Liquidation of the Auschwitz

The transcript of the podcast

In the second half of 1944, due to the Red Army’s successes and the advancing eastern front, the SS authorities in the German Auschwitz camp decided to evacuate some 65,000 prisoners to camps in the Reich interior. At the same time they began to destroy the evidence of the crimes committed in the camp. Dr. Jacek Lachendro from the Research Centre of the Museum talks about the last period of the operation of Auschwitz.

The date of the liberation of Auschwitz, 27th January 1945, is regarded as the camp's closing date. Were the perpetrators, the SS camp authorities, making any preparations to leave the camp grounds before the advancing front?

Yes, nearly half a year before the final liquidation of the camp, when the Soviet army, following its operations in the eastern and south-eastern parts of Poland, within its current borders of course, reached the line of the rivers - the Vistula and Wisłoka. These operations continued in July and August, with the front stopping some 200 kilometres from the Auschwitz concentration camp in August. During this operation, they seized the grounds of the Majdanek camp in Lublin. And this also became, as one might assume, a reason for reflection on the future of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Meanwhile, Auschwitz reached the peak of its development in the summer of 1944, both in terms of territorial expansion - it was a massive complex comprising three major parts: Auschwitz I, the main camp, Birkenau and the Monowitz camp, and dozens of sub-camps located in Western Lesser Poland and mostly in Upper Silesia. However, it reached its expansion peak, particularly in terms of the number of incarcerated prisoners. In August 1944, more than 100,000 people were imprisoned in this camp complex, the majority of them Jews but also Poles and prisoners from the then Soviet Union.

Besides the over 100,000 registered people, about 30,000 Jews were detained in so-called transit camps. They were not registered but sent successively to various camps and workplaces, mainly in Germany. Meanwhile, as the Red Army continued to gain ground on the eastern front, the SS camp authorities contemplated how to react to all these events and what actions to take, and not take at Auschwitz. There are no available documents on the exact decision-making process. We may presume here, based on post factum actions, that the SS and camp authorities, on the one hand decided to stop the expansion of the camp and send some of the materials and inmates from the Auschwitz camp complex to other concentration camps located inside the Third Reich. On the other hand however, the decision was taken to keep many prisoners at this camp for as long as possible, mainly because they were employed either on the camp farms, in workshops, warehouses and factories located near or within the main camp, or in the Monowitz camp, or employed in the construction of the IG Farben chemical plant, or above all, in the several sub-camps located near the factories, steelworks and mines mostly in Upper Silesia. Thus, on the one hand, a gradual evacuation was carried out, but on the other, efforts were made to make the best possible use of this slave labour of prisoners in industry or agriculture.

Following these measures, 65,000 prisoners were transported to various concentration camps within the Third Reich in the second half of 1944. Meanwhile, deportations of groups continued to Auschwitz, notably Jews from Slovakia and Theresienstadt ghetto, as well as Poles from insurgent Warsaw. Ultimately, following the removal of prisoners from the camp and deportations to the camp as of mid-January 1945, an estimated 67,000 prisoners were still in the Auschwitz camp complex.

So, the German camp authorities, despite knowing that they had to evacuate and liquidate, continued to receive new transports?

One can presume that it wasn't entirely a matter of knowing they had to evacuate. One can assume the tendency was that, while some prisoners are to be deported, employment should continue as usual. One might even assume that some of the decision-makers, whether in the SS authorities or the directors of various industrial plants in Upper Silesia, continued to believe that the fortunes of the war would reverse and they would conquer the Allies. Such examples and suggestions could be the decisions to create successive new sub-camps next to the industrial plants in Upper Silesia. In September sub-camps were set up, such as Althammer, in Stara Kuźnia, where prisoners were employed in the construction of a thermal power station, and the Bismarckhütte sub-camp in Chorzów, where prisoners were recruited to work at the Bismarck steelworks. A sub-camp, Charlottegrube, was created in Rydułtowy, where prisoners were deployed to work in the coal mine. In December 1944, another sub-camp, Hubertushütte was established near Bytom, where prisoners were sent to work in the steelworks. Finally, at the turn of 1944 and 1945, yet another agricultural and livestock sub-camp called Pławy was established very close to the Birkenau camp, which proves that there was a view all along, at least among some of these decision-makers, that employment should continue and that the fortunes of the war would still reverse.

One such symbolic example of this belief, which for me is particularly memorable, is the incident of 18th January 1945, when the camp was practically in a state of liquidation. The prisoners had either already been led out on the evacuation route or successive groups were preparing, and then Joachim Caesar, the manager of the camp farms, ordered that water in the central heating system at the Raisko horticultural farm be drained. He explained that the water had to be drained so the installation would not be damaged, since we would be returning here.

