Deportations of Jews from Slovakia

Transcription of the podcast

Among the many groups of people deported to the German camp Auschwitz, Slovakian Jews occupied a special place. They were brought to the camp at a time when it was undergoing fundamental, organizational and functional transformation. From a place of concentration and gradual destruction of prisoners through dramatic living conditions and hard labor to a center of mass extermination in gas chambers. Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz, the head of the research center of the Auschwitz Museum, recounts the details of this process.

The year 1942 in the history of Auschwitz was the year in which the camp obtained a new function - it became a center of extermination, and the deportations of Jews from Slovakia played a particularly important role in this process. Why did Slovak Jews occupy such a special place in the history of Auschwitz?

The transports of Jews from Slovakia were the first large-scale transports organized by the Reich Main Security Office — in this case in cooperation with the Slovak authorities, although in general this was the usual practice. That is, when considering transports of Jews deported from other countries to Auschwitz, including from Western occupied Europe, this too often took place with the knowledge or support of local authorities. But when discussing the history of the deportation of Jews from Slovakia, two characteristic aspects must be mentioned. First, these were the earliest deportations — so on the example of these transports we can trace how Auschwitz developed, how the SS authorities attempted later to adapt certain procedures that had first been developed during the reception of transports from Slovakia. The second characteristic aspect was the full cooperation of the Slovak authorities in organizing the deportations, especially in the first half of 1942. And there was one more unique feature: Slovakia was the only state that decided to pay substantial sums when sending its Jewish citizens to the concentration camp. This was a fee of 500 Reichsmarks per person — a considerable sum. And if we calculate the total profits the Slovak authorities obtained from the confiscation of Jewish property, it turns out that the funds paid — those 500 Reichsmarks for each deported Slovak Jew — were nearly the same as the expected revenues from the confiscations. This shows that, on the one hand, deporting the Jews was treated by the Slovaks as a kind of priority, even more important than potential financial gains — but also that pressure from the German authorities and the political relationship between the Third Reich and Slovakia significantly shaped these decisions.

What was the political situation in Slovakia in the interwar period and just before the outbreak of the Second World War? We speak here about the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the establishment of the Slovak state.

The situation was extremely complex. On the one hand, Slovaks during the Austro-Hungarian monarchy saw themselves as second-class citizens. Many Hungarians lived in the regions making up present-day Slovakia, especially in the south; moreover, much of the landowning nobility were Hungarians. In the cities there was a mixed population including Hungarians but also many Jews, some of whom spoke Hungarian. Slovaks perceived them partly as people who collaborated with the Hungarian “occupier,” and partly as those enriching themselves at the expense of the Slovak masses. Thus, an antisemitic tone and tendencies can already be seen in Slovakia at the moment when local political parties began to form — the most important later being the so-called Ludák party founded by priest Jozef Tiso. Initially, the party demanded autonomy within the newly created Czechoslovak state after World War I, but due to tensions and the reluctance of the Prague authorities to consider Slovak autonomy, the party eventually shifted toward pursuing the creation of an independent state. This independent state could be created either in cooperation with Germany or Poland. Hungary remained the main enemy in the Slovak view, but there was also resentment toward the Czechs, who during the interwar period promoted the policy of so-called “Czechoslovakism.” Interestingly, the Czechs largely denied the Slovaks a distinct national, linguistic, and cultural identity. In the census data of that time one can find the category “Czechoslovaks,” without distinguishing Slovaks — because the Czechs considered Slovak merely a variant of Czech and denied them cultural autonomy as well. Thus Slovak politicians sought international support for their independence aspirations, partly in Poland — and indeed strong currents in Slovak politics openly looked in this direction. However, the more important and clearly more powerful player in this region was always Germany. Poland, in fact, quickly undermined its chances of cooperation with Slovakia — for example by working with Hungary in the occupation of Carpathian Ruthenia. Few people today know that in 1938, after the Munich Agreement, Poland sent saboteurs to Slovakia — the so-called Operation “crowbar”. These saboteurs carried out acts of terror or destruction: blowing up bridges, destroying telegraph lines, and even engaging in armed clashes. In addition, Poland annexed several disputed municipalities along the border with Slovakia and a sizable fragment of the Tatra mountains region. Poland did this largely to prevent the strengthening of Ukrainian nationalism in Carpathian Ruthenia. And finally, once Poland established a shared border with Hungary, the Polish press enthusiastically wrote that “we now have a common border with our Hungarian friends.” All this convinced Slovakia — threatened by Hungary on one side and, as it turned out, also by Poland — to turn toward Germany, which, after seizing Prague in March 1939, was clearly the dominant political power. Hence the servile gestures from Bratislava toward Berlin. Soon after the occupation of Prague and the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Slovakia declared independence — but almost immediately agreed to sign alliance treaties with Germany that effectively handed over control of the Slovak economy and, in practice, the Slovak army to the Germans. Thus Slovakia at that time sought at all costs to convince the Germans of its loyalty — to prevent any situation in which Germany might find it more convenient to side with Hungary. These submissive tendencies in Slovak politics were clearly visible, and the “Jewish question” became a kind of test of loyalty toward Berlin.

