Yes, we ate that food. It was a rescue for us. Even animals eat each other when they feel hunger. ... We wanted to live. We wanted to survive. Should we have thrown it away? We didn’t kill anyone. We ate only their food. They were already dead at that time.... To have food, water and enough sleep—those were the things we cared about. We had all of that in “Canada.”
Not surprisingly, however, it was individual members of the SS who personally benefited far more from “Canada.” “The Germans kept accumulating wealth,” says Linda Breder. “Death was the only thing that was left for us. ... All of them [the SS men] used to steal. They came there because there was no other place like that, where they got everything.”
Rudolf Höss admitted that “the treasures brought in by the Jews gave rise to unavoidable difficulties for the camp itself ” because the SS men who worked for him “were not always strong enough to resist the temptation provided by these valuables which lay within such easy reach.”9 Oskar Groening confirms his commandant’s view, “There was a danger [of theft] because if a lot of stuff is heaped together you can easily steal something and profit from it—which was absolutely common in Auschwitz.” Because he worked in the Economic Agency, Groening was aware that “many people touched” the valuables in the chain that led from the luggage deposited on the arrival “ramp” via the sorting barracks of “Canada” to the placing of the wooden boxes filled with valuables in his office, “And it’s surely been the case that a whole lot of this stuff was carried into channels that it wasn’t meant to go.”
Surprisingly, as Groening confirms, the supervision of the SS members in Auschwitz was “actually very loose.” He admits that he himself was an active participant in the corruption and theft that were rife among the SS members in the camp, stealing from the cash that surrounded him in order to buy goods on the flourishing Auschwitz black market. When, for example, he grew tired of having to draw a revolver from the camp armory and then return it at the end of his shift, he approached “people who had connections” and said, “Dear friend, I need a gun with ammunition.” And, because Groening was known as the “King of the Dollars” because of his job counting and sorting the stolen money, a fee of thirty U.S. dollars was agreed. It was a simple matter for Groening to steal this amount from the money that passed by him every day, so he handed over the thirty dollars and received his revolver.
Groening’s transaction was mirrored by thousands of other similar illegal deals every week at Auschwitz. So much wealth was flooding into the camp with so little supervision and so many casual opportunities to steal that it is hard to imagine that any of the SS members were free from involvement in this crime. From the SS private who wanted a new radio to the SS officer who dealt in stolen jewelry, corruption at the camp was endemic.
Himmler referred to the ultra-sensitive question of corruption in the SS during his infamous Posen speech of October 1943, delivered to an audience that included fifty senior SS figures.
I want to mention a very grave matter before you, in all frankness. We can talk about it amongst us, yet nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public ... I am referring to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. Most of you will know what it means when a hundred bodies lie together, when five hundred lie there, or when there lie a thousand. And ... to have seen this through and, apart from a few exceptions of human weakness ... to have remained decent, that has made us tough. It is a page of glory in our history that has never been written and is never to be written. We have taken away the riches that they had, and ... I have given a strict order, which Obergruppenführer Pohl has carried out: we have delivered all of these riches to the Reich, to the State. We have taken nothing for ourselves. We have the moral right, we had the duty to our people to do it, to destroy the people who wanted to destroy us. We have carried out this most difficult task for the love of our people. And our heart, our soul, our character have suffered no harm from it.
Himmler thus attempted to draw a clear line between the murders, which were justified and necessary for the good of the Reich, and individual profit, which remained a crime. He did so in an attempt to preserve the image of the SS members as both “hard” and “incorruptible.” It is easy to understand why he tried to make this distinction. He had observed first-hand, two years before, the psychological damage that shooting Jews at close range had caused his teams of killers, and so he had overseen the development of a system of murder via the gas chambers that to an extent distanced them from emotional trauma. Now he sought to provide intellectual comfort to his men by distinguishing between the moral but hard defender of the Reich and the louche opportunist out for personal profit. For them to be able to live with themselves, perhaps even to enable them to “forgive” themselves for their parts in the “Final Solution,” Himmler recognized that he had to paint a picture of the SS members as killers of women and children, yes, but murderers who had still retained their honor. His method of doing that was to remind them that they had not profited personally from the killings.
