Sub-camps

The transcript of the podcast

The Auschwitz concentration camp had almost fifty sub-camps. The largest of them had extensive administrative structures, separate hospital barracks, showers, and even small crematoria. In the smaller ones, prisoners were locked up for the night in rooms or cellars. There were no fences or guard towers there and meals were delivered from the main camp. The majority of prisoners were employed in the armaments and extractive industries or agriculture. At the beginning of 1945, the sub-camps held more men and female prisoners than Auschwitz I and Birkenau combined. Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz, the head of the Memorial Research Centre talks about the history of Auschwitz sub-camps.

When did the idea of creating sub-camps appear in the history of Auschwitz? Was it planned from the very beginning or was it more the need of the moment?

Well at the very beginning of the existence of the Auschwitz concentration camp prisoners had to be present on the evening roll call and therefore all prisoners of Auschwitz stayed in the barracks of the Stammlager of the main camp. However it was already in 1941, after the first wave of mass expulsion of the local poles who lived in the area of Auschwitz between rivers Sola and Vistula. SS in 1941 in the spring of the year, confiscated land of these people, they demolished the houses in the 8 villages around Auschwitz, but they also confiscated number of cattle that were to be used for the needs of the future agriculture enterprises of the SS inside the so-called „zone of interest” of the Auschwitz concentartion camp, and therefore it was necessary to send certain number of prisoners each day early morning to these places, particularly in the village of Rajsko in order to feed the animals, to take care of them and that led to certain inconvenient results for the SS.

In the end of the year, in December in 1941, the first command of about 50 prisoners were sent to the village of Harmęże, which is situated about 2 miles from the main camp in the Auschwitz, and these people, their task was to take care on rabbits and chickens that were kept in the cages in different places in the village. Practically that was the date of the establishment of the first Auschwitz sub-camp, and gradually, when commandor of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess, who believed that all this area, about 40 square kilometers, should not be used only as a typical agriculture farm, Hoess did not want to just cultivate potatoes for example, but he wished to establish a herd network of very specialized, sophisticated farms, which could be seen as a model of German agriculture in the East, including some laboratories like in Rajsko.

When German specialists worked on new plants that could be used as a source of natural rubber for the German war economy. They found such a plant in southern part of the Soviet Russia which was called „kok-sagiz” and it contained a certain amount of natural rubber in its roots, so that was the purpose for establishment laboratory, in which some prisoners, particularly women, Jewish prisoners from France, they worked in this area on the supervision of German scientists. Similar agriculture farm was established in the village of Harmęże. SS wished to expand the fishing farms that existed there before the war, so in all these places, the SS in 1942 and 43 established tie of network of such farms. So these were agriculture sub-camps of Auschwitz.

In the second half of 1942, when Rudolf Hoess recieved an order from the Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler to burn the bodies of those people who had been killed in the gas chambers, so he wished to acquire a certain amount of wood to do so, and in order to achieve this goal, the SS initiated the series of negotiations with German Forestry Administration in Pszczyna or Pless, and thanks to the agreement reached between the both sides, prisoners of Auschwitz were sent to several localities in the area to Radostowitz, Altdorf of Stara Wieś, Mesersitz and others, where the small commanders, about 20 or 30 prisoners were employed in the forest, they had to cut the trees, remove the branches and then some of this wood was used for this purpose for burning the bodies in pits in Birkenau.

In the end of the year SS decided to establish one, single, larger sub-camp in Kobiór, instead of these many others, and this sub-camp existed practically until the end of construction of this large crematoria buildings in Birkenau, as long as it was necessary. In August 1943 the last of these forest camps was liquidated.

It seems then that it was rather the decision taken as then developed to start that kind of using of slave labour of prisoners to create sub-camps. Are we able to give a definition of a sub-camp, from the administrative SS point of view?

We consider this term, the „sub-camp” in the way that the prisoners should be placed somewhere outside the main camp. They had to stay there in the isolated building, under the supervision of German guards. Each such sub-camp should have separate sort of administation with the leader of the camp, so-called Lagerführer. In some cases also with other administrative officials and its own sentry platoon or accompany that was responsible for guarding prisoners in such in place. The problem was that in the German documents we can find many different names for the sub-camps, for example the Außenkommando, the External kommando or Branch camp or something like that. But in practical terms all these sub-camps worked the same way. Prisoners worked, in most cases, for the benefit of certain external administration unit of the German stage or for the needs of German companies, in the factories, in coal mines and many places around Auschwitz.

In 1941 for the first time this idea emerged to employ the prisoners in the industry. That was of course connected with the story of a huge IG Farben plant that was built on the suburb of Oświęcim, on the other side of the city called Monowice. From the very beginning, the company needed a lot of workers, including prisoners of concentration camp. The only problem was that, commander Hoess believed that these prisoners should be transported back each day to the camp, to be present on the evening roll call. Because of the distance between the construction site and concentration camp, that was about 4 or 5 miles, caused some problems, because initially prisoners had to walk simply, cross main street of the city of Oświęcim and later on they were transported by a special shuttle train, that operated from station in Dwory, that was situated not far from the construction site and the main camp, so that caused some problems and emerged some costs for the company, which had to pay to the German railways for the transportaion of these people.

