Auschwitz (50 page)

We must judge behavior by the context of the times, and judged by the context of mid-twentieth-century, sophisticated European culture, Auschwitz and the Nazis' “Final Solution” represent the lowest act in all history. Through their crime, the Nazis brought into the world an awareness of what educated, technologically advanced human beings can do—as long as they possess a cold heart. Once allowed into the world, knowledge of what they did must not be unlearned. It lies there—ugly, inert, waiting to be rediscovered by each new generation. A warning for us, and for those who will come after.

1
This assumption is based partly on a BBC audience survey conducted in 2004 to test public knowledge and perception of Auschwitz. The research demonstrated that the vast majority of people who had heard of the camp thought it had been built to exterminate the Jews.

2
I acknowledge my great debt to the production teams with whom I have had the privilege of working on these past projects, in particular the brilliant research conducted by Tilman Remme, Detlef Siebert, Martina Balazova, and Sally Ann Kleibal.

3
See esp.
Robert Galletely,
The Gestapo and German Society
(Clarendon Press 1990).

4
It was fascinating to discover from Jonathan Glover's epic
Humanity—A Moral History of the Twentieth Century
(Pimlico 2000) that, in this regard, this distinguished philosopher, from a study of written sources, had reached the same broad conclusions.

5
For a detailed examination of Goebbels' work, see Laurence Rees,
Selling Politics
(BBC Books 1992).

6
Rees,
Selling Politics
. See esp. Wilfred von Oven's interview.

7
An expression first coined by Martin Broszart.

8
See
p. 62,
infra
.

9
Quoted in Goetz Aly,
Final Solution: Nazi Population and the Murder of the European Jews
(Hodder Arnold 1999), 3.

10
See
p. 211,
infra
.

11
Testimony of former prisoners Wanda Szaynok and Edward Blotnicki, quoted by Andrzej Strzelecki in “Plundering the Victims' Property,”
Auschwitz 1940–1945, Central Issues in the History of the Camp
(Auschwitz State Museum 2000), 2:164.

1
BBC interview.

2
It is right to be suspicious of broad psychological explanations for the behavior of Nazis; although Alice Miller, in
For Your Own Good: The Roots of Violence
in Child-Rearing
(Virago Press 1987), does claim that all of the leading Nazis had rigid upbringings similar to those of Höss and Hitler. Even if that is so, however, there were many people who had such a childhood and did not go on to become Nazis.

3
Quoted in
Concentration Camp Dachau 1933–1945
(Comitè International de Dachau, Brussels Lipp GmbH, Munich 1978), 20.

4
Rudolf Höss,
Commandant of Auschwitz
(Phoenix Press 2000), 131.

5
Höss,
Commandant
, 131 (these page references have been given for ease of reference; the quotes used, for the most part, have been translated from the original manuscript held at the Auschwitz State Museum).

6
In the previous year, 1933, Höss had formed a troop of mounted SS on the Sallentin estate in Pomerania—effectively a “reserve force”—which he was involved with while still a farmer.

7
Höss,
Commandant
, 64.

8
BBC interview.

9
Of course, some of these politicians were Jewish; however that was not the reason for their arrests.

10
Höss,
Commandant
, 81.

11
Höss,
Commandant
, 70–71.

12
BBC interview.

13
Quoted in Danuta Czech, “The Auschwitz Prisoner Administration,” in
The Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp
(Indiana University Press 1998).

14
Laurence Rees,
The Nazis: A Warning from History
(BBC Books 1997), 36.

15
Quoted in Franciszek Piper, “The Methods of Mass Murder,” in
Auschwitz 1940–1945
(Auschwitz State Museum 2000), 3:71.

16
Quoted in Jonathan Glover,
Humanity—A Moral History of the Twentieth Century
(Pimlico 2000), 44.

17
Quoted in Glover,
Humanity
, 361–62.

18
Höss,
Commandant
, 77.

19
Quoted in Aly,
Final Solution
, 19.

20
BBC interview.

21
Aly,
Final Solution
, 17.

22
BBC interview.

23
Diary of Josef Goebbels, entry for Jan. 24, 1940.

24
Quoted in Raul Hilberg,
The Destruction of the European Jews
(Holmes and Meier 1986), 50.

25
Quoted in Aly,
Final Solution
, 70.

26
BBC interview.

27
BBC interview.

28
Quoted in Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham (eds.),
Nazism 1919–1945
(Exeter University Press 1988), 3:933.

