New Research on the History of Auschwitz

The transcript of the podcast

It might seem that we already know everything about the history of places such as Auschwitz, because several decades have passed since the events and we have access to a great many documents and thousands of testimonies. However, this is not true, we are constantly learning new facts about the history of the camp, as Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz, the head of the Memorial Research Centre explains.

Where can we look for new research sources or interpretations concerning the general history of Auschwitz and its details?

There are essentially two possibilities. We can either try to reinterpret previously known materials, which is not a bad thing. Or search for documents that may shed new light on specific events in the camps history. This particularly applies to those hither to unknown and derived from largely inaccessible archives.

It is so fortunate that several such major documentary collections on the history of Auschwitz have been made available to historians in recent years. I’m referring above all to documents from the Russian archives, which were taken from the campsite in the period immediately after the liberation of Auschwitz and spent the next few decades in the vast archives of the present-day Russian Federation in Moscow.

Ultimately these are documents made available to researchers in London. These are decrypted telegrams sent from Auschwitz to the concentration camp headquarters, which primarily relate to the period of 1942 and early 1943. They are important enough to show how the SS reporting system functions, and what it was like to carry out the various orders sent to Auschwitz from decision making bodies in Berlin.

Finally, there are also materials from other Archives. Yad Vashem, the archives in Washington etc etc. Over the past few years, this collection of documents has grown exponentially.

The main task of a historian is to look at two worlds. On the one hand we have memoirs, account and testimonies of survivors, which are vital documents that speak of the personal World of people’s suffering in the camps. On the other hand, we have administrative documents showing us developments and direction changes. They show us what the camp looked like from a management perspective, a perspective not found in accounts. It could be said that administrative documents are heartless data that do not contain the human element. So, we need to find a middle ground showing these two perspectives.

For the historian, perhaps the most desirable situation is when the materials or messages of the two groups of sources are mutually complementary. This is because when it comes to such everyday life in Auschwitz, SS documents are of little use in depicting human tragedies on an individual level. However, when it comes to the operation of the camp as a bureaucratic machine in terms of determining for example, the responsibility of individual SS men for their decisions. Here the prisoners accounts are of little use because they usually had no contact with the people who issued such orders and decisions. In this respect, documents from the SS administration are indispensable. However, it must be remembered that often the German SS documents were repeatedly falsified by SS men. Here you have to learn to read between the lines. This is precisely why information from narrative sources and prisoners accounts are essential. On the contrary, if prisoners often find it difficult to establish the chronology of events in their memoirs, then the SS administration documents are usually helpful, as more often than not, the dates given in them are in line with reality.

What does it look in practice then?

Well, it looks as follows. For example, we have information in many prisoner’s accounts, that in the summer of 1942, the SS began intensive selections of prisoners for death in the gas chambers, which involved Jewish and Polish prisoners. In now remains to be established, to what extent these selections yielded a death toll, which sections of the camp they encompassed and whether they only applied to Auschwitz Birkenau or the sub camps.

So here in determining the details of these events, it is extremely helpful to have documents from the SS Chancellery and most often, those that explicitly noted changes in the camps numbers. And such files are found precisely in London, the number of prisoners who arrived at the camp on a given day and the number of so-called losses. That is those who were removed from the camp list for some reason were also reported. The most frequent reason for this was of course a prisoner’s death. Thus, it can be stated for example, that from mid-August of this year, until nearly mid-October, the Auschwitz men’s camp population dropped from over 23,000 to 16,000 prisoners. Assuming that over the same period, almost 8,500 male prisoners new to the camp were registered. It appears, that due to the typhoid epidemic and the selections ordered by the SS, more than 15,000 people died. That is almost half of the camps inmates died in less than two months.

This trend is even more evident in the reports on the population of the women’s camp, when it fell from over 16.000 prisoners at the beginning of September to 4,700 inmates at the beginning of December. And now again, taking into account that almost 80,000 women who arrived at the camp were registered at that time, it would appear that nearly 20,000 female prisoners perished. They died, or were murdered in gas chambers, representing a decline in the women’s camp of around 80%. This is probably one of the most significant crimes committed at Auschwitz in a short period involving registered prisoners.

