Auschwitz: The Machinery of Genocide

Introduction

Auschwitz, originally Polish army barracks, was opened in 1940 and was located in southern Poland. Since the time Nazi invaded and occupied Poland in September 1939, it quickly became a mass killing camp using systematic destruction of humanity by means of violence, starvation and labour. It became the largest Nazi concentration and death camps. Auschwitz became the machinery to execute the ultimate place of Adolf Hitler. After the start of World War II, Adolf Hitler implemented the “Final Solution”, which isolated Jews in Germany and in countries annexed by the Nazis and eliminated millions of Jews to solve the “Jewish problem”. This research dissertation aims to study lives of the prisoners more preciously at the Auschwitz death camp. It aims to study how the lives of the prisoners were. This area of study is still relevant in modern time given that the mass genocide carried out by the Nazis regime in accordance with the secret laws of Hitler and his team of army commanders is still fresh in the minds of many. One of the aims of this research dissertation is also to continue discussing the act of genocide and particularly about the lives of the prisoners who were murdered and also those who survived. Auschwitz was one of the biggest camps at that time and it is therefore important to discuss this camp and what had happened inside the camp so that the world continues to know it. One could see the worst treatment of mankind, irrespective of the age, sex, race, gender, etc. in this camp and millions suffered. This dissertation comprises three chapters that will attempt to lay out information and attempt to understand the act of inhumanity by the Nazis against the prisoners, mostly the Jews. Chapter one will discuss about how Auschwitz was created as the machinery to carry out Secret Laws of the Nazis, which included the Final Solution. There were three camps - Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau and Auschwitz III-Monowitz. Auschwitz I was the area where the infamous line ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ meaning ‘works set you free’ was written above the entrance. Auschwitz II-Birkenau was where the gas chambers were. Auschwitz III-Monowitz was where industrial activities were carried out. This chapter will discuss in brief about how Hitler’s totalitarian regime was abused and used in the form of secret laws and as a legal method to carry out wholesale killings in concentration camps. It will depict how Nazis deported prisoners from across Nazi-occupied Europe to Auschwitz. Prisoners were legally and social marginalised and were humiliated and degraded. The Nazis used a separation method where either the victims were directly eliminated or were forced to work and live until they become useless. At the arrival, children and the weak, ill and old prisoners were sent to concentration camps. Men and women were made to go separate ways. Nazis had two categories of prisoners – First Group was those who could work and Second Group was those who were to be immediately killed. More than one million Jews were murdered and incinerated on arrival. More humiliating acts were committed on the prisoners. They were stripped, shaved and marked with numbers and colours thereby taking away their identities and assigned numbers instead. Horrifying acts were executed. Pregnancy was a death sentence and at arrival, all visibly pregnant women and women with small children were sent for immediate killing.

There was range of different duties assigned to the prisoners, which were either within the concentration camps, or outside of the camps. Majority of the work was outside the camp. Chapter two will discuss the work and division of work assigned to the prisoners. One common thing that could be observed is that the classification of work or for that matter even the separation of the prisoners was based on age, class, race and religion. Young and able bodied male prisoners were used as forced labourer. Women were made sex slaves and assigned other tasks that required domestic skills. This chapter will discuss how Nazis adopted some deliberate polices of differential treatment being meted out between Jews from different jurisdictions. It will discuss how the prisoners were group and assigned roles based on the need of the Nazis in administration of the camps and to serve their purpose of eliminating Jews and undesirables. There were specific categories of workers, for example the Sonderkommando, the Kanada Kommando, and the terror agents. For all these categories of work, the only skill required was the physical and mental ability to complete work the entire day on a daily basis. There was also a hierarchy of work and authority, for example the creation of kapos, Lagreralteste, Blockalteste and Studendienste. The role of the men and women is important to discuss to understand how they survive through their daily lives. Chapter two will also particularly discuss the roles of men and women in Auschwitz. Men were given tasks that involved heavy manual work. They were mostly used as slave labourer, such as to carry dead bodies or cleaning chambers. However, there was also lighter work, like those in the kitchen. Nazis prohibited languages of the inmates and allowed only German. This created the role of an interpreter (Dolmetscher). The work life of the women was no less horrible. There was differential treatment to women and the nature and scope of the orders contributed in shaping the length and conditions of Jewish lives in the camps. Their domestic home skills helped them cope with the life in Auschwitz. They were used in the bathhouse, as hairdressers, to sew socks and sorting clothes, and were generally put to the tasks involving some hand skills. However, the worst was the young women who were used as prostitutes. Young Jewish girls were rounded up to serve as prostitutes for the German army. Some of the women worked in the hospitals to move patients, such as out of the ward before SS came and killed them.

Lastly, this dissertation will collect from reminiscences and memoirs of former prisoners in Auschwitz that will show how terrifying the lives of the prisoners were. There was unbearable tension, terror and emotional turmoil in the lives of each and every prisoner. There were constant orders and duties to be followed strictly on time and accurately. In case of non-conformity, prisoners were subject to both personal and collective responsibility. Chapter three particularly discuses the lives of the prisoners, but most importantly the ways they cope with the gruesome routine. Dormitories were crowded and there were three tiers bunked beds where many prisoners were cramped. Prisoners were treated worst than animals. Women did not have any underwear and sanitary protection. The water was treated with some chemicals that stop them from menstruating.” Daily work day started at 4:30 am in the summer and 5:30 pm in the winter. Prisoners also carried back dead bodies killed while working. The meals had low nutritional value and did not suffice for the hard labour leading to deaths in the camp. Sundays and holidays were holidays. However, the prisoners spent the entire day doing chores, such as tidying up quarters, washing or mending their clothes, or shaving or hair cut. This chapter will also share a glimpse of coping mechanism that could be seen amongst the women. Women formed camp sisters, who were like family to find support and help each other emotionally. About the end of the Second World War, 1945 Allies moved in close to Germany and that was when Allied force liberated the concentration and extermination camps in Germany and Poland, and that was when the world camp to know about the worst thing that has been done to mankind.