Already in September 1941 the so-called “Jewish Code” was enacted. What were its main provisions and how did it affect the lives of Slovak Jews?

The “Jewish Code” was the culmination of a whole series of regulations directed against Jews. Earlier decrees already restricted Jewish life in various ways — for example by introducing forms of numerus clausus that limited the number of Jews allowed to practice certain professions. But the “Jewish Code”, enacted on 9 September 1941, was extraordinary in its scope — it contained more than 200 paragraphs and very precisely regulated the obligations imposed on Jews in Slovakia. There are many similarities between the Code and the Nuremberg Laws — parts of it were simply copied. But the Code also contained a number of additional regulations that, even more than in Germany, restricted the freedom of movement and general rights of Jews in Slovakia. Among the more peculiar demands, for example, was the requirement that Jews mark their correspondence — their letters — with symbols such as a Jewish star. Interestingly, no one in Nazi Germany had come up with such an idea. Overall, the Code aimed to remove Jews from city centers and resettle them in the countryside; to impose compulsory labor and indeed, labor camps for Jews were established in Slovakia at that time. And to enact decrees leading to an ever deeper process of Aryanization — the seizure of Jewish property. Together with restrictions on practicing professions, this rapidly impoverished Slovak Jews and turned them into second class citizens.

You have already mentioned that Slovakia cooperated in organizing transports of Slovak Jews to Auschwitz. You spoke about paying for these transports. Just a moment ago, you also mentioned the organization of labor camps. How exactly were these deportations organized, and what characterized the first transports of Jews from Slovakia to Auschwitz?