Could it be said that the camp authorities only evacuated the labour force, that is, prisoners who were fit to continue working?

In mid-January 1945, the SS and camp authorities decided on the final evacuation and liquidation of Auschwitz. Perhaps the word evacuation is not the most appropriate, as it tends to have such a positive connotation when a group of people are being rescued from an endangered place. Here, on the one hand, it is difficult to speak of rescuing these Auschwitz prisoners by transferring them to other concentration camps, but on the other hand, there is simply no suitable word for this sequence of events in the second half of January 1945. Then, as I said, the authorities decided to liquidate and evacuate the camp. This was due to another offensive by the Red Army, which began on 12th January. The actions of the Soviet side from these positions I mentioned earlier, more or less along the line of the Vistula and Wisłoka rivers, took a favourable turn for the Soviets and forced the Germans to retreat. In effect, the Red Army reached the outskirts of Kraków on 17th January, which was the main reason for the decision to move the prisoners out of the Auschwitz camp complex.

In this evacuation of prisoners, those who were deemed fit to march were to take part, while the others were to stay in the blocks, in the camp barracks. Those who were debilitated also joined the march because it was rumoured in the camp that those who remained would be executed. There was talk that the camp was being mined and would be blown up or that the Germans would spray poisonous gases that would cause the death of these people. Accordingly, 56,000 prisoners were evacuated from the camp; only about two thousand were taken from the two sub-camps directly by train to Mauthausen. Prisoners were leaving the camp and the largest groups were directed to march to Wodzisław Śląski and Gliwice. This is a distance of around 50-60 kilometres from Oświęcim. From there, they were transported by rail to other concentration camps.

Similarly, the vast majority of prisoners incarcerated in the Upper Silesian sub-camps were to be transferred to other camps. Some were sent to Gliwice, but the majority, or a significant proportion were later sent on foot marches to other concentration camps. The best example is the Neu-Dachs sub-camp prisoners in Jaworzno, who walked a distance of over 300 kilometres to the Gross-Rosen camp on foot. This evacuation took place in freezing, snowy winter conditions. For many prisoners, even those who on the outside looked like they still had some strength left, it was a gruelling, harrowing experience. For many of them, it ended in death. This was mainly due to the unfavourable weather conditions and the rigour the SS men tried to maintain. Prisoners who stopped without permission or tried to tend to their physiological needs or even adjust their shoes were either beaten or shot. As a result, around three thousand prisoners lost their lives in Upper Silesia and Opole Silesia. Further prisoners perished during the subsequent transport to other concentration camps. The exact numbers of those who died during the evacuation of the camp are not known, nevertheless it can be assumed that at least 9,000 of them lost their lives. Hence, these marches and evacuations are called marches of death.

The evacuation, as you mentioned, was also accompanied by the liquidation of the camp. What was its purpose?

The first steps, aimed at liquidating the camp, were already being taken in the autumn of 1944. The objectives varied. Once the Majdanek camp was occupied, the SS began destroying documents that could show or prove the crimes committed at the camp. They destroyed documentation on prisoners so their personal details could be erased, especially the number of those brought here and deported. They did this to erase all traces of the scale of the crimes committed here, particularly on the Jews deported in mass transports. However, when the decision was taken to stop the extermination of the Jews at the end of October/beginning of November 1944, they began dismantling the installations in the gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau and made preparations to blow them up. Only one crematorium was left, crematorium number 5, where the corpses of dead or murdered prisoners were burned in the final weeks of the camps' operation. Barracks were dismantled on a large scale on the Birkenau site, notably in building section three, the so-called Mexico. Also, the dismantling of barracks began in section BI of the former women's camp, from which prisoners were gradually transferred to other parts of the camp.

Efforts were made to intensify the removal of items that had been looted from the Jews deported here and murdered in the Birkenau camp. The process of destroying documents, obliterating traces of the crime and liquidating the camp was intensified in January 1945, when a huge part of the camp documentation was burned in piles. Care was also taken to deport as many items as possible looted from the Jews and still lying in the warehouses. They also tried to transport building materials gathered in the camp, which could have been used to build barracks, or in any case, could have been used in other concentration camps.

Finally, once the prisoners had been led out of the camp and only a few remained, the camp was no longer controlled and guarded by permanent SS posts, but by flying patrols who came to the Birkenau camp and set fire to the storage depots containing the Jewish property that had not been transported. It included a complex of more than 30 barracks that had been nearly burnt to the ground, including the buildings of crematoriums II and III, and crematorium number V which was blown up literally hours before the Red Army arrived here. The prisoners had already demolished the crematorium IV building, as it had been heavily damaged in October 1944 during a revolt by Sonderkommando prisoners.