29
Quoted in Aly,
Final Solution
, 3.

30
German Foreign Office memorandum, July 3, 1940.

31
BBC interview.

32
BBC interview.

33
Höss,
Commandant
, 116.

34
Höss,
Commandant
, 116.

35
Höss,
Commandant
, 116.

36
BBC interview.

37
Remark made by Albert Speer, according to his brother Hermann, quoted in Michael Thad Allen,
The Business of Genocide—The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps
(University of North Carolina Press 2002), 59.

38
Allen,
Business of Genocide
.
See esp.
chap. 2, ”A Political Economy of Misery.”

39
Höss,
Commandant
, 283.

40
BBC interview.

41
Quoted in Irena Strzelecka, “Punishments and Torture,”
Auschwitz 1940–1945
(Auschwitz State Museum 2000), 3:389.

42
KL Auschwitz as Seen by the SS
(Auschwitz State Museum 1998), 117.

43
BBC interview.

44
Peter Hayes,
Industry and Ideology—I.G. Farben in the Nazi Era
(Cambridge University Press 1987), 347–64.

45
“Ambros document,” quoted in Hayes,
Industry
, 349.

46
Franciszek Piper, “The Exploitation of Prison Labour,” in
Auschwitz 1940–1945
(Auschwitz State Museum 2000), 2:104.

47
Höss,
Commandant
, 390; Höss interrogation by Jan Sehn, Krakow, Nov. 7–8, 1946, Instytut Pamieci Narodowej, Warsaw NTN 103.

48
Minutes of founding meeting of I.G. Farben-Auschwitz, Apr. 7, 1941. Quoted in Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt,
Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present
(Norton 1996), 211.

49
I.G. Farben, “Report of meeting with commander of the concentration camp near Auschwitz on 27.3.1941 at 3 p.m.” Nuremberg Trial Files Document 15148; and SS report of the same meeting.

50
Minutes of meeting on May 2, 1941, Nuremberg Trial Files, 31:84, Document 2718-PS.

51
“Political-Economic Guidelines,” Nuremberg Trial Files, 36:135–37.

52
Goetz Aly and Susanne Heim,
Architects of Annihilation
(Weidenfeld and Nicolson 2002), 63–64.

53
Quoted in Aly and Heim,
Annihilation
, 237.

54
Quoted in Ian Kershaw,
Hitler
(Penguin Press 2000), 2:127.

55
Quoted in Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen, and Volker Riess,
Those Were the Days
(Hamish Hamilton 1991), 179.

56
Quoted in Henryk Swiebocki, “Escapes from the Camp,”
Auschwitz 1940–1945
(Auschwitz State Museum 2000), 5:233.

57
Quoted in Robert Jay Lifton,
The Nazi Doctors
(Basic Books 1986), 63.

58
BBC interview.

59
For a full discussion of the new evidence for Pavel Sudoplatov's approach see Laurence Rees,
War of the Century
(BBC Books 1999), 53–55.

60
Quoted in Ulrich Herbert (ed.),
National Socialist Extermination Policies
(Berghahn Books 2000), 257.

61
BBC interview.

62
In the 1960s, Friedrich was the subject of a police investigation about his actions during the war but he was not prosecuted. In our interview, he admitted taking part in the shooting of Jews although he did not name the exact places where he had committed the crimes. At such a distance of time, and without personal identification from eyewitnesses, it seems unlikely that a criminal prosecution proving his guilt “beyond reasonable doubt” would succeed.