It was all a lie, of course, and not just at the most obvious level—that the SS was massively implicated in corruption and theft at Auschwitz. It was a fundamental lie through and through, because no distinction was ever possible during the Nazis’ “Final Solution” between the “honorable” murder of helpless civilians and pure bestiality. This truth is illustrated most obviously by the actions of the SS doctors at Auschwitz. These medical professionals were involved at every level of the killing process, from the initial selection at the ramp to the placing of Zyklon B into the gas chambers. Their involvement was symbolized by the fact that the Zyklon B was transported to the gas chambers in a pseudo-ambulance marked with a red cross.
As a result of their total complicity, the Auschwitz doctors faced a dilemma more stark than any of the other Nazi perpetrators, best expressed in the question: How can you take part in mass murder and yet still retain a sense that what you are doing is morally compatible with the Hippocratic oath that compels doctors to try and heal the sick?
Crucial in any attempt to understand how the Nazi doctors felt able to answer that question is the realization that, for them, Auschwitz was not a sudden introduction to the idea that trained medical staff should be involved in murder. From the moment of their accession to power in 1933, the Nazi leadership had been committed to the concept that certain “races,” and indeed certain individuals, were more “worthy” of life than others. The first indication of the practical implication of this vision was the introduction during the 1930s of compulsory sterilization for those with severe mental disease. Altogether, around 300,000 Germans were forcibly subjected to such sterilization.
The close links between the Nazis’ adult euthanasia program—which originated in the autumn of 1939—and the staff of the Operation Reinhard death camps were described earlier. Those pioneers of the death camps, Wirth and Stangl, both began their careers in killing by helping to murder the disabled. But what is important to note here is the fact that the selection process for the adult euthanasia program was controlled by doctors, not by police—a practice that was perpetuated in Auschwitz. This intimate link was the necessary consequence of a pre-history of killing that elevated the removal of what the Nazis called “life unworthy of life” (“lebensunwertes Leben”) to the highest duty of medicine. It was this perverse logic that made it unsurprising to the killers that a medical practitioner, Dr. Eberl, could become the commandant of the death camp of Treblinka.
By the time Eberl took up his job at Treblinka this concept of “life unworthy of life” had, of course, been extended from the mentally and physically disabled to the Jews. In attempting to justify the killing of the Jews, the SS doctors fell back on the early Nazi propaganda lie of the Jews as a corrupting influence on the body politic. “Of course I am a doctor and I want to preserve life,” said Fritz Klein, one Nazi doctor. “Out of respect for human life, I would remove a gangrenous appendix from a diseased body. The Jew is the gangrenou
s appendix in the body of mankind.”10
From the purist Nazi point of view, therefore, Auschwitz and the other death camps were an exercise in health management—facilitating the removal of people who were a burden or threat to the well-being of the state. Thus, some of the earliest killings at Auschwitz of those found unfit to work were carried out at Block 10—the hospital block—by means of injections with phenol. It was an exact inversion of normal medical ethics—a visit to the hospital not to be cured, but to be killed.
Once the system of selection on arrival was introduced in 1942, Nazi doctors played a vital part in the process of mass murder. It was doctors who made the decision that was fundamental to the operation of Auschwitz—who from the arriving transports should live and who should die. The active participation of doctors in this selection was essential to the Nazis for two reasons—one practical and the other philosophical. The practical reason was clear—doctors were thought to be best capable of sizing up at a glance a human being’s capability to work (each selection took only a matter of seconds). But the philosophical reason is both less obvious and more significant. By involving doctors so intimately in the selection, a sense was created that the killing was not an arbitrary act of prejudice, but a scientific necessity. Auschwitz was not a place of indiscriminate slaughter, but a measured and calm contribution to the health of the state.