In result of many negotiations between the representatives of IG Farben and the concentration camp, it was already in 1942 in June, when the SS finally agreed to move certain contingent of prisoners to the construction site. IG Farben had already built 3 large barrack camps, residential camps, were different category of slave labourers around the factory, and the managment of the company agreed to donate The forest camp for the needs of the concentration camp. That was the beginning, for the first time the SS agreed to move the prisoners from concentration camp to the other place.

More or less, at the same time, in June in 1942, practically the first industrial sub-camp was established, or the decision was taken to do so, when the SS took over the large quarry and factory of cement in city of Golleschau or Goleszów, about 30 miles from Auschwitz. For obvious reasons it was not possible to deliver the prisoners each day to this working place, so because the company was owned by the SS, there was no problems in communication between the administration of the factory and the commendatore, the headquarters of the concentration camp.

The third such camp was built near the coal mine in Jawiszowice, about 8 miles from Oświęcim, and The forest camp in Chełmek, which is situated again about 4 miles from Auschwitz concentration camp. That was shoe factory there, and the German administrator of this plant reached the agreement with administration of Auschwitz. About 200 Auschwitz prisoners were employed there by cleaning the fish pond which was, what we used as a source of fresh water for the plant.

It seems that when we look at the sub-camps of Auschwitz we can have different kind of division parameters. On one hand we can look at the, who commissions the sub-camp, sometimes these were camps created by the SS for the needs of the camp, sometimes there is an outside company, that uses the slave labour of prisoners. On the other hand we can look at them from the kind of labour that the prisoners were doing, and you mention the farm sub-camps of different kinds, forest and different kind of industrial camps. When we look at this division, the kind of labour the prisoners were to do, what else can we see in the story of the Auschwitz sub-camps?

We can see, that in the course of time, more and more industrialists were engaged in the cooperation with the SS, and they asked for labours for their factories. That was conected of course with mass conscription of German workers to Wehrmacht to the German Armed Forces on the one hand, on the other gradually, the German authorities decided to move more and more production potential from the western part of Germany, which was intensively, during this time, bombed by the British or American Armed Forces, to the east. The only possible location of those new factories was Silesia, where’s the huge deposits of coal and others raw materials. However it was still in 1943, more or less in the spring of the year, when not all these industrialists were persuaded that prisoners could be used in their own factories as a source of labour and they may have some problems with inclusion of the prisoners into their own labour of the factory. They may had been worried about the low efficiency of work, of prisoners so on and so on, and it was only after several months, when the industrialists in Auschwitz, including IG Farben and others gained certain experience with employment of the prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp, that these industrialists began to believe that it was possible, that it was nothing unusual, it would not cause any serious troubles to hire Auschwitz prisoners for their own needs. So from the spring of the year we can observe gradually that many more German factories began to employ prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

What can we say about the conditions in the sub-camps, because this is not a monolith and I suppose that every sub-camp had its own uniqueness and the conditions varied from extremely bad to maybe some sub-camps that could be better for prisoners.

If we wished to look at the structure of the camp, and the regime, and mortality, the treatment of prisoners in all types of these sub-camps, we can find some common features between them. For example, for these camps that were established at the beginning, in 1942, for instance, similar number of deaths in this camp. The mortality was extremely high for two reasons I believe; first of all the SS did not care about the deaths, about the hundreds or thousands of prisoners who were dying, who were losing the ability to work in these factories. Practically it was only with, in the spring of 1943, when the SS itself began to understand that they were not able to cover the gaps in squares of these prisoners, because in this time more or less, the most of the european jews, including first of all the polish jews, had already been killed. Secondly the industrialists themselves, they began to complain, the quality of the prisoners being delived by the SS at the construction site is rather low, that it could be used,in most cases only as the so called „Hilfsarbeiter” as „unskilled workers”, and they wished to at least keep those prisoners who were able to gain some skills for longer time, and on the one hand we can see that, as example we can give the story of the IG Farben plant, when the managers, after the series of complaints, they asked the SS to exchange those who were sick, who were unable to work any longer, with a new ones, with new prisoners who had just arrived to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and who were ready to work with a higher efficiency. Even in this case, in the case of IG Farben, in 1943, in 1944, we can observe certain tendency to conserve this ability of prisoners to work, to safe at least some of them, who were carpenters, bricklayers and so on.