Chapter One - Auschwitz & Selection

About Auschwitz

Auschwitz was also known as Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was opened in 1940 and was located in southern Poland. It was originally a Polish army barracks. Nazi invaded and occupied Poland in September 1939. By May 1940, they turned it into a jail for political prisoners. It became the largest of the Nazi concentration and death camps. More than 1 million people during World War II (1939-45) lost their lives at Auschwitz by some accounts; they were exterminated, often in gas chambers, used as slave labor, or barbaric medical experiments. Auschwitz became a new power which used systematic destruction by means of violence, starvation and labour. Between 1933 and 1945, it became a means to bring universal horror.

Hitler’s Law, Final Solution

The events related to Auschwitz started when after the start of World War II, Adolf Hitler implemented a policy that came to be known as the “Final Solution”. His laws and actions were beyond just isolating Jews in Germany and in countries annexed by the Nazis. According to him, he could solved the “Jewish problem” by elimination of every Jew in Nazis; domain, and elimination artists, Romas, educators, homosexuals, communists, the mentally and physically handicapped and others that he deemed unfit for survival in Nazi Germany. The “Final Solution” could be claimed to have started since the time the Nazis came to power in 1933. In just five year and half years down the line, Jews in Germany had lost their working rights, and their financial and personal freedom. The situation was not restricted to Germany alone. Same kind of restriction of freedom was suffered by the Jews in Austria and occupied Czech. The build-up to the “Final Solution” which led to creating Auschwitz, for the purpose it was known, comprises certain events, including finding effective ways of carrying out mass murder without less witness and negative impact to Nazis soldiers; finding sites to carry out the killings with high degree secrecy and effectiveness, and finding the ultimate solution of wiping out Jews in a shorter period of time. In 1938, 400 Jews got killed, 30,000 were put in concentration camps, 1,000 synagogues were burnt to ground, and Jewish businesses in thousands were attacked. Over that over 4,50,000 Jews escaped the Reich. All these were done to revenge the murder of a German diplomat in Paris by a Jewish student. In October month of 1938, mentally and physically disabled patient were gassed and killed. Nazis did not like the ways of killing. In addition, the process of separating old and young and slave forced seem to have started when Heinrich Himmler, the leader of SS expressly intended to have Polish people to be without leaders, and wanted them to be ill-educated slave and children, who were suitable to be adopted to be sent to Germany. Himmler desired to have all the word Jews to be eliminated and desired to have them migrated on a large scale. Hitler in fact approved the plan of sending Polish Jews to Madagascar. But, the killing at Auschwitz seems to have started with the killing of 573 sick inmates who were selected from the concentration camp system on 28 July 1941 after Dr. Horst Schumann visited Auschwitz according to an extended program code name “Action 14f13”of T4 program. The extension happened after Himmler visited Phillip Bouhler, Head of Hotler’s Chancelley and Hitler’s representative for the T4 program. The use of Auschwitz camp and the killing methods employed came about after other killing trials, such as shooting, using explosives, mobile gas chambers, and pesticides. By the winter of 1941, gas chambers were constructed at Auschwitz. There were three camps - Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau and Auschwitz III-Monowitz. Auschwitz I was the area where the infamous line ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ meaning ‘works set you free’ was written above the entrance. In October 1941, work on Auschwitz II-Birkenau started. It was at the gas chambers at Auschwitz II-Birkenau where vast majority were murdered. Auschwitz III-Monowitz is where German chemicals company IG Farben was built and it operated a synthetic rubber factory. Hitler and Himmler both made a vital decision in mid-July 1942. They wanted to intensify the mass murder of European Jewry. Thus, the horror began that went totally against all existing human values and social norms.

