c





 
The city of Warsaw, capital of Poland, flanks both banks of the Vistula River.
A city of 1.3 million inhabitants, Warsaw was the capital of the resurrected
Polish state in 1919. Before World War II, the city was a major center of
Jewish life and culture in Poland. Warsaw's prewar Jewish population of
more than 350,000 constituted about 30 percent of the city's total
population. The Warsaw Jewish community was the largest in both Poland
and Europe, and was the second largest in the world, second only to New
York City.
 u
 u
n ctober 12, 1940, the Germans decreed the establishment of a ghetto in
Warsaw. The decree required all Jewish residents of Warsaw to move into
a designated area, which German authorities sealed off from the rest of the
city in November 1940.
The ghetto was enclosed by a wall that was over 10 feet high, topped with
barbed wire, and closely guarded to prevent movement between the ghetto
and the rest of Warsaw. The population of the ghetto, increased by Jews
compelled to move in from nearby towns, was estimated to be over
400,000 Jews.
German authorities forced ghetto residents to live in an area of 1.3 square
miles, with an average of 7.2 persons per room.
‰  ood allotments rationed to the ghetto by the German civilian authorities were
not sufficient to sustain life. In 1941 the average Jew in the ghetto subsisted on
1,125 calories a day.
‰ Czerniaków wrote in his diary entry for May 8, 1941: ³Children starving to
death.´ Between 1940 and mid- mid-1942, 83,000 Jews died of starvation and
disease.
‰ Widespread smuggling of food and medicines into the ghetto supplemented the
miserable official allotments and kept the death rate from increasing still furtherr
furtherr
‰ n April 19, 1943, a new SS and police force appeared outside the ghetto walls,
intending to liquidate the ghetto and deport the remaining inhabitants to the
forced labor camps in Lublin district.
‰ The ghetto inhabitants offered organized resistance in the first days of the
operation, inflicting casualties on the well-
well-armed and equipped SS and police
units. They continued to resist deportation as individuals or in small groups for
four weeks before the Germans ended the operation on May 16.
‰ The SS and police deported approximately 42,000 Warsaw ghetto survivors
captured during the uprising to the forced-
forced-labor camps at Poniatowa and
Trawniki and to the Lublin/
Lublin/Majdanek
Majdanek concentration camp. At least 7,000 Jews
died fighting or in hiding in the ghetto, while the SS and police sent another
7,000 to the Treblinka killing center.
o

‰ n 8 September 1939 Lodz was ‘
 by German troops. In April 1940 the
town was re-re-named Litzmannstadt, after the German general 


 
 
who was killed near Lodz in 1915. 34% of the 665,000 inhabitants were Jews,
making Lodz an important centre of Jewish culture in Poland.
‰  rom the moment of occupation, the Jews suffered from persecution by SS and
1,500 Volksdeutsche, the latter members of the approximately 60,000
inhabitants of German origin.
‰ Economic plunder took place in two ways, the confiscation of Jewish property
and enforced labor in as many as 96 newly built ghetto workshops and factories,
where starvation forced the Jews to work strenuously for a piece of bread and
some soup.
‰ This work as well as all other Jewish affairs within the ghetto was managed by
the Judenrat (Lodz: Ältestenrat / Council of the Eldest), which was established
by the Germans in ctober 1940. It was led by å‘ 


‘
(official title: Ältester der Juden / Eldest of the Jews).
‰ The Judenrat managed the inadequate food rations, 5 hospitals, 47 schools, the
allocation of quarters, the Jewish rder Service and even a ghetto prison.

