Auschwitz functionary prisoners. Selected postwar fates

Transcription of the podcast

We discussed the group of functionary prisoners at Auschwitz in one of our previous podcasts. You can find it at: podcast.auschwitz.org. In this episode Dr. Wojciech Płosa, the head of the Auschwitz Museum Archives will talk about the post war fates of some of the functionary prisoners. Let’s start with the origins of functionary prisoners in the Nazi concentration camp system.

This system of introducing prisoner functionaries actually began as soon as the Nazi regime came to power in Germany and established the first SS-controlled concentration camp in Dachau, back in 1933. And it was implemented in virtually all concentration camps created by the Third Reich, right up until the very end of its existence.

So the system of functionary prisoners emerged alongside the first concentration camps, and Auschwitz followed a similar pattern?

Yes, exactly. Nothing new was invented for the Auschwitz camp—nothing that hadn’t already been tested elsewhere. The Nazis simply assumed that this system worked exceptionally well. It was based on the leadership principle, the Führerprinzip, which dictated that, in addition to the members of the SS camp staff holding absolute control, a selected group of prisoners would also be introduced to oversee those subordinate to them—meaning the entire remaining mass of inmates held in the camp. This was, of course, an artificially engineered system, but it was incredibly effective. It allowed for virtually constant control and supervision over the prisoners, not only in the blocks or residential barracks where they were housed, but also at the work sites where they had to perform specific tasks.

Can we estimate in any way how many functionary prisoners there were in the camp?

Well, that’s actually quite difficult, because the sources are rather selective, I would say. Of course, the personnel cards issued by the Prisoner Labor Department contain a wealth of information on this subject, including who held which position. However, documents like the bonus lists—which are lists of prisoner work details showing the division between functionary prisoners and the rest—have survived only fragmentarily. For the most part, we only have them from the second half of 1943 until effectively the end of 1944. So, this also gives us insight only into a small window, a very brief period of the camp’s existence. In the accounts or memoirs of former prisoners, we don’t find much detailed information either. Typically, they only mention that yes, the Kapo of their work detail was cruel, or that he perhaps wasn’t the worst. However, it’s hard to tell whether it was just one person, whether they changed overtime, or if there were any deputies. So, while it’s very difficult to estimate, given the massive number of work details and the vast number of prisoners who went through the camp, I believe it must have been several hundred people, perhaps even many more.

From the history of Auschwitz, we know that some prisoner functionaries tried to help their fellow inmates. Others, in turn, were brutal. Their history is far from uniform. What happened to these functionary prisoners after the war? Do we have any examples of them being prosecuted? Were there any trials?

The trials are somewhat of a separate story, because everything connected with the issue of punishing former functionary prisoners —as I see it—became complicated the moment specific charges had to be brought. Looking at how this works under Polish law, for instance, we must emphasize that the prosecution—the prosecutor’s office and law enforcement—is responsible for building a case strong enough to hold up in court. In other words, the evidence presented must be credible enough for the charges to stick. However, prisoner functionaries were frequently assessed in very different ways. You would find people who described a given functionary as truly responsible for a crime and were ready to testify to that. But you would also find those who could testify to quite the opposite. I think this is partly connected to a pattern we see in the accounts of former prisoners. When asked if they remember who the Kapo was or who held which function, their answers are often, shall we say, rather evasive. That is, these prisoners either claim not to remember, or they only mention first names or nicknames. Generally speaking, the only functionary prisoners about whom there is absolutely no doubt are those who were uniquely and unquestionably remembered as exceptionally cruel. They are recalled in a rather definite way, whereas the rest is a somewhat different story. But overall, of course, trials did take place, and we could bring up a few examples here.

Were these joint trials with SS men, separate ones, or did it vary?