Secret laws of Nazis

The kind of rules that Nazis applied to the victims that arrived at Auschwitz was totally based on the ‘Final Solution’ laid out by Hitler. One way or the other, Jews along with others was exterminated. There was evidently a higher degree of hate in all the actions of the Nazis. Genocide perpetrated by the Nazis is in itself an interpretation of the Holocaust. It was the most terrifying example of industrial killing and could be considered a characteristic expression of modernity. Holocaust could be considered a product of destructive technical and bureaucratic capacities of the modern Western Civilisation. Hitler adopted this industrial approach of killing. A conditioned readiness of the masses could be seen and under the pressure of Hitler’s totalitarian regime, the masses also relinquished their sense of collective or individual moral responsibility. In this regime, there was constant motion of permanent domination of individuals and their lives, which brought these individuals under a common framework and towards a political goal. The abuse of the concept of totalitarian was the effective use of Hitler’s secret laws. This was a legal method employed by Hitler during his regime, which led to existence of secret laws, such as that law that legalised wholesale killings in concentration camps. This totalitarian approach led to bringing tens of thousands of Jews sent to Auschwitz daily. Secret laws indicate internal actions that were not published and posses the potential of affecting rights and interests of citizen. Orders or laws of Hitler’s to wholesale killing in concentration camps acted as justification to validate the act as being lawful. A certain level of convenience was followed that overrode any legal forms enabling the execution of out such secret orders or law. Even the Nazis’ courts discarded any statute as long it suited their convenience or it did not bring the displeasure of a lawyer-like interpretation. This totalitarian approach led to bringing tens of thousands of Hungarian. Nazis built a dual state – one which is the normative state the existence of which is condoned by the Nazis, and the other which is the prerogative state that ignored such laws when necessary. The continued existence of secret laws and a supportive legal system gave legality to the Nazis, where special decrees and courts removed Hitler’s enemies and the regime was not bound to any legal norms. It was claimed that there was “a wall of silence” about the mass murder occurring and such secretiveness was possible and much easier to maintain Germany under Hitler’s totalitarian regime. Hitler had extreme and effective means of control and also of repression. Moreover, his authorities used determined effort to spread out misleading information regarding the fate of the Jews. Only a very few Germans officials knew about the “Final Solution”. One of them is Himmler, in one of his war time speeches, said that nobody would speak about the Final Solution and the fate of the Jews. The ways the secret laws were executed reportedly involved many participants and witnesses. Authorities, such as the party leaders, SS, security police and agencies employed camouflage languages while even in internal correspondence. Some of the languages used were “resettled”, “removed”, “evacuated”, “deported”, or the most popular was “special treatment”. All these words meant killing of Jews. The extent of secrecy could be gauged from Himmler’s sensitivity towards and subsequent order not to use of “special treatment” by Korherr, who was the chief statistician of the SS in an interim report that provided the progress of the “Final Solution”. Another instance of the high degree of the secrecy was the fact that some senior most leaders of the SS, one of them being Karl Wolff who was the Chief of Staff of Himmler, did not reportedly know about the “Final Solution”. Only a few, Hitler, Hermann Goering, and Himmler and then in descending order of authority, Reinhard Heydrich, Adolf Eichmann, their immediate collaborators, and the special units called the Einsatzgruppen, knew about the “Final Solution”. This cut down on the witnesses including the army once the “Final Solution” became an institution in itself.

Selection at Auschwitz

Nazis deported prisoners from across Nazi-occupied Europe to Auschwitz. The transit was conducted in nightmarish conditions. They were crammed into freight cars. There was no water or food. They travelled for days. Prisoners were already subjected to cruelties. There was inhumane imprisonment in ghettos. They were legally and social marginalised. They were humiliated and degraded. It was the young Slovakian Jewish women who were among the first contingents of Jews transported to Auschwitz. They became the forerunner firstly for young men, families, and finally all the Jews from Slovakia. On 27 March 1942, the expulsion of Slovakian Jews to the district of Lublin started and it ended on 15 June 1942. 38 ‘transports’ occurred that led to deportation of around 40,000 of them. What was worst is that only a few of the deportees survived. A small proportion of the Slovakian Jews were directly sent to the death camps, but a majority of them were sent first to ghettos, used as interim stops and then were deported to the death camps. This Slovakian deportation became a model for other countries. It must be noted that Jews left behind in Slovakia became aware of the fate of the deportees due to contact established between them and the deportees at a very early stage. This information was conveyed to Jewish organisations operating in neutral countries and to other. There were failed attempted widespread evasions by women of the transports to evade the execution of Final solution of Hitler. There were informal networks of women that brought evasion some success. But, there were reported cooperation by some of the women with the administration to gain some advantage. On the other hand though, people with some connection with the authority within Auschwitz social structure used its connection to help the defenceless. However, all these events are of marginal importance considering that three quarters of these Jews were killed on the arrival. The German state killed about 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, 75,000 Polish civilians, and some 25,000 Roma and Sinti, as well as Jehovah's witnesses, political prisoners and homosexuals at Auschwitz. This evidently shows that there was some selection process involved in deciding who to be killed and who not to be killed. The Nazis used a separation method wholly based on the Final Solution founded by Hitler, which is total elimination of Jews. Under this solution, either the victims were directly eliminated or were forced to work and live until they become useless. It was reported that victims from all over Europe were pushed into cattle wagons without any windows, seats or food, toilets, and were transported to Auschwitz. When prisoners in Auschwitz and other camps were no longer useful, they were sent to Birkenau concentration camp. A train discharged around four to five thousand prisoners. On arrival at the camp, the cars of the train that brought the prisoners looked like funeral train with many decaying corpses. Even on arrival prisoners were not offloaded in some of the trains and those living prisoners had to pile on each other to avoid contact with the corpses. The camp was filled with odour of the flesh being burnt. There were many women who were doctors or wives of doctors, who carried poison capsules in case worst situations occurred. At entry point, instructions for selection could be seen that divided the transport into two – one that had men and women who were fit and aged between 16 to 50 and another carrying men and women who were incarcerated and the rest gassed to death. Healthy men and women in their late teens and/or early twenties were made to stand in line in a waiting room were brought in one after another. The women stood between plates that hid their abdomen and back and men stood with their penis and scrotum on a plate. Castration surgeries were performed. Torturous techniques were used to collect sperms or remove productive organs. These are some events that demonstrate how torturous inhuman medical treatments started right on the arrival of the prisoners.