We know that such issues were being discussed already at the end of 1941. During talks held in Germany, representatives of the Slovak authorities agreed to send to Germany a certain number of seasonal workers, and at that time — preliminarily, it seems, because the details of those negotiations are not known — the Slovak authorities most likely agreed to send about 20,000 Slovak Jews as a supplement to the new contingent of workers who were to be sent to Germany. One clear piece of evidence that these talks took place in Germany with complete alignment between both sides is the protocol from the Wannsee Conference. During the discussion about the possibility of sending Jews from various European countries to Germany as part of the so-called Final Solution of the Jewish Question, it was emphasized that with respect to Slovakia — and also Croatia — the problem was essentially already solved. Meaning, neither of these countries opposed such a solution in any way. The first test of this was the agreement to deport Jews who were Slovak citizens and who were already within the territory of the Third Reich. The Slovak authorities showed no interest in the fate of these Jews. As for the first practical actions connected with deporting Jews to Auschwitz, these had to wait until accommodation became available — places where such Jews could be housed at Auschwitz. This was the period in which Birkenau was being built — a huge new camp intended at first for Soviet prisoners of war. But for various reasons, primarily the lack of sufficient numbers of Soviet POWs, this idea was abandoned. And in an order dated 25 January 1942, which Himmler sent to the Inspector of Concentration Camps, Glücks, it was stated that these Soviet prisoners of war would be replaced by Jews who were now emigrating or leaving their countries. The deportation of Jews from Slovakia was to be part of this plan. At the beginning of March 1942, we have a whole series of documents confirming that preparations for organizing these transports began in earnest. First, the Slovak authorities undertook to establish several transit camps, where Jews were to be concentrated before departure for Germany. And second — something perhaps even more important — they began consultations on the practical arrangements for building the transports: that is, securing train sets that would carry these Jews to Germany. And here, the Slovak authorities readily agreed to make available to the Germans six complete train sets, consisting of a locomotive, freight cars for the deportees, several wagons intended to transport their belongings, and wagons for the guards. On the Slovak side, these guards were to be gendarmes or members of the so-called Hlinka Guard — a paramilitary organization in Slovakia modeled somewhat on the SA. It was established that at the border station in Zwardoń, such transports would be taken over by German police officers. Assuming that a transport would pass through Žilina at around six in the morning, it should, after several hours, reach Auschwitz. It was also agreed that transports of women were to be directed primarily to the Auschwitz concentration camp, whereas men were to be sent to camps in the Lublin region. A schedule was set: how many transports were to leave, at what times, on which days. All this logistical work was essentially completed by the first half of March 1942. Interestingly, it was assumed that these transports were to include — at least initially — only Jews who were young, healthy, and able to work. Such transports were to arrive in Auschwitz. There is a document confirming German intentions which reached commandant Höss at the end of March 1942. It precisely stated that in the first phase, there would be ten such transports. Each was to consist of one thousand women, Jewish women, and they were to arrive at Auschwitz successively from the end of March through the second half of April. However, quite quickly it turned out that Höss was notified that only four such transports would arrive, and that he would be informed later about the remaining ones. This was probably due to a shift in German views on how these transports should be structured. Around this time, Obersturmführer Wisliceny — supposedly a specialist in Jewish affairs — was dispatched to Bratislava. He was to inform the Slovaks that, in the opinion of the German authorities, the next transports should no longer consist exclusively of young, strong, healthy, work-capable women. They were now to be so-called family transports, consisting of women and men, as well as children and elderly people. This change could apply only to later transports, perhaps from the fifth onward. The earlier ones — since Jews had already been concentrated by the Slovaks in transit camps — were to proceed to Auschwitz as originally planned.

So, can we say that the first four transports were transports intended for labor, and only in later transports do we see entire families — children, women, and elderly people — being sent to extermination?

With certainty, the first transports were supposed to bring to Auschwitz people capable of work. And indeed, looking at the birth dates of the women who arrived in Auschwitz — whether in late March or early April — they were either young girls or young women suitable for labor. But we do not know precisely what the German authorities intended to do with the elderly people and children who were to arrive later in the second phase of these transports. On the other hand, there are indications that preparations were made to “solve” the problem of the significant number of elderly people and children. Auschwitz was not — and had not been — a place to which children were normally transported, because it was clear they could not be employed in any form of labor. So Höss, confronted with this issue, had to look for “a solution.” And that solution was most likely the gas chamber which, in March, was installed — or rather created — in the building of a Polish farmer who had been evicted from the village Brzezinka – Birkenau in German. This gas chamber served at that time for sporadic killings of small transports of Jews arriving from the Schmelt Organization labor camps — a network of Jewish labor camps in Silesia. Having this tool — the gas chamber — Höss could now, from his point of view, calmly face transports containing small children and elderly people, because there now existed a procedure for dealing with such “problems,” namely murdering these people in the gas chamber. Since the Slovaks had concentrated a significant number of people capable of work — both women and men — these individuals did indeed arrive at Auschwitz in the first nine transports. Looking at the lists of arrivals — documents which survived — one can see that there were no children or elderly people, although gradually, examining later transports, one sees a pattern: the later the transport arrived, the older some of its members were. The first transport containing a significant number of children was the transport from Žilina, which arrived at Auschwitz on 29 April 1942. It included 1,004 people, but only just over 700 were registered in the camp. Immediately the question arises: what happened to the remaining deportees? We have really only one good account — from a women prisoner who survived this transport — who stated that upon arrival, women with small children, mothers with young children, were separated from the rest and placed in a different block. And the next day, it turned out that these children and their mothers were simply no longer in the camp. Since they had not been registered, they must have been killed in Auschwitz. Those mothers with their children were probably murdered either in the gas chamber at crematorium I — as certain indications suggest — or possibly in Birkenau, in the first bunker, so-called the “little red cottage”, which was another gas chamber. Around the same time, the first Sonderkommando in Birkenau was formed — in mid-April 1942. Because the Sonderkommando consisted of Jews, and the only Jews arriving in significant numbers at that time were Slovak Jews, the few surviving documents concerning the formation of this Sonderkommando show that almost all the prisoners selected for it were Slovak Jews. We do not know what might have happened later — what would have been the fate of the next Jewish transports — had it not been for a change in Nazi plans. In May, instead of transports from Slovakia, large transports of Polish Jews began arriving from ghettos in the Dąbrowa Basin and nearby areas. These were Jews deemed unfit for work by the Germans and were deported from the ghettos to Auschwitz for extermination. Thus, this shift resulted in a temporary halt in transports of Slovak Jews to Auschwitz — and their place in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Birkenau was taken by Polish Jews.

