Before he arrived at Auschwitz he showed no signs of becoming a sadist; by all accounts he demonstrated bravery fighting in the East, rescuing two soldiers from a blazing tank, and before that he had led a relatively unexceptional life in the medical profession after studying at Frankfurt University. It was the circumstances of Auschwitz that brought forth the Mengele the world was to know—a reminder of how hard it is to predict who, in exceptional situations, will become a monster.
Mengele was, in many respects, the archetypal Nazi officer in Auschwitz. Perfectly turned out on every occasion, he had utter contempt for the inmates. The idea of any form of intimate relationship with prisoners would have been anathema for him, the thought of sexual contact inconceivable. In this he was entirely consistent with the Nazi ideal. Because in Nazi racial theory those imprisoned in the camp represented a danger to the physical well-being of the Reich, sexual relationships between members of the SS and camp inmates were expressly forbidden. Such acts constituted a “race crime” for the Germans.
Indeed, one of the differences between the atrocities committed by the Nazis who were carrying out the “Final Solution” and many other war crimes of the twentieth century is the overt insistence by the Nazis that their troops refrain from sexual violence—not out of humanity but out of ideology. In many other instances—for example, the Turkish massacre of the Armenians during World War I, the Japanese war of colonization in China that began in the 1930s, and the more recent Serbian attempt to conquer Bosnia in the 1990s—sexual violence against the women of the “enemy” was widespread. From the Bosnian rape camps to the selling of Christian Armenian women into harems and the “bonding” gang rape of Chinese women by soldiers of the Imperial Japanese army, the conflicts of the twentieth century are redolent with instances of male sexual violence.
For the Nazis, however, the conflict in the East was a different kind of war. While on the Channel Islands or in France it was perfectly possible for German soldiers to have relationships with local women, the Jews and the Slavic population of the East represented, to the Nazis, racially dangerous peoples. Nazi propaganda trumpeted that one of the most sacred tasks for each soldier of the Reich was to ensure the “purity of German blood.” Slav and Jewish women (especially the latter) were absolutely out of bounds. A law had even been passed in pre-war Germany explicitly forbidding marriage between Jews and non-Jews.
All of this meant that there ought to have been no instances of sexual relationships at Auschwitz between members of the SS and Jewish prisoners. Killing Jewish women was, it seems, a sacred ideological duty of the SS, but having sex with them was a crime. Nonetheless, as Oskar Groening points out,If private interests are bigger than the feeling for the Jewish community as a whole—well, these things happen. If one is in a routine where one is looking after twenty young girls and one is a favorite and making coffee and God knows what, then these things, these propagandistic things, they aren’t important any more....
And so, when the SS men were in charge of women prisoners, Groening did not find it surprising that “it happens that they stroked or kissed one another or had forced sexual relations.”
The women who worked in “Canada” were the most obvious targets for members of the SS willing to set aside their ideological convictions and commit rape. The majority of women in Auschwitz had their heads shaved, were malnourished, and were easily susceptible to disease. In contrast, the women working in “Canada,” had access to food that they could take from goods as they sorted them, and they were allowed to grow their hair. Additionally, the SS men mingled freely with the women who worked in “Canada,” not just to oversee their work but to pilfer goods for themselves. As a result, rape in “Canada” was not unknown, as Linda Breder confirms,When we came to “Canada” there was no running water. However, the commandant [SS officer in charge] of “Canada” ordered showers to be built. These showers were behind the building. Although the running water was ice cold, I took regular showers. Once, a girl from Bratislava was taking a shower. She was a pretty woman, not skinny. An SS officer came to her and misused her in the shower—he raped her.
The SS man responsible was subsequently transferred out of “Canada” but escaped further punishment. Another SS man known to have had sexual relationships with Jewish prisoners in camp was one of the report officers at Birkenau, Gerhard Palitzsch.16 He was arrested but—almost certainly thanks to the influence of Höss—was punished merely by being transferred to a sub-camp away from Birkenau.
Rape also took place in an area of Birkenau where, as in “Canada,” women were allowed to keep their own clothes and leave their hair unshaved. This was the so-called “family camp,” a separate, fenced-in area that (from September 1943) held Jews who had been deported from the ghetto-camp of Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia. Around 18,000 men, women, and children were imprisoned here until the camp was finally liquidated in July 1944. For these Jews there had been no selection on arrival: The Nazis planned to use them for “propaganda” purposes. They were instructed to write postcards home explaining how well they were being treated, in an attempt to dispel rumors that Auschwitz was a place of extermination. Unlike the gypsy camp (the only other location in Birkenau where families lived together), in the family camp men and boys lived in separate barracks from women and girls.
Ruth Elias was one of the inmates living in the women-only barracks of the family camp. She twice witnessed drunken SS men visiting the barracks and selecting women to take away: “The girls came back crying—they had been raped. They were in a terrible state.”