Most often, of course, they were tried separately. However, during the Frankfurt trials, there were also situations where prisoner functionaries sat in the dock right alongside former members of the SS camp staff. Let me highlight a few examples that are very well documented—in the sense that there is a wealth of material and records showing how those proceedings played out. The story of Otto Locke is quite characteristic. He was a German-born prisoner, and I want to talk about him because following his conviction, as he was trying to get his sentence reviewed, he actually reached out to the Museum. He asked for records concerning his stay in the camp, as well as information about the prisoners who testified against him. His case is exceptionally well-documented because the trial materials have survived. Locke was a man who had been in trouble with the law from a very young age. In fact, by September 1933, he was already in Sachsenhausen, and from there, he was transferred to Auschwitz in August 1940. His prisoner number was 3227. At first, he was the Kapo of the old crematorium. Back then, it had nothing to do with mass extermination; it was simply used to cremate the bodies of prisoners who had died or been killed in the camp. Later on, however, he held various other roles. At some point, he also ended up in the bunker in the basement of Block 11. It’s not entirely clear why, but most likely he was involved in an illegal trade in the belongings of the murdered Jews. Ultimately, in 1944, he was supposed to be transferred to the infamous Dirlewanger Division. During his pre-deployment training, he met a German female prisoner who confided in him that she was pregnant, and that the father was a Polish prisoner. This put her in a precarious position, as both she and the father would have faced severe consequences. Oddly enough, Locke stepped in and claimed paternity. Perhaps he hoped this would save him from being incorporated into the Dirlewanger Division. In the end, it didn’t work, and he was shipped off to the front lines anyway. The German woman, however, was indeed released from the camp and gave birth that October. As for Locke, his health was already weakened by his time in Auschwitz, where he had survived a bout of malaria. He also had relapses of the disease while serving in the Dirlewanger unit. He later claimed that he didn’t see much combat. However, he may have said this to avoid being held accountable for the crimes committed by that specific division. Eventually, as his unit retreated westward along with the German front, he ended up in a field hospital in Żory. It was there that he crossed paths with the German woman he had met back in the camp. She helped him escape from the hospital, and he remained in hiding in the Żory area until hostilities ceased. Later, he moved to Germany, where he found himself unable to adapt to the post-war reality. Then, in 1948, at the Hanover railway station, he ran into a former Auschwitz prisoner he knew. Back when Locke was the Kapo of the tailors’ work detail, this man had been one of his subordinates. The man mentioned that at the liberated Bergen-Belsen camp, a group of Jewish survivors from Auschwitz were preparing to emigrate to the United States. Locke thought that this sounded like a perfect opportunity for a fresh start. Believing that moving to America was his best option, he headed to Bergen-Belsen—only to be recognized and detained by those very survivors. You could say they placed him under citizen's arrest, and handed him over to the British military police who were maintaining order at the former Bergen-Belsen camp. Then the survivors began accusing him of crimes he had supposedly committed during his time as a Kapo. At first, he denied everything, but eventually he signed a full confession. Later on, however, Locke claimed that he only did so because the former prisoners had beaten him. Ultimately, a trial never took place because he managed to escape. It wasn’t until 1955 that he was finally arrested in West Berlin. Although initially he was using a false name, once his real identity was exposed, investigators immediately connected him with the events at the former Bergen-Belsen camp, and this time he was brought before a court. His trial was quite high-profile in West Germany, as it was one of the very first trials involving an Auschwitz prisoner functionary. The West German press described him as worse than the SS, labeling him a criminal from Auschwitz, and so on. In the end, he received seven life sentences after the court found him guilty of murdering seven prisoners—the only charges that could be irrefutably proven. Locke’s case is complicated because the efforts he made from behind bars—while still trying to have the sentence reviewed—point to a number of doubts. They suggest that the court may not have fully weighed these ambiguous details. In other words, from the defendant’s perspective, he was never given the benefit of the doubt. His defense team heavily emphasized one detail: before taking the stand, all the witnesses stayed in the exact same hotel, meaning they easily could have coordinated their testimony. As it turned out, Locke’s appeals led nowhere, and he spent the rest of his days in prison. He died in the 1970s at Moabit Prison in Berlin. Around the same time, in 1953, the trial of Józef Kral took place in Poland. Originally from Tychy, Kral had fought in Poland’s defensive campaign in 1939. He was later sent to Austria as a forced laborer, where he faced brutal treatment. Exhausted and desperate to change his situation at all costs, he simply escaped. However, he was soon arrested by the police in Vienna, and a local court sentenced him to imprisonment in a concentration camp. That camp was Auschwitz. Józef Kral was brought there on June 29, 1941, and was assigned prisoner number 17401. He was a prisoner who owed a great deal to a somewhat rare circumstance: he was an exceptional specialist. Kral was a master bricklayer, which earned him a spot in the large Neubau work detail. This unit was responsible for expanding the camp, adding floors to existing buildings, and constructing new blocks—all critical tasks during that phase of Auschwitz's existence. He