Can we say that this transport of 29 April 1942 — that date — can be regarded as the beginning of selections whose purpose was to separate those capable of work from those who were murdered immediately in gas chambers?

I think so, except that this selection looked different from the selections we know from the later period. Especially from July 1942 onwards, these selections took on an almost routine form. That is, everything happened according to patterns worked out by that time. After the transport arrived at the so-called Jewish ramp, or Jewish track, in front of the railway station in Auschwitz, selections were carried out immediately, and people deemed unfit for work were taken straight to the gas chambers. The selection on 29 April was done differently. A different method was used to separate these Jews. That is, mothers with children were sent to the gas chamber only from within the Auschwitz camp itself. In general, at that time it was expected that such transports would arrive at Auschwitz and be directed to the women’s camp that had just been created there. We should remember that although the first registered women in Auschwitz were prisoners brought from Ravensbrück — primarily German women — the women who arrived in the following weeks were almost exclusively Jewish women from Slovakia. So this women’s camp that was to be established in Auschwitz ultimately took shape as ten two-storey brick blocks, separated within the main camp. These were blocks numbered from 1 to 10. The women’s camp was created by building a wall along one of the camp streets, topped with bundles of barbed wire, thus separating the women’s section from the men’s. The gate to the women’s camp was located near Block 1, by the commandant’s office, and practically next to the commandant Höss’s villa. That was where the women prisoners entered the camp and from where they went out to work. The idea was that each transport, which, as I mentioned, was supposed to number one thousand women, would be placed in successive buildings, starting from Block 10. It very quickly became clear that this was unrealistic, because there were far more women in Slovakia. In other words, the women’s sector in Auschwitz filled up to such an extent that the density of prisoners in each block had to be increased, and the blocks became overcrowded already in the spring of 1942. It was even necessary to put bunks up in the attics, for example.

What, then, were the living and working conditions for the women in this first women’s camp in Auschwitz I, and later, after the prisoners were transferred to Birkenau? And what were the conditions for the male prisoners who were later also brought there?

