Commandant of Auschwitz

by Rudolf Hoess

  The next largest contingent consisted of the Russian prisoners of war who were employed on building the prisoner-of-war camp at Birkenau.

  They arrived from the military prisoner-of-war camp at Lamsdorf in Upper Silesia, and were in very poor condition. They reached the camp after many weeks’ marching. They had been given hardly any food on the march, during halts on the way being simply turned out into the nearest fields and there told to “graze” like cattle on anything edible they could find. In the Lamsdorf camp there must have been about 200,000 Russian prisoners of war. This camp was simply a square area of ground on which most of them huddled as best they could in earth hovels they had built themselves. Feeding arrangements were completely inadequate and the distribution of food was irregular. They cooked for themselves in holes in the ground. Most of them—it could not be called eating—devoured their portion raw. The army was not prepared for the immense numbers of prisoners captured in 1941. The organization of the army department responsible for prisoners of war was too rigid and inflexible, and could not improvise speedily. Incidentally, it was the same story with the German prisoners of war after the collapse, in May 1945. The Allies, too, were unable to cope with such massive numbers. The prisoners were simply herded on a convenient patch of ground, enclosed with a few strands of barbed wire, and left to their own devices. They were treated exactly as the Russians had been.

  It was with these prisoners, many of whom could hardly stand, that I was now supposed to build the Birkenau prisoner-of-war camp. The Reichsführer SS ordered that only the strongest of the Russian prisoners, those who were particularly capable of hard work, were to be sent to me. The officers who accompanied them said these were the best available at Lamsdorf. They were willing to work, but were incapable of doing so because of their weakened condition. I remember very clearly how we were continually giving them food when first they arrived at the base camp, but in vain.[49]

  Their weakened bodies could no longer function. Their whole constitution was finished and done for. They died like flies from general physical exhaustion, or from the most trifling maladies which their debilitated constitutions could no longer resist. I saw countless Russians die while in the act of swallowing root vegetables or potatoes. For some time I employed 5,000 Russians almost daily unloading trainloads of turnips. The railway tracks were blocked, mountains of turnips lay on the lines, and there was nothing to be done about it. The Russians were physically all in. They wandered aimlessly about, crept into a safe corner to swallow something edible that they found—which was a great effort for them, or sought a quiet spot where they might die in peace. The worst time was during the mud period at the beginning and end of the winter of 1941-42. The Russians could endure the cold more or less, but not: the damp and being constantly wet through. In the unfinished, simple stone barracks, hastily constructed in the early days of Birkenau, the death rate constantly rose. Even those who had hitherto shown some powers of resistance now declined rapidly in numbers day by day. Extra rations were of no avail; they swallowed everything they could lay their hands on, but their hunger was never satisfied.

  On the road between Auschwitz and Birkenau I once saw an entire column of Russians, several hundred strong, suddenly make a rush for some nearby stacks of potatoes on the far side of the railway line. Their guards were taken by surprise, overrun, and could do nothing. I luckily happened to come along at this moment and was able to restore the situation. The Russians had thrown themselves onto the stacks, from which they could hardly be torn away. Some of them died in the confusion, while chewing, their hands full of potatoes. Overcome by the crudest instinct of self-preservation, they came to care nothing for one another, and in their selfishness now thought only of themselves. Cases of cannibalism were not rare in Birkenau. I myself came across a Russian lying between piles of bricks, whose body had been ripped open and the liver removed. They would beat each other to death for food. Once, riding past the camp, I saw a Russian hit another on the head with a tile, so as to snatch a piece of bread which the man had been secretly chewing behind a heap of stones. I happened to be outside the wire and by the time I found a gate and reached the spot the man was dead, his skull bashed in. I could not identify his assassin among the crowds of Russians swarming around. When the foundations for the first group of buildings were being dug, the men often found the bodies of Russians who had been killed by their fellows, partly eaten and then stuffed into a hole in the mud.

  The mysterious disappearance of many Russians was explained in this way. I once saw from a window of my house a Russian dragging a food bucket behind the block next to the command building and scratching about inside it. Suddenly another Russian came around the corner, hesitated for a moment, and then hurled himself upon the one scrabbling in the bucket, and pushed him into the electrified wire before vanishing with the bucket. The guard in the watchtower had also seen this, but was not in a position to fire at the man who had run away. I at once telephoned the duty block leader and had the electric current cut off. I then went myself into the camp, to find the man who had done it. The one who had been thrown against the wire was dead, and the other was nowhere to be found.

  They were no longer human beings. They had become animals, who sought only food.

  Of more than 10,000 Russian prisoners of war who were to provide the main labor force for building the prisoner-of-war camp at Birkenau, only a few hundred were still alive by the summer of 1942.[50]

  Those who did remain were the best. They were splendid workers and were used as mobile squads wherever something had to be finished quickly. But I never got over the feeling that those who had survived had done so only at the expense of their comrades, because they were more ferocious and unscrupulous and generally “tougher.”