Looking at what happened at Auschwitz at the time, it is difficult to comment on the camp commandant and the construction bureau, which continually tried to add subsequent barracks and barrack sectors at Birkenau, while the prisoners perished en-masse. Which virtually put the functioning of Auschwitz during this period on a par with other extermination camps, such as Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor, where practically all the Jews were murdered immediately upon arrival at these camps.

Now, if selections were indeed carried out at Auschwitz, it follows that some prisoners were sent to the camp and registered, but what difference does it make given that most of them died anyway after a few weeks? It therefore approximated the role of Auschwitz to that of an extermination camp, almost like the one at Treblinka.

Furthermore, by analysing all this data, we can compare the numbers of prisoners registered during that period in the camp with the number of so-called losses. It should also be remembered that virtually all the prisoners on the camp list during that period perished, as the camp was closed in the second half of 1942 due to the typhoid epidemic quarantine. In addition, no prisoner transports were transferred to other camps. No one was released from the camp at the time either.

Comparisons can also be made between the numbers of losses in the prisoner’s population and prisoners for whom death certificates were issued. We may more of less assume that prisoners for whom death certificates were issued, are those who died of supposedly natural causes in the camp. And those without death certificates were those murdered in the gas chambers, victims of the selections.

Again, by getting into calculations of this kind, one can also prove that the members of the resistance organisation who pointed out in one of their reports, that the selection for the gas chambers were gathering momentum, were not wrong. However Jewish prisoners were selected during such selections even if they were only slightly ill, indicating that Poles for example, were also selected for the gas chambers using less strict criteria. These calculations show the existence of such a difference, that is it can be approximated that Jewish prisoners were seven times more likely to be selected for the gas chambers than sick Poles from the camp hospitals.

Has any other new important or interesting information been found recently?

This is primarily information that serves to clarify certain already know things regarding the history of Auschwitz. Again, it is a situation relevant enough for the historian to confirm the existence of a given fact with the help of various sources. It may not only relate to the account of survivors, but also the testimony of SS men. We have for example, the rather extensive testimony given by Maria Mandl, the chief female supervisor at the Birkenau female camp, which is sometimes of somewhat dubious value for obvious reasons, that is she was careful not to testify against herself. That is to interpret certain events so as not to incriminate herself. However, certain fragments of these testimonies seem to be accurate and confirmable.

Thus, for example, when Maria Mandl confirmed that she had arrived at Birkenau on October 8th 1942. And when she said that due to the Typhus epidemic several female prisoners were so ill that they lost consciousness, or did not leave their bunks, and that some other female prisoners barely moved around the camp. It was impossible to form the working commands properly, so it was almost impossible to count the numbers of women in the women’s camp. Accordingly, upon her arrival, Maria Mandl assumed the term of governance firmly and ordered the separation of women who were sick from those who could still work. Then the SS doctors arrived and conducted the selection. As a result, the situation in the women’s camp was sanitised and rehabilitated.

The story is not entirely true it seems. Nevertheless, analysing the state of the women’s camp again during this period, it can be confirmed that shortly before Maria Mandl’s arrival, the situation was such that it was virtually impossible to hold roll calls in the camp for several days, as the camp could not report the current number of women in the women’s camp to Berlin due to the inability to count them. Furthermore, this gap in the stream of reports that reached Berlin during this period indicates that something unusual must have happened at Auschwitz then. And finally, after a gap of a few days which lasted from the 24th to 28th of September, reports on the status of the Auschwitz camp are again sent to Berlin. Until finally on the 2nd and 3rd of October, very significant losses in the number of women in the camp are recorded. That is about 4000 women were removed from the camp records on these two days, which points to the selection in question. Admittedly it is difficult to say here that this selection was carried out solely by SS doctors. So, the female supervisors in Maria Mandl’s roles were virtually insignificant and non-existent in this crime.