It seems that women were deported to Auschwitz with the aim of employing them in types of work that women could perform. That was the idea of the SS men who decided to send women to Auschwitz and, generally, men to Majdanek . So they probably imagined that, since there were SS agricultural farms near Auschwitz on land confiscated from Polish farmers — those Poles had been expelled and their houses largely demolished — women could work on those farms, and the men employed there could be transferred to work that required greater physical strength. One could imagine, as the SS likely did, that these women, equipped with rakes or hoes, would work in the fields, care for livestock, and milk cows. There was also the idea of assigning women to work in the camp kitchen, and certain measures were indeed taken in that direction: for example, the kitchen building was surrounded with an additional barbed-wire fence, in expectation that women would be able to work there. However, it very quickly turned out that the work in the kitchen was too heavy; women could not cope with, for instance, carrying the heavy cauldrons of soup. So quite soon these women were sent back to the women’s camp and their place was taken again by male cooks who had been working there before. Looking at the work assignments of the women to particular labor kommandos, we can see that initially they did not go to agricultural work at all. One reason was probably that early spring agricultural work had not yet started, but it also turned out that the Central Building Administration of the SS, which was carrying out various construction projects in the camp — above all, the construction of new barracks — did not have enough prisoners for the work. As a result, already in April 1942 women began to be placed in kommandos such as the Planierung kommando — that is, levelling ground, digging, and earthworks in general: heavy, exhausting labor. Then, with the onset of warmer weather, a significant number of women were indeed sent to agricultural work, including a large contingent for cleaning fish ponds. This was an idea of commandant Höss at the time, who imagined the future of Auschwitz as a center of agricultural production, including fish farming. South of the camp there were fish ponds, some of which had not been used for years and were very neglected. Höss believed that the southern part of the so-called Auschwitz interest zone should become a complex of fish ponds, where women would work to maintain them. We can see that during this period Höss was not particularly interested in the women’s camp itself. He basically limited himself to one visit there, while leaving it to his subordinate officers to issue orders regarding women’s work assignments. Up until about mid-year, the women’s camp in Auschwitz was formally managed by the head woman overseer, the so-called Aufseherin, who was subordinate to the command of the Ravensbrück camp. That changed only as a result of a reorganization of camp administration. Later, that subordination to Ravensbrück was abolished, and the women’s camp became directly subordinate to the Auschwitz commandant’s office. We know, for example, that in mid-year the first large group of women was sent from the women’s camp to work in the Kanada kommando. Gradually, all women prisoners in this camp were drawn into the obligation to work, and the statistics we have, show that this led to a rise in mortality. The first women, the first Slovak Jewish woman, perished in Auschwitz as early as March 1942 — literally two days after arriving in the camp, we find the first death entries in the death records. But such cases became more and more frequent. This clearly resulted from being placed in a concentration camp, which meant insufficient food and poor living conditions, but above all from the over work: sending ever more women to various kommandos in the area around the camp. This was a time when women were held in Auschwitz in conditions which, while by no means good — these ten blocks carved out of Auschwitz I certainly did not guarantee even tolerable living conditions — were still significantly better, compared with what came later after transfer to Birkenau. The fact that they lived in brick blocks, relatively dry, with access, for example, to sanitary facilities and latrines, and could wash in the block washrooms, meant that mortality was not yet extremely high. We can estimate that of the women brought to Auschwitz in this first period — up to about July 1942 — fewer than 400 died or were killed in various ways. The situation changed at the end of July 1942, when a major typhus epidemic broke out in Auschwitz. On the one hand, we see a series of SS orders aimed at the complete isolation of the camp — both in Auschwitz and in Birkenau. And at the beginning of August, around 9–10 August, the women were transferred to Birkenau, to sector BIa, which at that time was still not fully completed, although most of the barracks were already standing. Was this decision somehow related to the outbreak of the epidemic? It is hard to say. Nevertheless, sending women to Birkenau at that point immediately had extremely dramatic consequences. As in every camp still under construction, many buildings were not finished and, above all, many installations were not functioning. From the accounts of women transferred to Birkenau, we know there were enormous problems with the water supply. As a result, the prisoners often drank water from puddles. The water problems naturally led, first, to the spread of various diseases, and second, to the fact that it was impossible to wash or launder dirty clothing. There was a water system of sorts, and a pumping station with a header tank, but it seems that it was highly inefficient. In practice, apart from a small group, for example women working in the kitchen, most prisoners in that camp had no access to water. And here we can see very clearly how these conditions caused a rapid rise in morbidity and mortality, not only from disease, but also from selections to the gas chambers among the Slovak Jewish women. The first such selection, it appears, took place at the time of the transfer from Auschwitz one to Birkenau. Next to the building designated as the infirmary for this sector, there already stood a wooden barrack where women suffering from infectious diseases were housed. Instead of being transferred to Birkenau, they were sent to the gas chambers. Later, the situation can be seen in two types of documents: death records and reports on the numbers of prisoners in the women’s camp. It is clear that large numbers of women were either dying or falling victim to selections to the gas chambers. There were gaps in the camp prisoners’ number reports because so many women were gravely ill, feverish, some lying half-conscious in the blocks, that they simply could not appear at roll call, and so it was impossible to count them and send reports to Berlin. In this way we see that the selections reached a massive scale. As a result, by around mid-December 1942, three-quarters of the women who had arrived in Birkenau sector BIa had lost their lives. By that I mean both Jewish women from Slovakia and other women who arrived there after mass selections had begun on the railway ramp in Auschwitz — that is, from about July 1942 onward. So these were not only Jewish women from Slovakia, but, increasingly, Jewish women brought from occupied France, Belgium, and other countries. Polish women in the women’s camp were still relatively few at that time; their numbers only gradually increased as transports of Polish women prisoners arrived in greater numbers. At the same time, the Slovak Jewish women — the very first to arrive in Auschwitz — were dying by the hundreds or even thousands. This is, in a sense, natural, because as time went on and they lost their physical strength, it was precisely the Slovak Jewish women who were dying in the largest numbers during this period. From the documents we have, we can conclude that the numbers of Slovak Jewish women — and men as well — steadily declined. They appear less and less frequently in the surviving camp records.