It was in the area of medical experiments , however, that the doctors of Auschwitz were to become especially infamous. That prisoners were used for this purpose fitted into the Nazi ideal that enemies of the state ought to provide a “service” to the Reich–if not by working as forced labor, then by dying in the pursuit of “medical knowledge.”
For the doctor who was ambitious in pursuing a career in research and unencumbered by humanity or compassion, Auschwitz was a laboratory without parallel. At least two doctors, Clauberg and Schumann, conducted “medical research” into sterilization at Auschwitz. Significantly, Schumann had previous experience of murder—he had been one of the doctors involved in the adult euthanasia program, working at the killing center at Sonnenstein where Auschwitz prisoners had been sent in July 1941.
Silvia Veselá,11 one of the first Slovakian women to arrive at Auschwitz, was forced to assist Clauberg and Schumann, working as a nurse in Block 10 in the main camp where many of the experiments took place.
I was told that one part of the block was where the X-rays were kept. There were huge X-ray machines with big cylinders. Dr. Schumann carried out these sterilizations. The second part of the building belonged to Dr. Clauberg. He carried out sterilizations by means of chemical substances. He injected the chemical substance into the women’s womb and ovary to make them stick together. The main aim of these experiments was to find out how much of that substance was necessary to carry out the sterilization correctly.
Himmler took a particular interest in the sterilization experiments conducted at Auschwitz. Sterilization had, of course, been one of the “solutions” considered by the Nazis to their self-created “Jewish problem” that pre-dated the development of the gas chambers—it had even been raised at Wannsee as a possible alternative to deportation for some German Jews of mixed ancestry. But, despite promises from leading medical figures like Professor Clauberg, Himmler had yet to be delivered the cheap, efficient sterilization technique he wanted.
As she cared for the women who were the subject of these painful experiments, Silvia Veselá “tried not to get involved too much—the best thing you could have done was not to think. The impact of X-ray intensity on the small intestine was tested on them. It was more than awful. These women were throwing up all the time. It was really terrible.” X-rays were used either as an attempt to sterilize on their own or to check the progress of chemicals injected into the womb:The women were put on the X-ray table in the gynaecological position. As their legs were spread open the doctor opened their wombs and injected the substance. From a console he was able to see whether he got the injection right. And I used to expose the X-rays after every examination and injection to see whether the woman was sterilized and her ovary finally stuck together. ... To them we were not humans. We were animals. Can’t you understand that? We were not humans. We were just numbers and experimental animals.
Silvia Veselá herself did not escape the attentions of Professor Clauberg in Block 10:I was ill and they carried out some experiments on me. ... Unfortunately, after the war when I got married, in spite of those experiments I got pregnant. I had to undertake a very loathsome abortion. Doctors told me, “That’s enough! Don’t dare to be pregnant anymore.”
In Block 10, not only did Schumann and Clauberg conduct sterilization experiments, but Dr. Wirths, Auschwitz’s chief medical officer, medically abused women in pursuit of “research” into the functioning of the cervix. Medical experiments were also carried out on men in Block 28 of the main camp—a particular specialty here was to cover prisoners’ skin with a variety of poisonous substances in an attempt to mimic possible tricks that might be used by those trying to escape service in the army.
Auschwitz prisoners were even “sold” to the Bayer company, part of I.G. Farben, as human guinea pigs for the testing of new drugs. One of the communications from Bayer to the Auschwitz authorities states that: “The transport of 150 women arrived in good condition. However, we were unable to obtain conclusive results because they died during the experiments. We would kindly request that you send us another group of women to the same number and at the same price.”12 These women, who had died in testing an experimental anaesthetic, cost the Bayer company 170 Reichsmarks each.