At the arrival

On receiving the prisoners, they were given instructions by the camp commandant to observe strictest disciple. The existing prisoners in stripped uniforms were put to work to collect luggage. Selection took place at the gates of Birkenau where the railroad siding ramp. The first selection was selecting the weak, either on the left side or the right, who were sent to the crematories. Children and old people were automatically selected for the left. The SS guards were merciless and they beat up anybody who resisted. The weaker section of the crowd, for example old people and sick people, were made to remain in the train and were transported to unknown location and were never seen. Babies were totally left unattended. There were doctors and four or five ambulances to transport to supposedly transport the ailing. But, in reality it was a window dressing to maintain order with minimum use of force. The ambulance took the sick directly to the gas chambers. At the arrival, separation took place where men and women are made to go separate ways at the time they were removed from the train with the promise that they could see each other every second day. The purpose was allegedly to easily manage them. Nazis used forceful and threatening ways of separating them. The victims were then sorted into two categories – First Group was those who could work and Second Group was those who were to be immediately killed. The Second Group were stripped naked and were delivered to showers for ‘delousing’ - a euphemism used for the gas chambers. Not only women who were old and weak and women who could not be separated from children, there are other young women who refused to abandon their mothers and who chose to die with their mothers during the early stages of the Final Solution (1941, 1942). In this process of the first selection, more than one million Jews were murdered and incinerated on arrival and bodies of the bodies were not registered. Other than mass killing, which was very horrific, Nazis used slave labour, which was another way of taking out life in a slower but painful way. As a result of the war and increasing number of prisoners, the network of concentration camps grew in larger quantity to absorb the growing number of nationals from Nazi-occupied countries. As a result, the living conditions in the camps worsened. It was between 1941 and 1942, that the SS’s plan and tendency to turn the camps into a pool of manpower for slave forces became evident, which also was used as a site to eradicate Jews, termed undesirables. There were parallel implementation, one of the plan of and promoting productive labour and the other method known as the “destruction through work”. The latter showed two forms. Firstly, work as punishment within the comprehensive terror system, and secondly, backbreaking labour without the use of even the simplest work-tools in below subsistence level of living. In the second half of 1942, the living conditions of prisoners and labour policies improved a bit, except those of European Jews, which was in its extreme. Himmler started temporarily using able and skilled Jews prisoners in the production process of war machinery and placed them under SS control.

Women carrying young children were divided into two groups. Some women with children were murdered upon arrival. The remaining was used as slave labour rumoured to be used as prostitutes and their children thrown in the ditch to die. Auschwitz extracted slave labour from most of Jews and inmates before killing them. Women inmates, just like men, were lined up and taken a roll call. They were shaved and then taken to work. They were not given any number as was seen with men. Women felt this treatment was very dehumanizing. More humiliating methods were employed by the Nazis after the selection process. Male prisoners were stripped and cleaned, and tattooed with ink and number assigned to each prisoners. Prisoners with tattoo were considered lucky in the sense those who did not have were murdered. There was no medical care. Even the women were stripped naked and shaved and made to stand naked in front of the soldiers. They were sent to the bathhouse. The prisoners were stripped of belongings and were force marched to the slaughter houses. The corpses from the train were unloaded. All the prisoners were lined for hundreds of yards. Women were objected to oral, rectal and vaginal examinations. After that, women were pushed in a chamber for showers. After the showers, they were shaved of their hairs, which were accumulated as precious raw materials for the Germans. Some of them whipped for no reason known. Disinfectants were smeared over the heads and the body and prison clothes and rags as underwear were provided. The clothes were painted red stripes. Many fell sick and died. They were forced march through forest into the concentration camps. Auschwitz was the slave camp, in which there were many war factories and many were used to produce armaments. For Jews, there is no weather. Girls were divided into different lines and made to march in snow in extreme cold. The worst undignified act was not having logging records by SS of women killed until May 12, 1942, which was unlike the case with male prisoners. One exception was Marta Kom’s death, the first ever reported woman death case in Auschwitz.

Pregnant women, mothers with children

In July 1943, the order for compulsory abortion was issued whereby any woman and the newly born child and her husband were sent on the next “transport” to Auschwitz death camp. Pregnancy was a death sentence in the concentration camp. At arrival, all visibly pregnant women and women with small children were sent for immediate killing. A woman in the early months of pregnancy might escape from detection and become a slave labor. Some women who were pregnant were spared the murder and were saved for medical experiments. Mengele, the murderous Auschwitz doctor, was notorious for experimenting on inmates. He chose a woman, who was pregnant, for forced labour, rather than murdering her in the gas chamber. There were medical experiments conducted on pregnant women. More worst was how women who were pregnant were treated before murdering them in the gas chamber. SS men and women surrounded them and they were beaten up by these guards, left dogs on them, pulled by hair and kicked with boots. After they were beaten senselessly, they were thrown to the gas chambers to die. Women were accorded “special treatment” that is killed without any delay to destroy the root basis of Jews. Same goes for children. Many terrible incidents occurred during and after the selection process. One is the separation of children from their parents or mothers and the murder of the children. Nazis faced certain administrative challenges in separating the children. One such terrible story is that of the killing of Jewish children sent from France. There were cases of children being snatched from their mothers at camp. There were cases of mother letting the sons run away with the hope that they would survive. Also, there were cases of families wanting to stay together at all cost. The selection process separated the family members, but Nazis realised that separation of mothers from children countered their interests of efficient management of killing process and also to reduce emotional distress of the killing squad, which was the Nazis’ reason to start concentration camp instead of continuing the killing of women and children by shooting. To advance this interest of efficient murder management, Nazis murdered both mothers and children.