 
 



 




 
 

‰ 

 

A clear distinction must be observed between the death camps, or killing centers,
and the concentration camps.
In some sense, all of the concentration camps, and there were hundreds of them,
were death camps in that thousands of inmates died of starvation, being worked
to death, exposure to the elements, epidemics and disease, or simply being
executed for alleged crimes. However, the camps are classified on the basis of
their primary, or intended, function.
Many of the camps were established early in the Nazi regime under the "Protective
Custody" law of  ebruary 28, 1933 which authorized the police to make arrests
on suspicion of criminal activity and incarcerated without benefit of legal
counsel or trial.
The first such camp was created at Dachau near Munich in the south (1933). In
that same year, Buchenwald was established near Weimar in the central part of
Germany and Sachsenhausen, near Berlin, in the north. Additional camps were
constructed between 1934 and 1941 as the need for them rapidly increased.
The first inmates of these camps were Communists, democrats, socialists, political
criminals, homosexuals and, of course, Jews.
‰ (
 
Chelmno was a Nazi extermination camp in Poland on the river Ner, 37 M (60 KM)
from Lodz. The Germans called it Kulmhof.
Under the command of Hauptsturmfuhrerer Herbert Lange, Jews transported to
Cholmno were forced, or inticed, into vans, the doors were closed and latched
and the motors were started. A hose carried the carbon monoxide fumes into the
van. It usually required 10 or 15 minutes to murder all who were in the van.
The driver then drove the bodies to the pre-dug graves in the forest where Jewish
workers unloaded the bodies into the graves. The van then returned to the camp
and the operation was repeated.
Estimates of the number of people killed at Chelmno vary from 170,000 to 360,000
men, women and children, virtually all Jews.
Most authorities agree on the higher estimate. Despite this large number, few
people in Poland or abroad ever knew of its existence, or were aware of the
hundreds of thousands of victims it claimed.
The camp was closed in 1943 but reopened in April, 1944. Late in 1944 there were
plans to shut down the camp; however, Soviet troops arrived before these plans
could be implemented.
As the Soviet troops advanced, SS guards liquidated the remaining prisoners.
 
  