The fact that members of the SS raped Jewish women in Auschwitz, although appalling, may not upon reflection be so surprising. The SS men had these women in their power and believed that they were ultimately destined to be murdered. A combination of alcohol and the knowledge that the crime could be concealed served to overcome any ideological strictures. That such crimes have not received attention in most of the conventional literature on Auschwitz is perhaps not so strange either. This is an immensely delicate subject, and those who suffered at the hands of the SS might understandably wish to keep silent. As criminologists have long noted, the “dark” figure for rape—the difference between the number of offences reported and the number of offences that have actually taken place—is one of the highest for any crime.
If the knowledge that the SS men raped women in Auschwitz fits the pattern of behavior of many soldiers towards “enemy” women, however, then the fact that at least one SS man fell in love with a Jewish woman who worked in the camp surely destroys our preconceptions completely. Indeed, the story of Helena Citrónová17 and her relationship with Franz Wunsch is one of the most extraordinary in the history of Auschwitz.
Helena arrived at Auschwitz in March 1942 on one of the first transports from Slovakia. Her initial experience of the camp was nothing out of the ordinary—a story of hunger and physical abuse. During her first few months she worked in an outside commando destroying buildings and carrying rubble. She slept on flea-infested straw and watched in terror as the other women around her began to give up hope and die. One of her closest friends was the first to lose her life. She “saw everything around her” and said, “I don’t want to live one minute more.” She started to scream hysterically and was then taken away and murdered by the SS.
Helena realized—in common with others—that to survive she needed to find work in a less physically strenuous commando. Another Slovakian woman she knew already worked in “Canada” and offered Helena some advice: If Helena was prepared to put on a white headscarf and striped dress taken from one of the women who had worked in the “Canada” commando and had just died, then she could come to work inside the barracks where the clothes were sorted the very next day. Helena did exactly that but, unfortunately for her, the Kapo noticed that she was an “infiltrator” and told her that on her return to the main camp she would be transferred to the Penal Commando. Helena knew that this was a sentence of death, “But I didn’t care, because I thou
ght, ‘Well, at least one day under a roof.’”
Coincidentally, Helena’s first (and potentially last) day at work in “Canada” coincided with the birthday of one of the SS men who supervised work in the sorting barrack—Franz Wunsch.
During the lunch break, she [the Kapo] asked who can sing or recite nicely, because today is the SS man’s birthday. One girl—Olga—was from Greece, and she said she knew how to dance, and so she could dance on the big tables where we folded clothes. And I had a very beautiful voice. So the Kapo said, “Is it true you can sing in German?” and I said, “No,” as I didn’t want to sing there. But they forced me to sing. So I sang for Wunsch with my head down—I couldn’t look at his uniform. I wept as I sang, and all of a sudden, when I finished the song, I heard him say, “Bitte.” Quietly he asked me to sing it again.... And the girls said, “Sing, sing—maybe he’ll let you stay here.” So I sang the song again—a song in German that I had learned [at school]. So that’s how he noticed me, and from that moment I think he also fell in love with me—that’s what saved me, the singing.
Wunsch asked the Kapo to ensure that the girl who had sung so memorably for him returned to work in “Canada” the following day, and by making this request he saved her life. Helena was spared from the Penal Commando and became a fixture in “Canada.” But, while Wunsch looked kindly on her from that first meeting, initially Helena “hated” him. She knew he could be violent—she heard rumors from other inmates of how he had killed a prisoner for dealing in contraband.
Over the next days and weeks, however, Helena watched as he continued to treat her with kindness. When he went on leave he sent her boxes of “cookies,” which were delivered to her through the intermediary of a “pipel”—the boys who were the servants of the Kapos (and often served them homosexually as well). Upon his return, Wunsch took to doing something even more daring—sending Helena notes.
When he came into the barracks where I worked he passed by me and threw me a note and I had to destroy it right away, but I saw the words “Love—I fell in love with you.” I was miserable. I thought I’d rather be dead than be with an SS man.
Wunsch had his own office within “Canada,” and he tried to think of excuses to get Helena to come and see him. Once he asked her to manicure his nails.
We were alone, and he said, “Do my nails so that I can look at you for one minute.” And I said, “Absolutely not—I heard that you killed someone, a young man, by the fence.” He always said that it was not true.... And I said, “Don’t bring me into this room ... no manicure, nothing. I don’t do manicures.” And I turned around and said, “Now I’m leaving, I can’t look at you any more.” So he screamed at me—all of a sudden he became SS: “If you go through that door you will not live!” And he took out his pistol and threatened me. He loved me, but his honor, his pride was hurt. “What do you mean you’re leaving without my permission?” So I said, “Shoot me! Shoot! I prefer death to playing this double game.” So of course he didn’t shoot me, and I walked out.