What, then, were the living and working conditions of Jewish prisoners from Slovakia?

Jews were already arriving at Auschwitz in April 1942 — in fact at Birkenau, to sector BIb. They were among the first prisoners brought there. That is, earlier there had also been prisoners transferred there from the infirmary of the main camp, a group of Soviet POWs, and a group of Jews from occupied France. But in general, by looking at the fate of these Jews we can see how dramatic and catastrophic the situation of prisoners in Birkenau was at that time, because in practice they died out by about August 1942. This is clearly visible in the entries in the Stärkebuch, the daily reports book, where the names of those prisoners who perished were recorded. This was probably due, on the one hand, to the fact that, as in the women’s camp, for living conditions there were particularly bad and catastrophic, and on the other hand to the type of work. Almost all of these Slovak Jews were assigned to extremely exhausting earthworks and to the construction of new blocks. So it is hard to say much more about the fate of these men than that practically all of them were dead by late summer of that year. From among them, as I have mentioned, the first Sonderkommando was formed. We have a document that appears somewhat puzzling. After some time, 47 entries were made in the daily registry book, indicating that Slovak Jews had been sent to their deaths, that they were to be killed. And now we do not know why their full personal details were not recorded there. Perhaps this is the result of some selection; perhaps these were also Jews who had previously been assigned, for example, to the Sonderkommando. We simply do not know, because witnesses are lacking. The few Polish prisoners who were able to observe these Slovak Jews left very little information about their fate. So, after a longer pause, the transports from Slovakia — of both men and women — began again to arrive in Auschwitz in July 1942. The situation was quite similar. From a document dating from December, we know that a little over 500 Slovak Jews were still alive at that time. This seems to have concerned mainly those Jews who had been sent in the last transports from Slovakia, which had arrived in Auschwitz from about July onwards. There was another transport in August, and the last one in September — and that was essentially the end, connected with the Slovak authorities’ withdrawal of their support for the idea of these transports. We do not know exactly what happened. Historians are not fully certain about the motives for these actions. Probably, first, the Slovak government realized that Jews were no longer being sent somewhere to work in Germany, but were becoming victims of mass murder and were being killed on a large scale in Auschwitz. This, after all, is not surprising: on clear days the mountains are visible from Oświęcim, and on the other side of those Beskid mountains lies Slovakia. So the distance between Auschwitz and Slovakia is very small, and news of what was happening in Auschwitz could reach Slovakia quite quickly. We should probably also link this Slovak reluctance to form further transports with uncertainty about how the war might end, because by mid-1942 this was no longer so clear. By then the battle of Moscow was over and the United States had entered the war. And another likely reason, which the Slovaks explicitly raised in their talks with the Germans, was that the Jews still remaining in Slovakia were precisely those who were absolutely necessary for the proper functioning of the Slovak economy. These Jews possessed documents that protected them from deportation. Some of them managed, almost at the last moment, to convert — to become Christians, either Catholics or Protestants — thanks to the help of friendly priests or pastors. So the intensity of transports from Slovakia decreased significantly after July 1942. Later, those transports were essentially halted altogether, which greatly surprised the Germans. In the talks held in Bratislava they were told, on the one hand, that yes, of course, once certain “difficulties” had been removed, the resumption of these transports could be considered. At least twice a new schedule was worked out for transports that were to depart at the end of 1942 and, on a larger scale, in 1943. But nothing came of it. One can say that the Slovaks resisted the plan to deport the last Slovak Jews to Germany. The Germans needed Slovakia because certain Slovak military formations — in effect, Slovak divisions fighting on the Eastern Front — were important to them. Perhaps more importantly, Slovakia supplied Germany with large quantities of agricultural produce, grain, and timber. So the Germans did not want to alienate their partner too much, especially as they recognized that the Slovak arguments were perhaps, in part, quite reasonable. Moreover, some Slovak Jews managed to escape to Hungary, which at that time still seemed like a safe place. For quite a long time there were simply no transports of either women or men from Slovakia directly to Auschwitz. This situation lasted until the second half of 1944, when the Slovak National Uprising broke out. To crush it, the Germans sent substantial Wehrmacht and SS forces. From that moment on, of course, they no longer had to take account of any Slovak protests. Interestingly, in the hunt for Jews — and also for Roma — the German authorities and German units continued to receive support from the Hlinka Guard. So this second wave, the last wave of the deportation of Jews from Slovakia, took place when Auschwitz was already nearing the end of its functioning as a center of extermination — roughly in September, October, and November 1944. However, a large portion of these Jews, mainly those from transports departing from Sered, were deported after a relatively short time to other concentration camps in Germany.