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‰ Auschwitz I held the commandant's office and living quarters, the administration
building, kitchen, infirmary, the main guard station, one gas chamber and
crematorium, the Gestapo camp, medical experiments center and gallows.
Barracks housed the criminals in the camp.
‰ These barracks held the "court rooms" where the prisoners were "tried" and
usually sentenced to death. The execution area was located in the southwest
corner of the camp and was used for carrying out the sentences by lining the
prisoners against the wall and shooting them. Their bodies were placed in gravel
pits in and around the main camp. Auschwitz I was surrounded by double barbed
wire electric fences and nine watch towers.
‰ Auschwitz also became a location for medical experiments that used humans as
the guinea pigs. Most notorious of the doctors of these experiments was Josef
Mengele whose favorite experiments were on twins. Experiments were also done
on dwarfs. Hypothermia experiments were carried out using Gypsies as the
primary subjects.
‰ The second site, known as Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, was located 1.5 miles from
the original camp. Construction began in ctober 1941. Rudolf Hoess was
named the commandant of the camp.
‰ Under his command, the main goal of the camp was the extermination and
elimination of all the prisoners. Auschwitz III, also known as Monoschwitz,
consisted of a small area that contained the subcamp and the "buna." The main
function of this sector was the production of synthetic fuel and rubber. As a
result of expansion of the main Auschwitz camp in ctober 1942, Auschwitz III
also was utilized for holding prisoners. The main focus of this essay is upon
Auschwitz II, Auschwitz-Birkenau.
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‰ Construction on Auschwitz-Birkenau began in ctober, 1941 and was completed
in March, 1942 although one provisional gas chamber, in a converted farmhouse,
went into operation in January 1941. When these experiments proved
inadequate, four large Krema, each containing a disrobing area, a gas chamber
and crematorium were constructed between March and June, 1943.
‰ The crematories and gas chamber equipments, constructed by Hoch und Tiefbau
AG Kattowitz, were delivered by the Erfurt firm J.A. Topf & sons. At it's peak,
more than 20.000 people could be murdered and their bodies burned in a single
day. In fact, the single day highest output was 24,000.
‰ Jews comprised the largest number of victims; at least one-third of the estimated
5 million to 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II died there.
 or this reason, Auschwitz has come to symbolize Holocaust more vividly than
any other symbol.
‰ In addition to the Jews, however, large numbers of Poles, Soviet prisoners of
war, gypsies, and homosexuals also died at Auschwitz.
‰ During peak operation from March, 1942 until November, 1944, trains arrived
almost daily with transports of Jews from all over occupied Europe.
‰ n the unloading ramp, new arrivals would undergo selection (O
) by SS
officers .Most women, children, and those that looked unfit to work were sent to
the left; while most young men and others that were fit would be sent to the
right. The left line meant immediate death at the gas chambers and the right
meant probable death from hard forced labor.
‰ The selection split families - mothers from their children, husbands and wives,
brothers and sisters.
‰ Those selected for forced labor were sent to a part of the camp called the
"quarantine, " where their heads were shaved and the were issued prison
uniforms before being sent one of the labor camps nearby.
‰ These prisoners were registered and received numbers tattooed on their left arm.
Initially the numbers were tattooed on the left side of the chest. Approximately
405,000 prisoners were registered in this way.
‰ The vast majority of the Auschwitz victims were not registered at all, those men
and women who, upon arrival Auschwitz II, were led to the gas chambers and
killed there immediately. nly about 65,000 of the tattooed inmates survived the
camp experience.
‰ Arrivals at the complex were separated into three groups. ne group went to the
gas chambers within a few hours; these people were sent to the Birkenau camp,
where more than 20,000 people could be gassed and cremated each day.
‰ At Birkenau, Zyklon-B, a cyanide gas originally manufactured for pest-control.
Before the bodies were burned the victim's hair was cut off and gold fillings and
false teeth made of precious metals were removed.
‰ The hair was used for making haircloth, and the metals were melted into bars
and sent to Berlin. After the liberation tons of hair were found in camp
warehouses. Laboratory analysis of the hair conducted by The Kracow Institute
of Judicial Expertise found traces of prussic acid, a poisonous component typical
of Zyklon -- proof that the victims were gassed..
‰ A second group of prisoners were used as slave labor at large industrial factories
for such companies as I. G.  arben and Krupp. Some prisoners survived through
the help of German industrialist skar Schindler, who diverted them from
Auschwitz to his factory near Krakow and later at a factory in what is now the
Czech Republic.
‰ A third group, mostly twins and dwarfs, underwent medical experiments at the
hands of doctors such as Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death." Eva Moses Kor, a
survivor of Mengele's twin studies, remarked: "I was not on Schindler's list;
however, I was on Mengele's list. And it was better to be on Mengele's list than
on no list at all."
‰ At the Auschwitz complex 405,000 prisoners were recorded as laborers between
1940 and 1945. f these about 340,000 perished through executions, beatings,
starvation, and sickness.
‰ When the SS realized that the end of the war was near, they attempted to remove
all evidence of the atrocities committed there. They dismantled the gas
chambers, crematories and other buildings.
‰ They burned documents and evacuated all the prisoners who could walk to the
interior of Germany. When the Soviet army marched into Auschwitz to liberate
the camp on January 27, 1945, they found about 7600 survivors abandoned
there. More than 58,000 prisoners had already been evacuated by the Nazis and
sent on a final death march to Germany.
h
  
 



   
 


‰ In 1943, he was named SS

garrison physician
(Standortartz) of Auschwitz.
‰ In that capacity, he was
responsible for the
differentiation and selection of
those fit to work and those
destined for gassing.
‰ Mengele also carried out
human experiments on camp
inmates, especially twins. Place
and date uncertain.
 å
   

   
  