It was evidently on the orders of the chief overseer, that the preliminary selection was carried out, removing female prisoners who, in her opinion, were unsuitable for work from the women’s camp records. While the SS doctors may have made the final decision in this respect, part of the blame must at least be attributed to Maria Mandl.

In analysing the documents of the camp administration, we cannot only specify or verify certain things related to the functioning of the camp as a place of selection and death of thousands of people. These are also documents that tell us a bit about the operation of the camp itself from the point of view of the camps staff and how they function in this context in some way.

Yes, here these new documents are to some extent handy. Secondly, in the course of a certain systematization of the source material, new concepts and ideas also emerge. Sometimes they concern events that seem entirely trivial on the surface, but are highly characteristic of the camp. Thus, in the spring of 1943, the commander of the SS garrison issued an order, in which he expressed great disapproval of visits by groups of civilians, who stopped at the bridge leading from Auschwitz to Birkenau over the rail line. As he pointed out, he doesn’t wish to see a repeat of such situations, as the zone of interest where the bridge was situated is not a promenade. We didn’t know precisely what could have happened and why it irritated the commander of the SS garrison.

What then happened?

According to our findings, the introduction of the so-called lagerspere quarantine for the prisoners and the SS guards, that is the suspension of all leave for SS men from the end of July of 1942 may be considered the source of this incident. It almost led to a kind of rebellion or defiance, that is the dressing up of the SS men especially before Christmas, when they wanted to finally go home for the holidays after many months of quarantine to meet their loved ones at Christmas. Indeed, such approvals were given conditionally with a specific sanitary regime in place for some time.

Well, quarantine was already re-introduced in February of 1943, as further cases of typhoid fever were detected among Jews brought to Auschwitz from the ghettos of Białystok which posed a significant threat to the functioning of the camp. Consequently, the SS men had to stay inside the camp zone which was also the SS garrison for the next few months. They were not even allowed to go to the city to spend their free time there.

And finally, in May of 1943, the camps chief physician concluded that the number of typhoid cases was low enough that the situation seemed to be under control. Therefore, approvals can be given for SS men to travel to their families. Nevertheless, after such a long period without contact with their relatives, practically all the SS men from Auschwitz would have wanted such leave immediately, which was impossible as the camp wouldn’t have operated in such a situation. Accordingly, they started to create different types of trip schedules. It was agreed that only a few SS men would go to their families for five days. Then once they return, subsequent colleagues of their respective units could receive farther leave.

However, this would have resulted in some SS men not having the chance to visit their families for several months. So, the camp commandant came up with a different idea. In other words, the families of the SS men, their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and fiancées, were provided guest rooms at the SS garrison disposal. They were either housed in the SS hotel next to the railway station, or vacant rooms in houses the camp commandant had previously confiscated from the Polish owners of these buildings, who had been expelled from them and taken over by the SS.

Also, these relatives of SS men could come here for the weekend or a few days, and at the same time the garrison commandant would grant passes to such SS men, either in the afternoon or on Sunday. They were also able to spend time together then, but frankly, Auschwitz was not an attractive place to stay for family members of SS men. Again, they could at most take their parents or siblings for example, into town and show them the market square, or a few neighbouring streets inhabited by Poles. Moreover, these parents must have asked their sons questions such as, “Show us where work,” right? “Show us where you live.” And that was a problem, as these places, the camp, Birkenau, the SS barracks were formally closed to civilians.

So, going back to the order of commander of the SS garrison, the only such place and the closest place from where one could catch a reasonably good view of the Birkenau camp and SS barracks, was the bridge over the rail line. Therefore, the SS men led their relatives and friends who visited them at the camp to the bridge to show them where their sons work, which is only a few hundred meters away from the entrance gate to the Birkenau camp. And there is a little farther to the right you can see the barracks where your son lives. It is a story with a bit of an anecdotal tinge.