On the other hand, practically till the very end, those prisoners who fell ill, who could not longer work in the construction site, they were being sent systemically to Birkenau for so called „better treatment”. I believe that the managers of IG Farben of course had to know what does it mean, that „special treatment” in Birkenau for these people. However, the situation varied in different kind of these camps, and depend on individual attitude of the managers of those plants towards the prisoners. If, in some cases, they completly did not care about the situation that prevailed in the construction sites and other working places and the sub-camps themselves. That it was the case of, for example, cement factory in Goleshau, where the mortality was extremely high, as it was for example in the case of the Chełmek factory, where practically all prisoners sent to this place died in the sub-camp itself or shortly after they were sent back to the hospital in Auschwitz.

But we can give also number of oposite examples, as it was in the camp in Bobrek, that was run by the Siemens company. The director of this plant, Mr Bundzus took care about the workers, probably because they were skilled, they worked in the factory which produced certain sophisticated pieces of electrical engines for the German Navy. He ordred that members of the SS could not enter the main room of the factory. He also organised better food for prisoners, relatively good living conditions in the building where prisoners lived and he also asked the administration of Auschwitz to send to Bobrek about 30 women, who were to take care about the kitchen and they cultivated some vegetables inside of factory, and these onions, for example, were added to the food given to the prisoners. And in result of this, mortality in Bobrek was minimal, so we can see that much depend on the individual decisions and attitude of german supervisors.

The problem was however that in most of this places where prisoners had to work on the construction of different objects in the sub-camps, there were German meisters, or foremen, supervisors, who many time expressed their discontent on the piece of work, and when for example, the commander of prisoners in the opinion of the German meister worked too slow, when he considered the prisoners that were lazy, so he used to inform about it Kommandoführer, the head of the guards, that he should do something in order to force the prisoners to work harder and therefore the Kommandoführer, SS guards themselves or in most cases the Kapos were instructed that they should take the sticks and push prisoners to work harder and faster. That of course had very negative consequences on the ability of prisoners to work, and sometimes even when german foreman was so irritated, so frustrated of this slow piece of work, so he might pit prisoners himself, which in some cases was tolerated by the german guards, but eventually in 1943, the SS issued the special order that pitting prisoners is forbidden and immediate supervision on the prisoners laid exclusively in the hands of the SS guards. So we get on this also some documents, in which the SS administration proposed to punish somehow those German civilians who were particularly brutal towards the prisoners. Perhaps that resultued from the fact that SS wished to keep the monopoly over the punishing the prisoners and controlling them.

These were the main types of sub-camps that existed within the complex of Auschwitz. In the fall of 1944, there were almost 50 such branch camps, sub-camps around Auschwitz. Most of them were situated by the factories, coal mines, were prisoners had to work in the steal works.

Where among the sub-camps of Auschwitz ,if any, where prisoners did something, well maybe something more unexpected, unusual, because you mention of course on one hand farms and forest, you mention coal mines and different kind of industry, but were there any unusual sub-camps?

Yes, there were such sub-camps and sometimes prisoners were employed in some unexpected places. That was the case of the Międzybrodzie or SS Solahütte camp. At the beginning some prisoners were taken there to build the SS resort for the holidays or for the weekends, where SS-men used to visit this place, so they built the main building as well as several cottages around it. But after the end of construction works, small number of women prisoners were employed there in the kitchen. So they stayed there and they did relatively easy job, as usual in the kitchen the prisoners might have do.

Then it was camp in Brno or Brünn, when initially prisoners were employed by the construction works in the building of the SS and Police Academy in the city. However in the certain moment group of prisoners was used for putting types of the typing machine into certain wooden containers, so in this way this kind of work was again relatively easy. That was also a special sub-camp that was pracitally organised in the train and mainly the prisoners stayed, they lived in the cars of the train and they were moved from one place to other in Germany, in order to remove rubble, pieces of glass and in general to clean the streets of the bombed German cities. So from a formal point of view it was a separate sub-camp, again with with its own administration and with its own Lagerführer.

Are we able to give precise number of how many prisoners of Auschwitz worked in the sub-camps? We know that in the last period of the existence of the camp there were in fact more prisoners inside the sub-camps than in the main Auschwitz and Birkenau camps.

Yes, in the fall of 1944 in all these sub-camps were more prisoners, mainly about 35 thousand than in the both main camps in Auschwitz and Birkenau, that was about 3o thousand only. However it’s difficult to find out how many prisoners in total were sent to the sub-camps because of common practice of the SS, of the constant replecement of prisoners in the sub-camps with a new ones. If, for example, in the certain camp some prisoners stayed in local sick bay longer than it was expected, so in result of constant selections done by SS sanitarians or by the German SS doctor who, from time to time, visited the sub-camps, people who were seriously sick were being constatly exchanged with a new ones, and if the track from Auschwitz was taking certain group of prisoners for the sub-camp, let’s say 20 or 30 people together. So the same track was trasporting the sick ones from the sub-camp to the main camp or to rather to Birkenau, in most cases to be killed. So if we can give more or less accurate number of prisoners who stayed in the sub-camps, there are more problems with estimating the number of those who were killed there or practically died in the result of the very hard labour in the sub-camps.