Chapter Two – Work & Roles

There was range of different duties, which were either within the concentration camps, or outside of the camps. Majority of the work was outside the camp. The prisoners were assigned work in many factories, farms, coal mines, or construction projects, which were owned by German companies. Prisoners in Auschwitz were considered lucky than those in Birkenau, which was a slaughter camp. The types of labour that prisoners carried out depended greatly on which camp they were placed in. Heavy physical labour, such as construction, was common throughout almost all camps. This labour could be based on the camp itself, or for external companies, such as building the infamous IG Farben complex which was part of Auschwitz.Inmates were also forced to complete other types of work. This work was hugely varied, from counterfeiting money and testing the soles of shoes in Sachsenhausen, to secretarial work, to sorting new arrivals possessions in the Kanada warehouses in Auschwitz. One common thing that could be observed is that the classification of work or for that matter even the separation of the prisoners was based on age, class, race and religion. One could see distinction being made at every stage of the execution of the “Final Solution”. Nazis sent the children and the weak to concentration camps. Young and able bodied male prisoners were used as forced labourer. Women were made sex slaves. Distinction been made between the rich, which was the political prisoners and the poor. Differential treatment meted out between Jews from different jurisdiction, for example Slovak Jews women were given work with higher authority.

Specific categories of workers

There was the Special Works Unit called the Sonderkommando. They worked in Crematoria's at Auschwitz. They work for up to four months. Their working conditions were terrible. They processed and disposed of bodies from the gas chambers. Another unit was the work of prisoners, called the Kanada Kommando. After the selection process, they collected possessions and precious belongings of the Jews victims transported to Auschwitz and took them to the Kanada warehouse facility. They sorted and transported these belongings back to Germany. The prisoners termed the warehouse as Kanada as they symbolised Canada as the country with wealth and the warehouse was full of different possessions. They were also assigned the task of handling soon-to-be-corpses and the corpses’ ashes. The Nazis selected a few of the prisoners who were the most brutal and unbalanced. They had authority over the other inmates. Auschwitz was one such camp that used this method of terrorising and controlling the prisoners by using this method. They were given specific tasks of continuing the control over the inmates in absence of the SS guards. These selected few were the most demoralised and they had the executed power to choose their staffs from the pool of prisoners and to use brutal force to exercise their authority. A group of prisoner-functionaries were also selected and they were known to be the cruelest, just like their SS bosses. They have the prisoner-crews known as Aussenkommandos. The functionaries had the privilege of exemption from physical work, had extra food rations, and better living conditions than the other prisoners. Some of the assignments were considered good assignments, such as services in the kitchen, laundry and other various workshops. Some of the prisoners in such squads worked indoors and they happened enjoyed greater opportunities of organising (a slang in the camp meaning stealing) some extra food. This extra food was considered the most precious benefit. It was mostly the old times and those prisoners who had some connection who were able to be assigned this work. What is interesting is that the relationship that these squads had in the prison society started way before in the pre-war time or from the solidarity among the prisoners during the transport when they were in the same transport or above all, started from the ties of membership in political resistance and underground movements. Because of the kind of work involved at the concentration camps, the first requirement was that the prisoners needed were to be strong so as to be able to complete heavy duty tasks. Such task included working in the factories, crematoria and coal mines. Second, prisoners were required to be physically well to complete the task as per the needed standard. Every other job in the concentration camps needs physical well being. Prisoners needed to take care of the bodies so that they could be at optimal health and function. The prisoners with weaker physical well being were executed. Third was resilience in the prisoners, who could easily recover faster from any incidents, so that they could work the entire day on a daily basis.

Unequal treatment and maltreatment at work

There was also racial discrimination faced by the prisoners. With the arrival of Slovak Jews at around March 1942, annihilation of the Jews accelerated. The German Lager made space for the Jews. This arrival increased the racial discrimination between the inmates. The German used this Lager as the final stage of annihilation of Jews. Slovakian women were given better jobs and later given to Jewish women. Slovak women were given jobs requiring German writing skill sets. As such, office work provided better protection and security such as protection from cold with necessary cloth wears. Some of these Slovak Jewish women were cruel to Jewish women. They were given jobs with certain authority. One example was a 16 year old Cili who became a Kapos, a foreman and was responsible for a barrack. Other women were given jobs of gassing. Nazis adopted policies deliberate to create tensions and conflicts between prisoners and between categories of prisoners. This was seen when authorities at the camp created a small powerful stratum of prisoners with authorities. The kapos were put in charge of work units. Lagreralteste was put in charge of the camp population. Blockalteste and Studendienste were in charge of commanding the blocks and many other central administration positions of the camps. Further hierarchy was found when the prisoners were grouped into ethnic and racial groups. Another set is that of the reds, who were political prisoners and greens, who were the criminal prisoners. The German prisoners, though smaller in numbers, occupied positions of authority. They had the key prison posts. Some of these German prisoners were also selected as black elders or chief of the prisoner blocks. Most of them are with sadists and were professional criminals. But, it is reportedly not true to state that all kapos and block elder maltreated other prisoners. It was in fact for the first two years after the camp came into existence, but situation changed. In Auschwitz I, Poles prisoners held official posts. At Auschwitz II-Birkenau, in both the men’s and women’s prisons, Jewish prisoners held such official posts. The impression of these Jews that they would undergo the normal manual slave labour was broken when they realised they would be treated differently. They were mostly Jews. They were tortured by the Gestapo and exceptional treatment was meted out to them, who worked against the Nazis during wartime. They were beaten up and treated like dogs. The treatment could not be considered slavery as in slavery life of the slave was of interest to the owners. Nazis’ version of slavery was to make prisoners work till they die and they cared less as they did not lack forced man powers. This is one reason too they needed the barracks to be empty to bring in new forced labour and for new labour to come in the existing ones needed to be murdered. However, it was later that the political prisoners played roles in changing the conditions of the camp. It was observed that habitual criminals, when they occupied key positions in the lower echelons of the hierarchy in the camp, subjected the prisoners to arbitrary punishment, humiliation and physical abuse and torture. These acts were driven by their desire to meet the expectation of the Nazis officials and also that they did not have any regard for human dignity. However, this trend gradually reduced as productive work became critically important to the Third Reich. The change was that prisoners who were political assumed supervisory roles, with the effect that prisoners had some relief from the torture. It is here to be noted that these political prisoners were connected to the underground resistant movement active in Auschwitz that time. In the later stage of the camp, they had the ability to influence the camp conditions and leaked information to the outside world.