However, it also conveys a more severe message. Because when we talk about the extent of the German public knowledge of the crimes committed at Auschwitz during the Second World War, it is usually in the context that these crimes were committed under cover, and therefore ordinary Germans didn’t have access to such information. This was not entirely true, given that the town of Oświęcim and the barrack camps built by the German company of IG Farben on the opposite Eastern side of the town, about 7000 to 8000 German civilians living there witnessed the crimes of the SS, to the extent that they could see how the SS men and Kapos mistreated the prisoners at the work commandos side of the Monowitz camp.

That’s one reason. And two, these people could see the smoke and flames hovering over the Birkenau camp from a relatively short distance. This applied not only to German civilians, but also to members of the Luftwaffe anti-aircraft defences, about 1000 of whom were either at the Auschwitz area or near the neighbouring villages. Finally, these were group employees who could see their railway platform where the selection took place barely 200 meters away. Afterall, the Birkenau camp and crematorium chimneys were relatively close by.

Then there are the wives and children of the SS men who lived by the camp premises, and finally the relatively large group of members of the SS men’s families who came to visit their sons at Auschwitz, and who indeed asked questions like, “What’s that awful smell spreading into the air?” It means that the circle of people privy to German crimes at Auschwitz were significantly larger than say, at Treblinka.

These documents tell us a little about the knowledge of the German civilian population here at the camp or its surrounding area. However, the Germans took great care to make sure knowledge of the crimes committed at Auschwitz didn’t spread beyond a particular circle. And now this leads us to other documents related to activities of resistance that were not produced at Auschwitz, which show us precisely what was known about what was going on in the camp.

Yes, refereeing back to the Germans, witnesses to the crime, they could only pass on this information or news by word of mouth to their neighbours or other Germans. The censorship enforced in Germany meant that virtually no information about the functioning of Auschwitz got to the press. If one were to analyse what appeared in the local press in upper Silesia, virtually nothing was written about Auschwitz at all. The only context is that of the existence of a large chemical factory here, and the success of the German mayor in restoring the German character of the town of Oświęcim. There was no mention of the camp.

However, the possibility of disseminating information about the concentration camp fell when the scope of activities of the allied countries, and to some extent on the Polish government in exile in London, which was practically the only source of such news for the press agencies of the other allied countries. And here too, we’re dealing with new or accessible collections of documents which are located for example, at the Hoover institute, or the Sikorski institute in London.

By analysing them the following conclusions can be reached. On the one hand, the source of this information, or the primary source of this information was the resistance movement at the Auschwitz concentration camp, such as Witold Pilecki’s organisation, which passed on reports in various way that later reached Warsaw, and then had to be subjected to all sorts of editing and abridgement, and which was done by people who often had little idea about what was happening in Auschwitz. Consequently, the more such reports were edited, the less precise they became and the more they contained misinterpretations. This too may have raised some doubts for those who later read such edited information in the West.

To a large extent, this was also news that was already quite outdated by the time it reached London, if we take into account the time the events in question took place at Auschwitz. Its often took months and sometimes more than a year for the immigration government press to report on the death of prominent people in Auschwitz, who had already been dead for a long time. This also shows some limitations in the London governments propaganda on reporting the crimes at Auschwitz. It also shows what criteria were used to select this information. For example, efforts were made not to disclose or publicise such materials or messages, the publication of which could harm or pose any danger to those sending them from Auschwitz as they were aware that these materials were also read eventually by some German agents. It is also not quite the case that despite significant efforts on the part of the resistance organisations in Auschwitz, these messages and reports reached the West in their entirety.

Also, when analysing these documents small details can sometimes be determined. For example, the issue of Witold Pilecki’s organisation in Auschwitz is interesting.

Yes, it is a minor detail, but perhaps an important one. Indeed, we have come to believe that for several reasons, the resistance organisation led by Witold Pilecki was not called the “Military Organisation Union”, as had been presented in almost all historical studies so far. For one, it is a phrase or formulation that doesn’t entirely conform to the nature of the Polish language, and as Witold Pilecki’s reports show, he was intelligent and fluent in Polish. And secondly, the whole misunderstanding arose from the fact the he wrote in one of his reports that he began to form a union of military organisations on his arrival in Auschwitz. These unfortunate unions were presumably mistranslated or adopted by historians who concluded that it must have been the name of Pilecki’s organisation.