climbed the ranks there, starting as an Unterkapo, then becoming a Kapo, and finally, being appointed Oberkapo after Józef Teichmann was released from the camp. He held this position until 1943, when the camp Gestapo accused him of participating in the resistance movement. He was sent to the basement of Block 11 and underwent brutal interrogation, but he refused to break or name anyone. So, since the Politische Abteilung had no irrefutable evidence against him, Kral was eventually released from the bunker. This coincided with relentless efforts by his family to secure his release from the camp. They ultimately succeeded, with one major condition: Kral was forbidden from leaving the town of Oświęcim. He was forced to stay in the area and work at the chemical plant, remaining there until the Red Army marched in, in January 1945. After the war, he worked as a supply coordinator for the State Forests administration in Katowice. At the end of 1952 though, during an annual audit, shortages were discovered in his warehouse, prompting a disciplinary inquiry, which, in turn, quickly drew the attention of the communist militia to his past. That was when the information finally came to light: Kral was not just a former Auschwitz prisoner, but also a former Oberkapo. Immediately, people came forward accusing him of committing crimes against his subordinates. This led to his arrest, but his trial actually ended in acquittal. What makes this particularly interesting is that both the prosecution and the defense called their own witnesses, who remarkably presented conflicting testimonies. In fact, several former prisoners then working at our Museum, like Mr. Franciszek Targosz, testified for the defense. They emphasized that while Józef Kral had indeed been an Oberkapo, he used his position to protect the prisoners. Former members of the Neubau construction detail backed this up in court. They recalled how Kral cleverly organized their work so that they could warm up indoors. For instance, he managed to convince the SS that portable stoves needed to be lit inside newly built blocks to help the walls dry faster. He would then assign the prisoners to work in those exact rooms so that they could escape the bitter cold. He was also able to accomplish a great deal thanks to his connections with inmates working in the camp kitchen. That allowed him to regularly secure extra soup for the men in his work detail. Beyond that, he was involved in the camp’s resistance movement. Incredibly—and remember, we are talking about 1953, the height of Stalinism—the defense managed to obtain a testimony from Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz himself, another former Auschwitz prisoner. It is a brief, one-page typed document in the trial records, in which Cyrankiewicz speaks of Kral in the highest possible terms, describing him as a patriot through and through who had cooperated closely and fruitfully with the resistance. Even so, it doesn’t seem that Cyrankiewicz’s statement was the deciding factor in the case, though it undoubtedly carried some weight. We must remember, however, that the two main prosecution witnesses were completely discredited. One of them was a former prisoner who desperately wanted to become the Oberkapo, but was allegedly less skilled when it came to construction work. During the trial, evidence was brought forward showing that he had tried to exploit young inmates to satisfy his homosexual desires. In the reality of the 1950s, this was a very serious accusation—not just a moral taboo, but a literal crime. The other witness, who also tried to pin numerous offenses on Kral, turned out to have held a reputation as a Gestapo informer back in the camp. So, with such compromised witnesses, the court's decision to acquit Kral is hardly surprising. It is also worth noting how the court justified its verdict. The ruling stated that simply holding the position of an Oberkapo at Auschwitz did not automatically make Kral a criminal; what mattered was how he performed his duties. Specifically, whether, within the brutal constraints of the camp system, he still found ways to help his fellow inmates. The court determined that he had. At the same time, the judges also concluded that the prosecution had failed to establish its case with the necessary, irrefutable evidence. And then there is the figure of Franciszek Karasiewicz, prisoner number 1825, notoriously known as “Bloody Franek.” He was a block elder in Block 5 in the BIIa quarantine sector in Birkenau. Much like in the case of Mieczysław Katarzyński, who was sentenced to death and executed after the war for similar crimes, there was no ambiguity among prisoners when it came to Karasiewicz, and the list of his atrocities was staggeringly long. Born in 1922, he was brought to Auschwitz at just eighteen. What shocked the prisoners most was how someone so young could be so cruel and depraved, capable of torturing, abusing, or killing others without a second thought. The court later agreed that his only motive was to assert his absolute power and prove that his position allowed him to do so. A number of former prisoners testified against Karasiewicz, and in 1952 he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Interestingly, after both the prosecution and the defense appealed the verdict, the Supreme Court imposed a harsher sentence: the death penalty. His only remaining option was to petition President Bierut for clemency. Karasiewicz did indeed write such a plea, and the document is still preserved in the court files. One argument Karasiewicz raised was his youth when he had entered the concentration camp. Lacking both a formal education and strong moral guidance from home, he claimed that he had been susceptible to the brutal environment around him. His second argument, however, perfectly captures the absurdity of the early 1950s: he emphasized that during the war, he had not yet discovered the teachings of Lenin or Stalin, but had he known them, he would have undoubtedly been a much better person. Surprisingly, Bierut exercised his right to clemency, commuting the death sentence to life in prison. Later, in 1970, an amnesty reduced his sentence to 25 years, including time he had already served.