Over time, however, Helena came to realize that—incredible as it had at first seemed to her—she could depend on Wunsch. Knowing Wunsch’s feelings for her gave her a “sense of security.” Says Helena, “I thought, ‘This person won’t allow anything to happen to me.’” This emotion was compounded when one day Helena learned from a fellow Slovakian that her sister, Róžínka, and her two young children had been seen in the camp—and that they were being taken to the crematorium. Helena heard this devastating news when she was in her barracks at Birkenau after work. Despite the curfew, she left the barracks and ran to the nearby crematorium. Wunsch learned about Helena’s actions and he caught up with her as she neared the crematorium. He first shouted to the other SS men that she was “an excellent worker in his warehouse.” Then he threw her down on the ground and started beating her for breaking the curfew, so that any SS members watching would not be aware of the relationship between them. Wunsch had already been told that Helena had run to the crematorium because her sister had been taken there and so he asked her: “Quickly, tell me your sister’s name before it’s too late.” Helena told him, “Róžínka,” and also said that she had arrived with her two small children. “Children can’t live here!” said Wunsch as he ran down into the crematorium.
He managed to find Róžínka inside the crematorium and dragged her out, saying she was another of his workers. But her children died in the gas chamber. Wunsch subsequently managed to arrange for Róžínka to work alongside Helena in “Canada.”
My sister couldn’t understand where she was. She was told she would work and the children had gone to a kindergarten—the same stories they sold all of us. She asked me, “Where are the children?” And I said, “On the other side of these buildings there’s a children’s home.” And so she said, “Can I visit?” And I said, “There are days you can.”
The other women working in “Canada” saw how upset Helena was by the constant questioning from her sister about the fate of her children. So one day they told Róžínka, “Stop pestering! The children are gone. You see the fire? That’s where they burn children!” Róžínka went into shock. She became apathetic and “didn’t want to live.” Only Helena’s constant care and attention secured her sister’s survival over the next months.
Emotionally distraught as Róžínka was by the terrible realization that her children had been taken from her and murdered, she was still fortunate—she remained alive herself. And, protected by her sister, she did survive the war. The other women in “Canada” looked on them both with mixed feelings.
My sister was alive and their sisters were not. The fact was my sister came and he [Wunsch] saved her life. Why didn’t such a miracle happen to them, who had lost their entire world—brothers, parents, sisters? Even those who were happy for me were not so happy for me. I couldn’t share my emotions with my friends. I was afraid of them. And they were all envious—they envied me. One of them—a very beautiful woman—said to me, “If Wunsch had seen me before you, then he would have fallen in love with me.”
Primarily as a result of Wunsch saving her sister’s life, Helena’s feelings for him changed radically, “Eventually, as time went by, I really did love him. He sacrificed his life [for me] more than once.” But this relationship was never consummated, unlike some others between the sexes in Auschwitz.
The Jewish [male] prisoners fell in love with all kinds of women as they worked. They disappeared once in a while into the barracks where the clothes were folded and they had sex there. They would have a guard so that if an SS [man] came they could be warned. I couldn’t, because he [Wunsch] was SS.
Their relationship was conducted by glances, hurried words and scribbled notes.
He would turn right and left, and when he saw no one was listening he’d say, “I love you.” It made me feel good in that hell. It encouraged me. They were just words that showed a crazy kind of love that could never be realized. There are no plans that could be realized there. It wasn’t realistic. But there were moments when I forgot that I was a Jew and that he was not a Jew. Really—and I loved him. But it could not be realistic. Things happened there, love and death—mostly death.
But, inevitably, because over time “all Auschwitz” knew about their feelings for each other, someone informed on them. Whether it was a prisoner or an SS man no one knows. But, as Helena puts it, “someone ratted.”
One day, as she was being marched back to the camp after work, a Kapo called Helena out of the line. She was taken to the punishment bunker in Block 11. “Every day they took me out and threatened me that if I didn’t tell them what had gone on with this SS soldier then at that very moment they would kill me. I stood there and insisted that nothing had been going on.” Wunsch had been arrested at the same time and, like Helena, under questioning he denied that any relationship existed. So eventually, after five days of interrogation, both of them were released. Helena was further “punished” by being made to work on her own in a section of the “Canad
a” barracks, away from the other women, and Wunsch was careful to be more circumspect in his dealings with her. Nonetheless, as is shown in Chapter 6, Wunsch went on protecting Helena and her sister until Auschwitz was no more.
The story of the relationship between Helena and Wunsch is a profoundly important one. For tales of the rawness of emotion at the brutal end of the human spectrum—murder, rape, theft, and betrayal—are commonplace in Auschwitz. How much rarer is a story of love. And the fact that love could blossom in such circumstances, between a Jewish woman and an SS guard who was known for his brutality, is nothing short of astounding. Like so much that happened in Auschwitz, were the facts to be imagined in a work of fiction they would be dismissed as unbelievable.
It is also worth noting, however, that circumstances played a decisive role in permitting the relationship to flourish. It is virtually impossible to believe that Wunsch would have fallen in love with Helena had she still been working in the demolition commando. There would have been neither the opportunity for them to come into close contact, nor the chance of Wunsch protecting her once they did. And, not least, she would never have had the chance of captivating him by singing a song in German for his birthday. In “Canada,” however, not only was there contact between the SS men and Jewish women, there was also the chance that long-term relationships could develop. It is not surprising that proportionately more women survived Auschwitz as a result of working in “Canada” than almost anywhere else.
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