  It was, I believe, in the summer of 1942 that a mass breakout by the remaining Russians took place. A great part of them were shot, but many managed to get clear away. Those who were recaptured gave as reason for this mass escape their fear that they were to be gassed, for they had been told that they were to be transferred to a newly built sector of the camp. They took it that this transfer was merely a deceptive measure. It was, however, never intended that these Russians should be gassed. But it is certain that they knew of the liquidation of the Russian politruks and commissars. They feared that they were to suffer the same fate.[51]

  It is in this way that a mass psychosis develops and spreads.

  The next largest contingent were the gypsies.

  Long before the war gypsies were being rounded up and put into concentration camps as part of the campaign against asocials. One department of the Reich Criminal Police Office was solely concerned with the supervision of gypsies. Repeated searches were made in the gypsy encampments for persons who were not true gypsies, and these were sent to concentration camps as shirkers or asocials. In addition, the gypsy encampments were constantly being combed through for biological reasons. The Reichsführer SS wanted to insure that the two main gypsy stocks be preserved: I cannot recall their names. In his view they were the direct descendants of the original Indo-Germanic race, and had preserved their ways and customs more or less pure and intact. He now wished to have them all collected together for research purposes. They were to be precisely registered and preserved as a historic monument.

  Later they were to be collected from all over Europe and allotted limited areas in which to dwell.

  In 1937 and 1938 all itinerant gypsies were collected into so-called habitation camps near the larger towns to facilitate supervision.

  In 1942, however, an order was given that all gypsy-type persons on German territory, including gypsy half-castes, were to be arrested and transported to Auschwitz, irrespective of sex or age. The only exceptions were those who had been officially recognized as pure-blooded members of the two main tribes. These were to be settled in the Odenburg district on the Neusiedler See. Those transported to Auschwitz were to be kept there for the rest of the war in a family camp.

  But the r
egulations governing their arrest were not drawn up with sufficient precision. Various offices of the Criminal Police interpreted them in different ways, and as a result persons were arrested who could not possibly be regarded as belonging to the category that it was intended to intern.

  Many men were arrested while on leave from the front, despite high decorations and several wounds, simply because their father or mother or grandfather had been a gypsy or a gypsy half-caste. Even a very senior Party member, whose gypsy grandfather had settled in Leipzig, was among them. He himself had a large business in Leipzig, and had been decorated more than once during the First World War. Another was a girl student who had been a leader in the Berlin League of German Girls.[52]

  There were many more such cases. I made a report to the Reich Criminal Police Office. As a result the gypsy camp was constantly under examination and many releases took place. But these were scarcely noticeable, so great was the number of those who remained.

  I cannot say how many gypsies, including half-castes, were in Auschwitz. I only know that they completely filled one section of the camp designed to hold 10,000.[53]

  Conditions in Birkenau were utterly unsuitable for a family camp. Every prerequisite was lacking, even if it was intended that the gypsies be kept there only for the duration of the war. It was quite impossible to provide proper food for the children, although by referring to the Reichsführer SS I managed for a time to bamboozle the food offices into giving me food for the very young ones. This was soon stopped, however, for the Food Ministry laid down that no special children’s food might be issued to the concentration camps.

  In July 1942 the Reichsführer SS visited the camp. I took him all over the gypsy camp. He made a most thorough inspection of everything, noting the overcrowded barrack huts, the unhygienic conditions, the crammed hospital building. He saw those who were sick with infectious diseases, and the children suffering from noma,[54] which always made me shudder, since it reminded me of leprosy and of the lepers I had seen in Palestine—their little bodies wasted away, with gaping holes in their cheeks big enough for a man to see through, a slow putrefaction of the living body.

  He noted the mortality rate, which was relatively low in comparison with that of the camp as a whole. The child mortality rate, however, was extraordinarily high. I do not believe that many newborn babies survived more than a few weeks.

  He saw it all, in detail, and as it really was—and he ordered me to destroy them. Those capable of work were first to be separated from the others, as with the Jews.

  I pointed out to him that the personnel of the gypsy camp was not precisely what he had envisaged being sent to Auschwitz. He thereupon ordered that the Reich Criminal Police Office should carry out a sorting as quickly as possible. This in fact took two years. The gypsies capable of work were transferred to another camp. About 4,000 gypsies were left by August 1944, and these had to go into the gas chambers. Up to that moment, they were unaware of what was in store for them. They first realized what was happening when they made their way, barrack hut by barrack hut toward crematorium I. It was not easy to drive them into the gas chambers. I myself did not see it, but Schwarzhuber[55] told me that it was more difficult than any previous mass destruction of Jews, and it was particularly hard on him, because he knew almost every one of them individually and had been on good terms with them. They were by their nature as trusting as children.[56]

  Despite the unfavorable conditions the majority of the gypsies did not, so far as I could observe, suffer much psychologically as a result of imprisonment, apart from the fact that it restricted their roving habits.

  The overcrowding, poor sanitary arrangements and even to a certain extent the food shortage were conditions to which they had become accustomed in their normal, primitive way of life. Nor did they regard the sickness and the high mortality rate as particularly tragic. Their whole attitude was really that of children, volatile in thought and deed. They loved to play, even at work, which they never took quite seriously. Even in bad times they always tried to look on the bright side. They were optimists.

