed territories. Throughout the war, the annexed Polish territories were subject to German colonization. The goal of Germany was to assimilate the territories politically, culturally, socially, and economically into
19551-403: Was gradually deported to concentration and extermination camps , the most infamous of which, Auschwitz , was located in annexed East Upper Silesia . The local Polish population was to be gradually enslaved, exterminated and eventually replaced by German settlers. The Polish elite especially became subject to mass murder, and an estimated 780,000 Poles were subject to expulsion , either to
19698-825: Was initially a quarantine camp), but the construction of BIII began in 1943 and stopped in April 1944, and the plan for BIV was abandoned. SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Bischoff , an architect, was the chief of construction. Based on an initial budget of RM 8.9 million, his plans called for each barracks to hold 550 prisoners, but he later changed this to 744 per barracks, which meant the camp could hold 125,000, rather than 97,000. There were 174 barracks, each measuring 35.4 by 11.0 m (116 by 36 ft), divided into 62 bays of 4 m (43 sq ft). The bays were divided into "roosts", initially for three inmates and later for four. With personal space of 1 m (11 sq ft) to sleep and place whatever belongings they had, inmates were deprived, Robert-Jan van Pelt wrote, "of
19845-532: Was introduced. Within Germany, OST-Arbeiters could be aborted, even against their will and contrary to the usual Nazi law against abortions. Only if the parents appeared to be of "good blood" was the child to be born, and if deemed satisfactory, was removed to a Lebensborn institution. Children who failed were sent to the Ausländerkinder-Pflegestätte , where they routinely died within a few months for lack of food. To further reduce
19992-664: Was merely seen as a transitional form of government, before the area's complete future integration into the Greater German Reich ( Grossdeutsches Reich ). The German bureaucrats subsequently discussed various proposals for the dismemberment of the remaining territories. Hans Frank advocated for the transformation of some or all of his province into a " Vandalengau ", in honor of the East Germanic Vandal tribes who in Ancient Times had dwelt in
20139-484: Was not a workday, but prisoners had to clean the barracks and take their weekly shower, and were allowed to write (in German) to their families, although the SS censored the mail. Inmates who did not speak German would trade bread for help. Observant Jews tried to keep track of the Hebrew calendar and Jewish holidays , including Shabbat , and the weekly Torah portion . No watches, calendars, or clocks were permitted in
20286-412: Was one gas chamber, there were 20 such prisoners, in late 1943 there were 400, and by 1944 during the Holocaust in Hungary the number had risen to 874. The Sonderkommando removed goods and corpses from the incoming trains, guided victims to the dressing rooms and gas chambers, removed their bodies afterwards, and took their jewelry, hair, dental work, and any precious metals from their teeth, all of which
20433-514: Was operational by March 1942. On or around 20 March, a transport of Polish Jews sent by the Gestapo from Silesia and Zagłębie Dąbrowskie was taken straight from the Oświęcim freight station to the Auschwitz II gas chamber, then buried in a nearby meadow. The gas chamber was located in what prisoners called the "little red house" (known as bunker 1 by the SS), a brick cottage that had been turned into
20580-598: Was renamed as the General Government district. The annexation was part of the "fourth partition of Poland" by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union , outlined months before the invasion, in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact . Some smaller territories were incorporated directly into the existing Gaue East Prussia and Silesia , while the bulk of the land was used to create new Reichsgaue Danzig-West Prussia and Wartheland . Of those, Reichsgau Wartheland
20727-420: Was sent to Germany. Once the bodies were stripped of anything valuable, the Sonderkommando burned them in the crematoria. Because they were witnesses to the mass murder, the Sonderkommando lived separately from the other prisoners, although this rule was not applied to the non-Jews among them. Their quality of life was further improved by their access to the property of new arrivals, which they traded within
20874-674: Was steadily raised by the settlement of ethnic Germans , including those displaced by the Nazi-Soviet population transfers . After the Vistula–Oder Offensive in early 1945, the Soviet Union took control over the territories. The ethnic German population either fled the Red Army or were later expelled and the territories became part of the People's Republic of Poland . Already in the fall of 1933 Adolf Hitler revealed to his closest associates his intentions to annex western Poland into an envisioned Greater Germany . In October 1939,
21021-411: Was the largest and the only one comprising solely the annexed territory. The official term used by the Nazi authorities for these areas was the "incorporated Eastern territories" ( German : Eingegliederte Ostgebiete ). They planned for a complete Germanization of the annexed territories, considering them part of their lebensraum . The local Jewish population was forced to live in ghettos , and
21168-475: Was the only Gau constituted solely from annexed territory, Danzig-West Prussia comprised also former German areas and the former Free City of Danzig . The occupied General Government remained outside Nazi Germany . The annexation violated international law (in particular, the Hague Convention IV 1907 ). Nazi Germany's officials discussed the convention and tried to circumvent it by declaring
21315-429: Was thought they would sabotage the action. The German state organization SD performed its own study on the problem. Among the things it concluded was the fact that the number of Poles was wrongly estimated in initial years; however, both the birth rate and survival of German children was higher than that of the Poles. The proposed solution to Polish problem was mass sterilization of lower classes (named "primitives" by
21462-442: Was to be resettled but when that proved impossible exterminated . Nazi Concentration camps and extermination camps were set up within the annexed territories including Auschwitz (consisting of several subcamps), Chelmno (Kulmhof) , Potulice (Potulitz) and Soldau . According to Heinemann, about 780,000 ethnic Poles in the annexed territories lost their homes between 1939 and 1944. Of these, at least 250,000 were deported to
21609-844: Was widely disseminated by the Bratislava Working Group in April 1944, and with help of the Romanian diplomat Florian Manoliu , the report or a summary obtained from Moshe Krausz in Budapest reached—tragically with much delay— George Mantello (Mandl), El Salvador Embassy First Secretary in Switzerland , via Manoliu who brought it to Mantello. Mantello immediately publicized it despite request from Rudolf Kasztner to keep it confidential. This triggered large-scale demonstrations in Switzerland, sermons in Swiss churches about
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