Role of the prisoners

Men were used mainly as slave labourer. Such slave labour was in used during one such transit of Soviet POWs to the camp. There was a transport from Minsk. The victims had not food or light. They did not have any clue about the camp and they thought initially it was a labour camp. Some of the POWs were selected based on the strength and health to carry dead bodies. Several other physically fit Jews were also selected to work burying dead bodies, cleaning chambers and sorting huge pile of clothes and belonging. Several were locked in cells and left to starve to death. A group of men, mostly Jewish, were chosen as Sonderkommando, who were given the jobs of transporting victims from the gas chambers and disposing their bodies. Nazis were able to run the concentration camps because of them. Their work involved secrecy as they were aware of the crime first hand. They performed under threat of death and their lives were under fear and isolation. Some men based on their calibre were given certain ad hoc roles such as minding the crowd. Some of the men were assigned the role of an interpreter. This job was not confined to men alone. Nazis prohibited languages of the inmates and allowed only German. Every inmate, from various ethnic groups, was forced to memorise some basic phrases in German, such as camp detention numbers, barrack number or songs they sung for Nazis soldiers. Survival in the camp without knowing German was near to impossible. It was mostly Italian who died within the first ten to fifteenth day after arrival since they were not able to communication that could have had helped them know survival ways. In this multilingual situation, there was therefore a need for interpreter. On arrival there were many inmates declared and listed as interpreters (Dolmetscher). They were mostly Jews from Polan or Russia. There were three groups. The first group consisted of the SS men working in the camp. Second were female inmates working as registrars (Schreiberinen) or messengers (Läuferinen). They were mostly Slovak or Hungarian Jews. Third was made up of prisoners who knew German or other language such as Russian necessary in the camp. Being an interpreter did not give them any privilege. They had to perform this function as well in addition to the force labour. This role also did not guarantee them any privileges for survival. But knowing German enabled them to communicate better with other inmate functionaries, and help others better. The work assigned to the women was no less worst compared to that of the men. The rules and regulations of the Nazis intended to give differential treatment to women and the nature and scope of these orders contributed in shaping the length and conditions of Jewish lives in the camps. Similar to that of the men, ad hoc selection for specific job was made, like when the women were sent to the bathhouse, and some women who were hairdressers were selected to cut or shave hair. They were into sewing socks and sorting clothes. They also were treated as a blood donors but forcefully taken to save Germans soldiers. Women were generally put to the tasks involving some hand skills. Some of them were put to the task of hammering batteries to get usable wires for electricity. Their domestic skills with the ability to sew led them assigned to the uniform-repair section. However, the worst part that was in total disregard of human dignity was the use of young women as prostitutes. Young women fall under the First Group where their lives had some materialistic purpose for the Nazis. Young Jewish girls were rounded up to serve as prostitutes for the German army. An evidence of this is the story of Iby Knill BEM, who in 1942 fled over the border into Hungary after a rumour of such thing happening. Iby was deported in 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau. She was selected for forced labour. Six weeks down the line, she was transferred to another camp. In 1945, Iby was sent on forced march to Germany. Iby was eventually liberated by the US Army while they were on march. This, with other similar events, shows that the categorisation occurred based on whether the victims are healthy to be used or fit enough to live in the German society as envisioned by Hitler. For example, Ibi Ginsburg, born in Hungary in 1924, along with her family were deported in 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Nazis selected both Ibi and her sister for forced labour. Their mother and two younger sisters were directly taken to the gas chambers. They spent three months in Auschwitz-Birkenau and were transferred to another camp in Germany from where sent on forced march to another camp, where they were liberated in 1945. The sex slaves were reportedly being kept on the top floor. Nazis soldiers gave them sweets after abusing them. Women psyched themselves out by trying to find some dignity in what they were forced to do. They shared these sweets with children. The women stated that this was the way they rise above indignity.

There were other roles assigned to the women. Some of the women worked in the hospitals to move patients, such as out of the ward before SS came and killed them. Some of the women were responsible for mixing paint and ensuring a stripe was painted on the back of each dress. The camp had a chaotic life. Such could be explained by the situation in the kitchen. Prisoners did not have any clue of what they were drinking. They were provided the same food, a loaf of bread to be divided among a few prisoners. They were not given any knife cut the bread. The haphazard environment started from the morning roll call. The barracks were poorly run system and prisoners were mixed with hardened German criminals.

Chapter Three – Life at Auschwitz

Reminiscences and memoirs of former prisoners in Auschwitz show the terrifying lives and superhuman efforts of the prisoners. The living condition is beyond description and impossible to portray. There was unbearable tension, terror and emotional turmoil in the lives of each and every prisoner. Despite the gloom and everlasting threat to life, prisoners did not lay down their guard and they were on permanent vigil. There was no question of privacy or physical, emotional or mental health and they were under constant hunger. No human dignity was such was recognised as prisoners were known and called by designated numbers and not by their names. There were constant orders and duties to be followed strictly on time and accurately. In case of non-conformity, prisoners were subject to both personal and collective responsibility. For instance during the mandatory evening call, if one missed the call because he fell asleep, other prisoners and he would be made to stand at the same place for hours, without movement or regardless of the weather. Over all these, prisoners’ sleep time was regulated. The prisoners were not treated as human. This was evident in the way the camp was fortified with barbed wire and electrified fence with constant patrolling. It is also evident from the very fact that prisoners on arrival were given number and same stripped uniform and treatment. Several identification marks were used, like a tattoo on the left hand arm, a small triangle for Jews, red colour triangle piece of cloth for political prisoners, green for ordinary criminals, and black for asocials. For Jewish prisoners, they used a Star of David with red and yellow triangles.

