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Which Religious Denominations Did the People Deported to Auschwitz Belong To?
A precise definition of the faiths of the people deported to Auschwitz is no simple matter, mostly because of the lack of source materials. Most of the people deported to Auschwitz were never registered in the camp, and the Nazis destroyed most of the records containing information on prisoners before the Russians liberated the camp in January 1945.
In general, the people whom the Nazis deported to Auschwitz were either
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murdered immediately upon arriving in Auschwitz – they never became prisoners in the camp, and their data were not entered in the camp files. Rudimentary information about them is available on the basis of resistance movement material and the transport lists drawn up by the Nazis in the occupied countries from which they sent people to Auschwitz.
Franciszek Piper, head of the Historical Research Department and author of the book How Many People Died in Auschwitz, estimates that slightly over 900,000 people were exterminated immediately after arrival, without being registered. The majority of them, almost 900,000, were Jews, the majority of whom professed Judaism. Also unregistered were some 10,000 Poles, 2,000 Roma, and 3,000 Soviet POWs; Catholicism was the religion of the majority of these unregistered non-Jews. - registered in the camp after completing the registration procedures – over the period when the camp was in operation, from June 1940 through January 1945, there were over 400,000 prisoners. Half of them were Jews and professed Judaism. Of the other 200,000 prisoners, about 150,000 were Poles, and the predominant denomination was therefore Roman Catholicism.
Religious Denominations according to the Death Books
Piotr Setkiewicz, head of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum archives, says that the so-called Death Books are the basic source of information on the religious beliefs of prisoners (that is, those who were entered in the records). This source is, nevertheless, incomplete. The Death Books consist of 46 volumes in which the Politische Abteilung (camp Gestapo) noted the deaths of approximately 69 thousand registered prisoners between July 29, 1941, and December 31, 1943. Setkiewicz notes, however, that the “religious denomination” field is missing from most of the extant records and that, even when it appears, it is not always filled in.
Almost 32 thousand (46.8%) of the prisoners in the Death Books are listed as Roman Catholics, 2.5 thousand (3.6%) as Eastern Orthodox, almost 2.3 thousand (3.4%) as Protestant, and over 1 thousand (1.6%) as Greek Catholic. There are also 5 Muslims.
The field for “religious denomination” is blank in 184 cases. In 116 cases, it reads “denomination unknown,” in 39 cases “believes in God,” and, in 1,277, “non-believer.” Setkiewicz also found information in the Death Books about 2 Buddhist prisoners, 2 Hussites, and 295 members of the Czech-Moravian church.
The Books also record the deaths of about 30 thousand adherents of Judaism. Setkiewicz points out that this figure is low. In 1943, death certificates were rarely issued for Jewish prisoners.
The Death Books therefore mention almost 40 thousand people of non-Jewish denomination. Of these non-Jews, 80.4% are Catholic, 6.1% Eastern Orthodox, 5.8% Protestant, and 2.7% Greek Catholic. The other 2,000 or so people represent almost 4.9% of the entries in the Death Books.
Setkiewicz feels that these data can be used to estimate the number of prisoners of non-Jewish denominations. However, he cautions that the true figure for Catholics would be somewhat higher, reflecting the deportations from Warsaw during the Uprising there. The Germans deported about 13 thousand inhabitants of the Polish capital to Auschwitz in August and September 1944.
It should also be remembered that the information from the Death Books omits seven months of 1940 and the first half of 1941, when the prisoners were almost exclusively Polish. Estimates should also take account of several thousand prisoners from the USSR, along with Soviet POWs.
Estimated breakdown of religious denominations
Applying these proportions to the total of 400,000 registered Auschwitz prisoners it can be estimated that
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the approximately 200 thousand non-Jewish prisoners included:
- 165 thousand Catholics
- 12.3 thousand Eastern Orthodox
- 11.6 thousand Protestants
- 5.5 thousand Greek Catholics
- and at least 9.7 thousand people of other or no religious denomination.
This latter category also includes 58 Muslims, information on whom, including denomination, is found in the files of Soviet POWs. There are files on about 7,500 of the 12,500 Soviet POWs. In most of these, the “denomination” space is left blank.
The one group whose numbers are known precisely is the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum staff member Teresa Wontor-Cichy has carried out research on them. She writes in her book Więzieni za wiarę [Imprisoned for their Faith] that at least 387 Witnesses were held in Auschwitz during its five-year existence.
- Among the 200,000 registered Jewish prisoners, Judaism was the denomination of the majority.