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70th Anniversary of the First Mass Gas Killing
The first trial of the mass killing of prisoners with the use of Zyklon-B in the Auschwitz camp probably began seventy years ago, on September 3, 1941, when 850 prisoners were killed. Immediately after evening roll call, the Germans locked about 600 Soviet POWs and 250 sick Polish prisoners selected from the camp hospital in 28 cells in the cellar of block 11 (then block 13). Ten prisoners from the penal company, who had been confined to the jail since September 1 following the escape by a prisoner, were also there.
In the volume of the Voices of Memory series devoted to the history of the crematoria and gas chambers in the Auschwitz camp, the head of the Museum Research Department, Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz, wrote that "About 600 Soviet POWs and 250 patients from the hospital were taken to the cellars of Block 11 on orders from camp director SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch, after which pellets of Zyklon B, a preparation used previously in the camp for sanitation purposes (pest control), were poured through the cellar windows. The windows were covered with earth. The following day, after determining that some of the POWs and prisoners were still betraying signs of life, the SS men poured in another dose of gas and succeeded in raising its concentration to lethal levels. This was the first occasion on which the crematorium furnaces proved incapable of burning such large numbers of corpses. Some bodies were stored for several days in the morgue room, while other corpses were most probably buried in a mass grave.”
After this experiment, the Germans adapted the morgue at the crematorium in the Auschwitz I camp as the first gas chamber. In view of the proximity of the prisoner blocks, the camp administration offices, and the Oświęcim-Brzeszcze road, the killing of people with gas was transferred to a place that was easier to isolate. A provisional gas chamber was set up in the house that had belonged to an expelled Polish farmer near the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, which was then under construction, in the spring of 1942. An additional farmhouse was adapted for this purpose a few months later, and the construction of four crematoria with gas chambers began at the Birkenau camp in 1942.
The first mass gassing in accounts by prisoners
Former prisoner Kazimierz Hałgas gave an account in which he recalls the selection in the camp hospital. “After entering, the SS physicians ordered all the patients to move to the left side of the room, set up a table in the center aisle, and sat down there. The patients passed by them single file on their way to the other side of the room. The SS physicians evaluated the prisoners by sight without examining anyone, only asking a patient an occasional question such as: Do you have pain in your lungs? Or: Do you have pain in your kidneys? They ordered some of the prisoners, particularly the more worn-down ones, to stand off to the side. I stood next to them with the box full of the prisoners’ file cards, taking out and giving them the appropriate ones, while an orderly standing beside me noted down or corrected the numbers that had previously been marked on the patients’ chests with a chemical pencil. The patients were led out into the little yard between the blocks, where patients were brought from the other departments in turn. Many of the patients lay down on the ground out of exhaustion and others shivered with cold because they were wearing only shirts. It was a woeful sight. Before evening roll call, the block bosses and SS men led the patients to the penal company block. In the evening we received supplies, bread and extras, for the full patient population. I went to infirmary obercapo Bock and asked where to send the food for the patients. He made a gesture as if I were crazy and told me to pass out the food to the patients there because the others would no longer be eating.”
Stanisław Suliborski recalled the moment when a group of Soviet POWs, who werelater killed with gas, arrived in the camp. “At about 2300 hours we heard people screaming and dogs barking from the direction of the camp gate. We sneaked looks out the window, from which we could see part of the camp street leading to block 13. Before our eyes there soon appeared the outlines of several hundred people in uniform overcoats, escorted by rows of armed SS men on both sides of the street. Shouts of ‘Put him out of his misery!’ in Russian oriented us to the fact that the men under guard were Russian. The commotion died down inside the gate of block 13. The SS men left and everything was quiet.”
After the completion of the gassing, prisoners from the camp hospital were ordered to carry the corpses out of the cellar and transport them to the crematorium. One of them, an orderly from the surgical block named Jan Wolny, described the event. “The whole group that I was in was marched on the run to the yard of block 13,” says Wolny. “There were several SS men there and one of them explained to us that we would carry the dead up our of the cellar and remove their clothing. After undressing the corpses, we were supposed to lay them out in the middle of the yard. I will never forget what I saw on entering the cellar. The dead bodies of prisoners and Soviet POWs lay scattered around, intertwined in confusion. Their eyes and mouths were wide open. While carrying and undressing the corpses I noticed that many of those who had been gassed had rags blocking their mouths and noses. The next day, we were also forced to load the corpses on carts and take them to the crematorium. No prisoners were allowed outside their blocks. Two orderlies took each corpse by the arms and legs and tossed it onto the cart in a single movement. Orderlies on the cart arranged the cold dead bodies in several layers rising high above the sides of the cart. We pushed the loaded cart through the whole camp to the crematorium.”