As it appears, Pilecki didn’t pay much attention to the issue of nomenclature. Attention was not made to making the name particularly impressive. He focused on the day to day activities and in his notes mainly wrote about the military organisation, written simply with a capital letter.

Notwithstanding the emergence of new documents, notwithstanding the success in shedding new light on specific events in the history of Auschwitz, it is by no means a closed catalogue. There are still questions that the documents fail to answer.

Yes, there are sometimes quite fundamental or interesting questions that touch on important issues concerning the camps history. One of them for example is the question of the history of the so-called, “Camp 3,” sector 3 in Birkenau, which as we know from its beginnings in early 1942, was designed as another sector for about 60,000 prisoners, where they were to be crowded into the same barracks as was the case in the other sectors of the Birkenau camp 1 and 2. And then suddenly in the middle of 1943 a new concept emerges in the SS decision making circles. The idea of turning this yet to be built section 3 into a huge camp hospital, and interestingly enough where the prisoners would have reasonably good living conditions given the new type of barracks that were to be used there, which were equipped with large windows. It must be remembered, that in other parts of Birkenau these were stable type barracks with skylights only on the front of the roof, which meant that it was usually semi-dark inside the barracks.

Moreover, the hospital section of the camp was only intended to accommodate 140/150 prisoners per barrack which, given the average placement of prisoners in the other barracks in Birkenau, was suddenly an indication of the extraordinary care taken by the SS in mid 1943 while designing such a camp. We will never fully know what the role of this camp 3 at Birkenau was supposed to be as it was never really completed. Parts of the barracks built up to the spring of 1944 were later used not for their original purpose, but to house Jewish women brought in mass transports from Hungary. Later on, the construction or expansion of this camp was stopped altogether.

What could have been the reasons to build such a large hospital camp? We suppose there may have been two reasons. The first is that it could have been an attempt to concentrate all the sick prisoners and patients of the various camp hospitals in the Auschwitz complexes in one place. In other words, perhaps the idea was to transfer the prisoners from Auschwitz 1, the women in the hospital barracks in the sector B1A and the men from sector B2F. It is likely however, given the number of prisoners in these hospitals at their maximum capacity, it was still less than design capacity of the hospital camp in section 3.

We do not know for sure but interestingly, there is also a second hypothesis which attempts to answer the question of how the substantial number of sick prisoners in the other concentration camps was to be handled in Germany. Well, it must be remembered that, from about the middle of 1943 Auschwitz was the only German camp equipped with gas chambers and crematoria, since all the other camps under Operation Reinhard had practically ceased to operate. The intention may also have been to transfer the prisoners from other concentration camps in Germany, or numerous sub camps who didn’t appear strong enough to return to work quickly to Auschwitz, so Jews could be killed immediately upon arrival in the gas chambers. The non-Jewish prisoners on the other hand would be placed in this large hospital where they could only wait to die, or recovered and sent back to work.

Here we have some arguments that would make that hypothesis plausible. First, as early as the end of 1943, the first such large transport of disabled and bed ridden prisoners they didn’t know what to do with, was sent to Auschwitz. These transports mainly consisted of Jewish prisoners and some Roma. In German documentation they were referred to as “Rücktransporter,” or “Return Transports.” These were Jews who had just been transferred from Auschwitz to different sub camps of Germany, and after some months of work in poor conditions and exhausted from hunger, they were considered unnecessary there. Consequently, they were sent back to Auschwitz. Some transport registers from these transports survived, and what is interesting is that they show that virtually all the Jewish prisoners from these transports were murdered immediately upon arrival in the gas chambers, as the names of these prisoners do not appear later in any Auschwitz documents. It may also be, that the unexpected idea of building a huge hospital camp at Birkenau should be attributed to such decisions.