Daily living

Dormitories were crowded and there were three tiers bunked beds. Prisoners were treated worst than animals. There was a “Barrack” that had a metal plague with the number of horses the building would shelter. A large brick stove divided the interior into two parts. This stove was four feet high and the two parts had the three tiers bunked beds. Prisoners were provided with old smelly blankets, one blanket for every ten prisoners. There was severe lack of space that could not accommodate all the prisoners. The building leaked during rain. For women, the condition was worst. They were each provided a red bowl and spoon, unwashed itchy sack-like uniform, and “clappers” the wooden shows. Women slept four or five in number on a wooden bed. They were woken at 4 in the morning and got tea for breakfast with which they clean their teeth using their fingers. Women did not have any underwear and sanitary protection. The water was treated with some chemicals that stop them from menstruating.” Though there were three meals per day, they had low nutritional value. Breakfast was half a litre of coffee, which was mostly boiled water added with grain-based coffee substitute, or tea, which was some kind of herbal brew. They were usually unsweetened. Lunch was about a litre of unappetising soup of potatoes, rutabaga, and some groats, rye flour, and extract of Avo food. Newly arrived prisoners could not consume this. Dinner was about 300 grams of black bread, with about 25 grams sausage, or margarine, or maybe a tablespoon of marmalade or cheese. What is inhuman was that the bread was to cover the following morning needs. These low nutrition food did not suffice for the labour that needed superhuman effort. It led to organs deterioration leading to emaciation and starvation, causing a significant number of deaths in the camp. Prisoner with starvation sickness, also referred to as a “Musselman,” had higher chances to being murdered in the gas chambers. However, second half of 1942, the meals improved when prisoners could receive food parcels, but it was not in the fate of the Jews and Soviet POWs. The deliberate policies of the Nazis to create tension and conflict between prisoners and groups of prisoners were seen in the food ration and distribution inside the camp. Women were assigned to keep the barrack clean, the violation of the rule lead to severe sanctions. Barrack huts sheltered 1,400 to 1,500 prisoners, had 20 bowls for every 1500 prisoners. Women were pitted against each other by the Germans to make them spiteful. They were provided with rations of beet-sugar or margarine, six and one half ounces of bread, which was full of sawdust. Some of the women were put in duty to guard the bowls.

Daily Schedule

Daily work day started at 4:30 am in the summer and 5:30 pm in the winter. There was a roll call at the roll-call square, where all of them lined up in rows of ten by block. Roll call got prolonged if the count did not add up, and there was tormenting that followed. They marched in working groups. There were some exceptions. Prisoners who were working several kilometers away were not needed in the roll call as they used to leave for work earlier. Similarly, prisoners working in internal labour, such as hospital, kitchen, or orchestra attend did not roll call. In February 1944, morning roll call was abolished to maximise the labour productivity. The total hours of work ran up to minimum 11 hours, as applicable in summer, and lesser in the winter. Prisoners were escorted back to the camp by SS before nightfall. Prisoners also carried dead bodies killed while working. There was a roll call for evening bread with its accompaniment and they had free time after the meal. At the evening, there was a first gong that was a signal for everyone to return to their quarters. Until then, prisoners waited used their time to the washrooms and toilets or receive mail or visit acquaintances in other blocks. The second gong announced night-time silence. Prisoners were allowed to go to toilet twice in a day. In the first months after arrival, prisoners used water from two wells and they relieved themselves in a provisional latrine located outdoor. After the camp was rebuilt, each building had lavatories on the ground floor. There were 22 toilets, urinals, and washbasins and the building had trough-type drains as well as 42 spigots installed above them. The access to the lavatories was limited as the prisoners from both the upstairs and downstairs used a single lavatory. The lack of taking care of personal hygiene led to sickness and death of many prisoners. Sundays and holidays were holidays with no labour. These days were spent doing holiday chores, such as tidying up quarters, washing or mending their clothes, or shaving or hair cut. On these holidays, prisoners attended concerts performed by camp orchestra. They send official letters every other week to their families. The camp administrators sometimes gave postcards to the prisoners to write to those left behind to inform them they were in good health. The ulterior motive was for the Gestapo to know the whereabouts of those they were searching. These instances give a unique side to the stories of how prisoners adapted and survived in extreme conditions. It was traumatic for prisoners to enter the death camp but, such instance show paralysis of emotions and thoughts may not be as general as normally believed. Prisoners reacted several ways to the initial encounter of the camps. Sometime the defence mechanisms worked, and there seem to be various other subjective factors that influenced survival. Through all these worst conditions, women inmates found time to cheer themselves up. Some of them sang and drank on New Year’s Eve. The protest against the tortures perpetrated against women also took the form of mutual emotional support. Women supported each other by indulging in storytelling, shared food, reminiscences and rags. Some of the women also showed resistance, such as Gisella Perl who performed abortions and infanticide to save pregnant women from being sent to gas chambers along with their children and foetuses.