The deportations of Jewish women from Slovakia coincided with the moment when the women’s camp began operating, because before them, as you mentioned, a transport had arrived from Ravensbrück. What role did Jewish women from Slovakia play in the camp structure, and what did this mean for the other women prisoners?

We must remember that these women who arrived in Auschwitz at that time were young, healthy, strong, and fit for work. According to the patterns developed in other concentration camps and in other parts of Auschwitz, they should simply have been sent to work under the supervision of German prisoner functionaries. And indeed, one such transport — as I’ve already mentioned — did arrive in Auschwitz first, coming from Ravensbrück. Several blocks in the main camp were then staffed with prisoner functionaries recruited from this first Ravensbrück transport, that is, from German women. However, quite soon it turned out that some positions, including fairly high ones in the camp hierarchy — for example, block leaders — were also given to Jewish women from Slovakia. This was somewhat surprising in light of the usual practices in Auschwitz. Perhaps this was due to the personal views of the head woman overseer, Johanna Langefeld. Or perhaps it turned out that among the German women who had come to Auschwitz there were not enough who met the required intellectual standard. When it came to staffing various camp offices — where, of course, knowledge of German was necessary, but where skills such as neat handwriting, typing, or keeping records were also needed — it turned out that these girls from Slovakia were better suited to that work than the German women. It is striking that already in the relatively early period of the women’s camp we see Slovak Jewish women holding quite important posts, such as Hauptschreiberin (chief clerk) or Rapportschreiberin (wrighter) Katja Singer, or Anna Weiss, who was the head doctor in the camp infirmary. This situation surprised some other prisoners who arrived later, for example Polish women, when they saw that these Jewish Slovak women were occupying such positions. In addition, some of them were assigned to work in the so-called “good kommandos”. Some even ended up in the Political Department in Auschwitz, where they were employed typing documents that were being made in multiple copies for the camp administration. So this was another group of Slovak Jewish women who were assigned to a kommando that one might call privileged — although, on the other hand, there was also the fear that these women, having been admitted to the secrets of the Political Department, would sooner or later be killed. This, however, did not happen. For reasons that remain unknown, they were taken out on the evacuation marches, and many of them survived the war. All this meant that Jewish women from Slovakia were quite numerous in various kinds of functions. We can probably add one more reason for this: they arrived in the camp as the very first female prisoners, which meant they had a chance to be assigned to those kommandos considered better, “good,” where living and working conditions were relatively tolerable. I mean, for example, the camp infirmary or various administrative offices. A similar mechanism probably operated as in the men’s camp: a certain respect for prisoners with what were called “low numbers”. These were people who, in 1943–1944, had camp numbers which showed that they had arrived very early. As a result, not only other functionary prisoners, but even SS men tended to look on such prisoners as people who had survived because they had influential contacts. It was therefore better to leave them alone — or perhaps such a prisoner might be able to obtain some rare goods from Kanada for them. There were several such reasons. In any case, these low-number prisoners, and in the women’s camp especially Jewish women from Slovakia, largely survived until 1944 and ultimately until the evacuation in January 1945.