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by Dr. Daniel Keren, Jamie McCarthy
Gord McFee and Mark Van Alstine
Holocaust-deniers claim that the ovens of Auschwitz saw little use.Very few could be cremated, they say - a few hundred corpses per dayat most - and there was never any systematic killing at Auschwitz,only deaths caused by accidents, typhus and old age. So of coursethere was no need for the crematory fires to burn day and night.
These documents (among others) prove them wrong.
Introduction
In the Auschwitz Museum archives are a series of three-pagesdocuments listing theArbeitseinsatz, the "labor force," activeeach day at the Birkenau camp. Fortunately, these documents were notdestroyed at the end of the war like most Auschwitz camp papers.
The labor force documents are an example of what many call the Nazilove for bureaucracy. Every job from the laundry room to the typingroom, from weed mowers to canal cleaners, is listed here, in columnsof anonymous numbers that change slightly from day to day.
Was it important to record that there were two skilled laborersstaffing the political department of the prisoner typing room onAugust 2, 1944, but three the next day? Perhaps this hadsomething to do with the corporation I.G. Farben promising: "Apayment of RM 3 per day for unskilled workers and RM 4 perday for skilled workers is to be made for eachinmate." [1]Whatever the reason, detailed records were kept for even the mosttrivial tasks.
And then there are the tasks which betray the sinister secretsinside the camp: the extermination actions. The most striking facts canbe hidden in a featureless series of numbers. The number of "stokers"are listed on page 3 of each report. At face value, this wouldmean the prisoners who fed the huge ovens of the death camp with fuel. Inreality, it is a euphemism for the Sonderkommando, the prisoners whoalso untangled corpses from the gas chambers, dragged them to the ovensor pits, and burned them.
How many? During July and August of 1944, over 100 people wererequired at each of four crematoria buildings during the day, and anequal number at night. Over eight hundred Sonderkommando staffed theextermination buildings to help carry out the liquidation of theGypsy camp in Birkenau; Jews from Belgium and France; Jews from theGalacia and Radom districts in the Generalgovernment; and Jews fromthe Lodz Ghetto in theWarthgua. [2]
On September 23, 1944, according to eyewitness testimony,200 Sonderkommando were taken to the Auschwitz I camp andmurdered. [3]The labor force report for October 3 shows a drop from 874 to 661Sonderkommando.
Sinti and Roma are listed as unskilled workers on the third page ofthe August 2 report (as "Zig.," for "Zigeuner"). This was theirlast day. Their entry is gone on the August 3 report. Theactivities of August 2 are described by DanutaCzech: [4]
After the evening roll call, a camp arrest is ordered inAuschwitz II and a block arrest in the Gypsy Family Camp, B-IIe.Camp B-IIe and other barracks where Gypsies are housed aresurrounded by armed SS men. Trucks drive into the camp and 2,897defenseless women, men, and children are driven to the gas chambers.
Note also that the wood unloaders working atCrematorium IV (V) during July and August suggest that, atthis time, additional corpse-burning was taking place in theincineration pits to the north and west of that Crema. By October, thewood unloaders are not listed.
Finally, note the boys, twin boys, and other prisoners kept for"experimental purposes" on p. 3 of each day. These were theso-calledMengele twins.
Commentary
Some comments on the documents, their translation and preparationfollow.
The format for the days we have available is very similar from dayto day. On the first two and a half pages, the numbers are broken up intoskilled and unskilled workers, listed in two columns in the middle.Subtotals for each numbered category are given in the two rightmostcolumns, which are then carried down into a section total and a pagetotal. The left column "Post" has fewer workers and is also totalled.Only the men are listed.
Underlining has been reproduced as such. German emphasizes words byputting spaces between each letter; this has been reproduced asitalics.
We have translated the common word "Kommando" as "detail," as in awork detail. It could also have been translated "squad" or "command."
These documents are labeled as referring to Auschwitz II, thatis, the Birkenau camp of the Auschwitz complex. A few activities arelisted as taking place in other camps (such as "Plawy").
The Crematoria are numbered I-IV in this document, though thealternate numbering system II-V was used in other documents and ispreferred today. We have left the old-style numbering system, and putthe preferred numbers in parentheses.