63
BBC interview.

64
BBC interview.

65
Quoted in Goetz Aly, “Jewish Resettlement,” Herbert (ed.),
Extermination Policies
, 71.

66
BBC interview.

67
Quoted in Glover,
Humanity
, 345.

68
Testimony of Wilhelm Jaschke in Widmann trial, Schwurgericht Stuttgart 1967, 62–63, Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg EL 317 III, Bu 53.

69
Testimony of Wilhelm Jaschke, Vilsbiburg, Apr. 5, 1960, Budesarchiv Ludwigsburg 202 AR-Z 152/159.

70
Gilbert witness statement in Dwork and van Pelt,
Auschwitz
, 278.

1
Quoted in Gustave Gilbert,
Nuremberg Diary
(Farrar 1947).

2
Quoted in Christopher Browning,
The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy September 1939–March 1942
(William Heinemann 2004), 318.

3
BBC interview.

4
BBC interview.

5
Quoted in Ian Kershaw, “The Persecution of the Jews and German Public Opinion in the Third Reich,” in
Yearbook of the Leo Baeck Institute (
1981), 26:284.

6
Russian State Military Archive 502K/1/218.

7
Peter Witte et al. (eds.),
Himmler's Dienstkalender 1941/2
(Hamburg 1999), 123, n.2; Sybille Steinbacher
, Musterstadt Auschwitz
(Munich 2000), 238–39.

8
BBC interview.

9
BBC interview.

10
Irena Strzelecka and Piotr Setkiewicz, “The Construction, Expansion and Development of the Camp and Its Branches,” in
Auschwitz 1940–1945
(Auschwitz State Museum 2000), 1:78.

11
Rudolf Höss,
Commandant of Auschwitz
(Phoenix Press 2000), 123.

12
Michael Thad Allen, “The Devil in the Details: the Gas Chambers of Birkenau, October 1941,”
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
16, no. 2 (2002).

13
Encyclopedia of the Holocaust
(Macmillan, New York), 2:902.

14
BBC interview.

15
BBC interview.

16
Christopher Browning,
Path to Genocide
(Cambridge University Press 1992), 28–56.

17
From testimony of Walter Burmeister, Jan. 24, 1961, 303 AR-Z 69/59, Bundesarchiv Ludwigsburg, 3.

18
Hitler's Table Talk 1941–1944
(Phoenix Press 2000).

19
Quoted in Peter Longerich,
The Unwritten Order
(Tempus 2001), 78.

20
Gerhard Weinberg, “The Allies and the Holocaust,” in Michael J. Neufeld and Michael Berenbaum (eds.),
Allies and the Holocaust in the Bombing of Auschwitz
(St. Martin's Press 2000), 20.

21
Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham (eds.),
Nazism 1919–1945
(Exeter University Press 1988), 3:1126.

22
Quoted in Longerich,
Unwritten Order
, 92.

23
BBC interview.

24
Interrogation of Kurt Moebius, Nov. 8, 1961, pp.5–6 2 StL 203 AR–2 69/59 Bd3.

25
Quoted in Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen, and Volker Riess (eds.),
The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders
(
Schöne Zeiten
), trans. Deborah Burnstone(Free Press 1988), 255.

26
BBC interview.

27
Perry Broad arrived at Auschwitz in April 1942.

28
KL Auschwitz as Seen by the SS
(Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum 1998), 129.

29
KL Auschwitz as Seen by the SS
, 130.

30
Majdanek, established as a camp for Soviet POWs near Lublin in October 1941, later held some Jews and developed a small Zyklon B gassing facility. It had neither the capacity nor the scale to become conceptually the same as Auschwitz, however, nor did it initially function as a concentration camp.

31
BBC interview.

32
BBC interview.

33
BBC interview.

34
Based on Wisliceny's post-war testimony in Slovakia on May 6 and 7, 1946 (Statny oblastny archive v Bratislave, Fond Ludovy sud, 10/48); and Aug. 12, 1946 (Statny oblastny archive v Bratislave, Fond Ludovy sud, 13/48); and Koso's testimony on Apr. 11, 1947 (Statny oblastny archive v Bratislave, Fond Ludovy sud, 13/48).