‰ In May 1943, Mengele entered Auschwitz as an educated, experienced, medical
researcher. With funding for his experiments, he worked alongside some of the
top medical researchers of the time. Anxious to make a name for himself,
Mengele searched for the secrets of heredity.
‰ The Nazi ideal of the future would benefit from the help of genetics: if Aryan
women could assuredly give birth to twins who were sure to be blond and blue
eyes then future could be saved.
‰ Mengele took his turn as the selector on the ramp, but unlike most of the other
selectors, he arrived sober. With a small flick of his finger or riding crop, a
person would either be sent to the left or to the right, to the gas chamber or to
hard labor. Mengele would get very excited when finding twins.
‰ The other SS who helped unload the transports had been given special
instructions to find twins, dwarfs, giants, or anyone else with a unique
hereditary trait like a club foot or heterochromatin (each eye a different color).
Mengele's seeming omnipresence on the ramp stemmed not only from his
selection duty, but his additional appearance when it was not his turn as
selector to ensure twins would not be missed.
‰ As the unsuspecting people were herded off the train and ordered into separate
lines, SS would shout "Zwillinge!" ("twins!").
‰ Parents were forced to make a quick decision. Unsure of their situation, already
being separated from family members when forced to form lines, seeing barbed
wire, smelling an unfamiliar stench - was it good or bad to be a twin?
‰ Some parents did announce their twins. Some relatives, friends, or neighbors
would announce the twins.
‰ Some mothers tried to hide their twins. The SS and Mengele would search through
the surging ranks of people in search of twins and anyone with unusual traits.
While many twins were either announced or discovered, some sets of twins were
successfully hidden and walked with their mother into the gas chamber
‰ Approximately three thousand twins were pulled from the masses on the ramp,
most of them children; only around two hundred survived.
c

‰ After the twins had been taken from their parents, they were taken to the
showers. Since they were "Mengele's children," they were treated differently
than other prisoners. Besides the obvious, suffering through medical
experiments, the twins were often allowed to keep their hair and allowed to keep
their own clothes.
‰ The twins were then tattooed. They were given a number from a special
sequence.2
‰ They were then taken to the twin's barracks where they were required to fill out
a form. The form asked for a brief history and basic measurements such as age
and height.
‰ Many of the twins were too young to fill the form out by themselves so the
Zwillingsvater ("Twin's  ather") helped them. (This inmate was assigned to the
job of taking care of the male twins.) nce the form was filled out, the twins
were taken to Mengele. Mengele asked them more questions and looked for any
unusual traits.
 
‘


‰ Each morning, life for the twins began at six o'clock. The twins were required to
report for roll call in front of their barracks no matter what the weather. After
roll call, they ate a small breakfast. Then each morning, Mengele would appear
for an inspection.
‰ Mengele's presence did not necessarily connote fear in the children. He was
often known to appear with pockets full of candy and chocolates, to pat them on
the head, to talk with them, and sometimes even play. Many of the children,
especially the younger ones, called him "Uncle Mengele.³
‰ The twins were given brief instruction in makeshift "classes" and were
sometimes even allowed to play soccer.
‰ The children were not required to do hard work and had jobs like being a
messenger. Twins were also spared from punishments as well as from the
frequent selections within the camp.
‰ Conditions for the twins were one of the best in Auschwitz, until the trucks
came to take them to the experiments.
 



‰ Generally, every day, every twin had to have blood drawn.

‰ Blood, often in large quantities, was drawn from twins' fingers and arms, and
sometimes both their arms simultaneously.
‰ The youngest children, whose arms and hands were very small, suffered the
most: Blood was drawn from their necks, a painful and frightening procedure. It
was estimated that approximately ten cubic centimeters of blood was drawn
daily.6
‰ Besides having blood drawn, the twins were to undergo various medical
experiments.
‰ Mengele kept his exact reasoning for his experiments a secret. Many of the twins
that he experimented on weren't sure for what purpose the individual
experiments were for nor what exactly what was being injected or done to them.
‰ Each morning, the twins would wonder what was in store for them that day.
Would their number be called? If yes, then the trucks would pick them up and
take them to one of several laboratories.
‰ å

The twins were forced to undress and lay next to each other. Then every
detail of their anatomy was carefully examined, studied, and measured.
What was the same was deemed to be hereditary and was different was
deemed to be the result of the environment. These tests would last for
several hours.
‰  ‘‘: tests included mass transfusions of blood from one twin to another.
‰ _!
In attempts to fabricate blue eyes, drops or injections of chemicals would
be put in the eyes. This often caused severe pain, infections, and temporary
or permanent blindness.
‰ ‘

,
Mysterious injections that caused severe pain. Injections into the spine and
spinal taps with no anesthesia. Diseases, including typhus and tuberculosis,
would be purposely given to one twin and not the other. When one died,
the other was often killed to examine and compare the effects of the
disease.
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