Abbreviations have been rendered into English as clearly as possiblegiven the limited space available. (The serious researcher should beexamining the German text in any case.) One abbreviation we were unableto interpret conclusively: "b.d. Dachppf" we believe to meanDachpappefertigung, "roof felt preparation." We have left this inGerman not only because of our uncertainty but for reasons offormatting (the abbreviation is much shorter).
Near the bottom of page 3, the prisoner occupancy is listed by eachsection of the Birkenau camp. According to Danuta Czech,Auschwitz Chronicle, 1990, p. 5, andYisrael Gutman et al., Eds.,Anatomy of the AuschwitzDeath Camp, 1994, p. 341 (photo), these sections were:
- B I/a: Women's camp until July 1943 (unknown purposesince that date).
- B II/a: Men's quarantine.
- B II/b: Family camp.
- B II/c: Hungarian camp.
- B II/d: Men's camp.
- B II/e: Gypsy camp (until its annihilation on August 2, 1944).
- B II/f: Male prisoners' infirmary.
- B II/g: "Kanada" loot handling and storage complex.
We apologize for the poor reproduction quality of the images.
The documents
- July 28, 1944
(this has the most detailed translation and analysis) - August 2, 1944
- August 3, 1944
(not yet available) - August 25, 1944
(only p. 3 is available) - October 3, 1944
(not yet available)
Implications for Holocaust-denial
Holocaust-deniers claim that there was never any extermination atany of the Auschwitz camps, nor any intention for same. What will theysay about these documents?
As the historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet astutely points out, deniersinsist that: [5]
Any Nazi document bearing direct testimony is taken at face value ifwritten in coded language...
Deniers will surely claim that where these documents read "Heizer" -which can be translated either "stokers" or "burners" - they are to betaken literally. Since there was no extermination, there could not havebeen a Sonderkommando.
But that still leaves over 800 supposed "stokers" at the fourbuildings correctly identified as "crematoria." So deniers must stillanswer these questions:
If Auschwitz was not a death camp, why did it require over 800people to tend its crematory furnaces?
Why is the liquidation of the Sonderkommando on September 27corroborated by this documentary evidence?
Why is the liquidation of the Gypsy camp on August 3corroborated by this documentary evidence?
Deniers will probably point out that there are sick inmates andchildren listed on the labor force reports, and ask how they could betolerated in a death camp. We will pre-emptively respond to this:
a) There are hardly any children listed in the camp for Jewish men-- just four.
b) Auschwitz wasalso a detention center. Most children weredeported from Warsaw with their parents after the rebellion in 1944.
c) Judging from the daily reports, there was one large liquidationaction of children (their number drops by 150 or so, with none of themmentioned as being transferred).
d) Some of the children may have been kept for Mengele's experiments(the "twins for experimental purposes" are mentioned).
e) Some inmates were cured to be used for slave labor force, orbecause they were not earmarked for extermination. The Franke- Grickschreport is very clear on this point, saying that even Jews who are"curably ill" are cured and incorporated into the labor program.
Notes
- Dwork, Debórah and Robert Jan vanPelt,Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present, 1996, p. 208.I.G. Farben's arrangement was made in 1941; to our knowledge, thiswas still true in 1944.
- Czech, Danuta,Auschwitz Chronicle1939-1945, 1990, pp. 672-700; Gutman, Yisrael and MichaelBerenbaum, Eds.,Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp,1994, pp. 395, 466.
- Two hundred Sonderkommando were murdered onSeptember 23, 1944 in a delousing chamber in Auschwitz I. Pressaccomments somewhere on this gassing, saying it is "dubious," but Czechcites the testimony of Dr. Horst Fischer in the GDR, 1966. Muellerwrites that this happened "towards the end of September," and alsogives the number of 200.
- Czech, Danuta,op.cit.,p. 677.
- Vidal-Naquet, Pierre,Assassins ofMemory: Essays on the Denial of the Holocaust, 1992, p. 22.
These documents were provided to Dr. Daniel Keren courtesy of theAuschwitz Museum.
Translations by Gord McFee; research by Mark Van Alstine; editing byJamie McCarthy.