Coping mechanism

There were many testimonies that present some gender specific coping skills. It was observed that women had caretaking and homemaking skills, which became assets for them increasing their chances of survival. In the camp, they paid more attention to their personal hygiene. In general, these caretaking and homemaking skills strengthened their will to cope with the conditions in the camps and avoid personal deterioration. Women also shared recipes and cooking techniques as a means to cope starvation. It reportedly created a powerful psychological effect, which reflected their will to live, and hope for a future. Women in the concentration camps also coined a term known as “camp-sister”. Family-like ties were formed amongst, first group comprising mothers and daughters and relatives, and pre-war close friends, and second group comprising women who met and bonded in the camps. These relationships were formed or maintained to support and sustain each other. A parallel term did not exist for men.

About the end of the Second World War - 1945

It was during the late 1944 and early 1945 when the Allies came to close in on Germany that surviving prisoners were forced by the Nazis on long marches towards the camps believed to far away from the Allies. In this process, thousands died. Allied forces liberated the concentration and extermination camps in Germany and Poland, It was during this time, war reporters and military personnel witnessed the most horrifying acts of the Nazis and this began the full exposure of the horror of crimes in the camps to the world.

Conclusion

This dissertation shows the extreme level that Nazis went in executing the Final Solution. Nazis really executed its horrendous plan of degrading humans on this earth. Auschwitz is the example of that and it will remain so for many generations to come to remind humans of the fact that Nazis did not have any limit on its cruelty. Auschwitz became an effective tool of the “Final Solution”, and it enabled the Nazis to a great extent to execute their plan of isolating Jews and solving the “Jewish problem”. The way they systematically destroyed humans and their dignity and freedom by use of physical, mental and emotional violence is still disturbing and tragic to read about. It is worth the study of the psychology of the Nazis to understand how they convinced their mind to commit such acts that were unpardonable and unthinkable. The secret laws of Nazis called for mass participation and also, as a result, mass imposition of the laws. The act of permanent domination of lives, as a core component of a totalitarian society, was not to serve a political goal, as is required, but looks like some personal vendetta of a very few unbalanced minds. Right from the selection and separation method on arrival at Auschwitz, the height of extreme and unconditional hatred was demonstrated when three quarters of Jews were killed on the arrival. Segregation of prisoners into groups occurred based on the ability to work. This may look like and has been reportedly as, for the purpose of better management by the Nazis. Alternative view could be that this was done purely for segregating abled manpower to serve the needs of the Nazis until the prisoners could do so till the last percent of their human strength. This is supported with the fact that the weak and those with no physical and mental ability to be useful to the Nazis were terminated. Concentration camps or the manslaughter houses are example of the horrific acts of the Nazis. They built these camps and used them as killing machines, killing prisoners innumerably in a short period of time. But, they also are the example of hypocrisy of the Nazis. Nazis used them to kill prisoners as the previous killing method of shooting prisoners to death was traumatic to their shooting squads. So, on one hand are inhuman while killing the prisoners, and on the other, they were considerate towards their shooting squad. The worst of all was how they treated pregnant women before murdering them in the gas chamber. Pregnant women were degraded and tortured for a game and were thrown to the gas chambers to die. It is all apparent that they put the whole blame on women, who they considered to be the root basis of Jews. The life in Auschwitz was the worst of its kind. Every ounce of strength of the prisoners was sucked out of the body before they were murdered. Nazis were deliberate in their policies of eliminating the prisoners. The way the work was defined and the prisoners were assigned roles and duties all served these deliberate policies. As seen in Chapter two and Chapter three, the work could be categorised into two main groups. The first group is where prisoners were used as slave labour in factories, farms, coal mines, or construction projects to aid the war machinery projects of the Nazis. Women were used in various work assignments, but the worst was when they were used as sex slaves. This particular work group contributed to the war machinery of the Nazis. The second group is mainly towards the “political goal” as Nazis claimed, where prisoners were used in activities concerning concentration camps, which is killing prisoners. Here, prisoners were used to dispose murdered victims, to clean the concentration camps, to collect and segregate left over belonging of the deaths. In order to easily manage the operation of the two groups of work, the labour was grouped into various divisions, such as Sonderkommando, Kanada Kommando, terror agents, Aussenkommandos and other lighter assignments, such as services in the kitchen, laundry and other various workshops. These assignments were done in such a way of making Auschwitz and the camps automatic killing machinery, which used fewer German officials and effort and used selected prisoners to take up assigned work.

The work division and the way that was operated show deliberately infused divisive policies, which resulted in a balanced hierarchical authority inside Auschwitz, which did not at all gave a balanced life to the prisoners, but more of chaotic and inhumane life for the prisoners. It is terrifying even to read the experiences of the prisoners. But, what is inspiring and worth remembering by present generation is the superhuman efforts of the prisoners. Every moment and second of the daily life was under constant orders, duties and permanent vigil, the non-compliance met with both personal and collective punishments. Even animals are not treated like they way they were treated. With no basic living conditions, such as minimum space of resting, minimum nutritional meals, and sanitation, the deliberate policies of the Nazis created emotional, physical and mental tension, conflicts and chaos amongst the prisoners. The prisoners, however, found ways of handling the pressure in the camps. The practice of camp-sisters and Sunday chores of taking care of their personal health show the everlasting hope of the prisoners to find life after Auschwitz. Finally, about the end of the Second World War, the hope of the prisoners came alive. What is worth remembering is the existence of the two extremes. First the inhumane acts of the Nazis. Second and the most important is the unimaginable strength of the prisoners and the ways they adopted to cope with the life in Auschwitz.

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