  I never saw a scowling, hateful expression on a gypsy’s face. If one went into their camp, they would often run out of their barracks to play their musical instruments, or to let their children dance, or perform their usual tricks. There was a large playground where the children could run about to their heart’s content and play with toys of every description.

  When spoken to they would reply openly and trustingly and would make all sorts of requests. It always seemed to me that they did not really understand about their imprisonment.

  They fought fiercely among themselves. Their hot blood and pugnacious natures made this inevitable in view of the many different tribes and clans thrown together here. The members of each clan kept very much together and supported each other. When it came to sorting out the able-bodied, the resulting separations and dislocations within the clan gave rise to many touching scenes and to much pain and tears.

  They were consoled and comforted to a certain extent when they were told later they would all be together again.

  For a while we kept the gypsies who were capable of work in the base camp at Auschwitz. They did their utmost to get a glimpse of their clanmates from time to time, even if only from a distance. We often had to carry out a search after roll call for homesick gypsies who had cunningly slipped back to join their clan.

  Indeed, often, when I was in Oranienburg with the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, I was approached by gypsies who had known me in Auschwitz, and asked for news of other members of their clan. Even when these had been gassed long ago. Just because of their complete trust, it was always hard for me to give them an evasive answer.

  Although they were a source of great trouble to me at Auschwitz, they were nevertheless my best-loved prisoners—if I may put it that way. They never managed to keep at any job for long. They “gypsied around” too much for that, whatever they did. Their greatest wish was to be in a transport company, where they could travel all over the place, and satisfy their endless curiosity, and have a chance of stealing. Stealing and vagrancy are in their blood and cannot be eradicated. Their moral attitude is also completely different from that of other people. They do not regard stealing as in any way wicked. They cannot understand why a man should be punished for it. I am here referring to the majority of those interned, the real wandering gypsies, as well as to those of mixed blood who had become akin to them. I do not refer to those who had settled in the towns. These had already learned too much of civilization, and what they learned was unfortunately not of the best.

  I would have taken great interest in observing their customs and habits if I had not been aware of the impending horror, namely the Extermination Order, which until mid-1944 was known only to myself and the doctors in Auschwitz.

  By command of the Reichsführer SS the doctors were to dispose of the sick, and especially the children, as inconspicuously as possible.

  And it was precisely they who had such trust in the doctors.

  Nothing surely is harder than to grit one’s teeth and go through with such a thing, coldly, pitilessly, and without mercy.

  What effect did imprisonment have upon the Jews, who from 1942 on composed the greater part of the inmates of Auschwitz? How did they behave?

  From the very beginning there were Jews in the concentration camps. I knew them well since Dachau days. But then the Jews still had the possibility of emigrating to any country in the world, provided only that they obtained the necessary entry permit. The duration of their stay in the camp was therefore only a question of time or of money and foreign connections. Many obtained the necessary visa within a few weeks and were set free. Only those who had been guilty of a racial offense,[57] or who had been particularly active politically during the “system” period,[58] or who had been involved in one of the public scandals were forced to remain in the camp.

  Those with some prospect of emigrating did their best to insure that their life i
n custody went as “smoothly” as possible. They worked as diligently as they were capable of doing—the majority were unaccustomed to any sort of physical labor, behaved as unobtrusively as they could and carried out their duties quietly and steadily.

  The Jews in Dachau did not have an easy time. They had to work in the gravel pit which, for them, was very strenuous physical labor. The guards, influenced by Eicke and by Der Stürmer,[59] which was on show everywhere in their barracks and the canteens, were particularly rough with them. They were sufficiently persecuted and tormented already as “corrupters of the German people,” even by their fellow prisoners. When a display case containing Der Stürmer was put up in the protective custody camp, its effect on those prisoners who had hitherto been not at all anti-Semitic was immediately apparent. The Jews, of course, protected themselves in typically Jewish fashion by bribing their fellow prisoners. They all had plenty of money and could buy whatever they wanted in the canteen. It was therefore not hard for them to find penniless prisoners who were only too glad to render services in return for tobacco, sweets, sausage, and such. In this way they were able to arrange for the Capos to give them easier work, or for the prisoner nursing staff to get them admitted to the camp hospital. On one occasion a Jew had the nails drawn from his big toes by one of the prisoner nurses in exchange for a packet of cigarettes, so that he might get into the hospital.

  They were mainly persecuted by members of their own race, their foremen or room seniors. Eschen, their block senior, distinguished himself in this respect. He was to hang himself later, because he feared punishment on account of some homosexual affair in which he had become involved. This block senior used every possible means, no matter how low, to terrorize the other prisoners, not only physically but above all mentally. He kept the screws on the whole time. He would entice them into disobeying the camp regulations, and then report them. He goaded them into acts of violence against one another, or against the Capos, so as to have an excuse to report them for punishment. He would not send-his report in at once, however, but would keep it hanging over their heads as a means of blackmail. He was the “Devil” incarnate. He showed a repulsive zeal toward the members of the SS, but was ready to inflict any kind of iniquity on his fellow prisoners and members of his own race.