But, terrible as the suffering inflicted was, it is not Clauberg or Schumann or Wirths or even the Bayer company that has invaded the popular consciousness as the most infamous name associated with medical experiments at Auschwitz, but that of a handsome, thirty-two-year-old combat veteran, holder of the Iron Cross, sent to Auschwitz in March 1943—Dr. Josef Mengele. More than any other individual, Mengele has become synonymous with Auschwitz. The reason is a combination of character and circumstance: character because Mengele reveled in the power he possessed at Auschwitz and the opportunities for heartless research the place offered, and circumstance because he arrived at the camp just as the Birkenau crematoria were completed and Auschwitz was about to enter its most destructive period.
The schizophrenic nature of Mengele’s character as demonstrated at Auschwitz is remarked on by a number of former prisoners. As he stood before them, immaculately dressed in his SS uniform, Mengele could smile and be charming—or he could be unspeakably cruel. Witnesses saw him shoot a mother and child on the ramp when they caused him trouble, but others remember how he offered them only kind words. Vera Alexander,13 a Czechoslovakian inmate, saw this duality at close range when she was Kapo of a block that contained gypsy and Polish children: “Mengele used to come to the camp every day—he used to bring chocolate.... When I shouted and told the children off, they usually reacted [by saying], ‘We will tell Uncle you are bad.’ Mengele was the ‘Good Uncle.’” But, of course, Mengele behaved in this way for a reason: These children were nothing to him but the raw material for his experiments. Vera Alexander witnessed how children could be returned to the block screaming with pain after a visit to their “Good Uncle.”
One of Mengele’s chief areas of “interest” was the study of twins—he had previously specialized in “hereditary biology.” The rumor at the camp was that he was trying to understand the exact circumstances in which multiple births occur, and therefore wanted to undertake research that might eventually allow women in the Reich to have more children more quickly. But it is more likely he was chiefly motivated by the desire to understand the role of genetic inheritance in development and behavior—this was a topic that obsessed many Nazi scientists.
Eva Moses Kor14 was ten years old in 1944, and, together with her twin sister, Miriam, was subject to Mengele’s attentions:Mengele came in every day after roll call—he wanted to see how many guinea pigs he had.
Three times a week both of my arms would be tied to restrict the blood flow, and they took a lot of blood from my left arm, on occasion enough blood until we fainted. At the same time they were taking blood, they would give me a minimum of five injections into my right arm. After one of these injections I became extremely ill and Dr Mengele came in next morning with four other doctors. He looked at my fever chart and he said, laughing sarcastically, “Too bad, she is so young. She has only two weeks to live.” I would fade in and out of consciousness, and in a semi-conscious state of mind I would keep telling myself, “I must survive, I must survive.” They were waiting for me to die. Would I have died my twin sister, Miriam, would have been rushed immediately to Mengele’s lab, killed with an injection to the heart and then Mengele would have done the comparative autopsies.
As Miklos Nyiszli,15 a prisoner doctor who observed Mengele closely, remarked, “This phenomenon was unique in world medical history. Two brothers died together, and it was possible to perform autopsies on both. Where, under normal circumstances, can one find twin brothers who die at the same place and at the same time?”
Eva Moses Kor managed to fight her fever and saved not just her own life, but that of her twin sister: “I was asked by somebody, ‘You’re very strong?’ And I said, ‘I had no choice. I overcame or I would have perished.’”
The story of Eva Moses Kor is not just a horrific one, it illustrates the truth at the heart of Mengele’s life in Auschwitz—he could do to human beings whatever he liked. There was no restriction on the scope or extent of what he called his “medical experiments.” His power to torture and murder in pursuit of his own sadistic curiosity was endless. He experimented not just on twins, but also on dwarves and inmates with the form of gangrene of the face known as noma, which was common in the gypsy camp in Birkenau because of the appalling conditions in which they were held. But Mengele could just as easily have decided to take an interest in three—or thirty—other areas of research.
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