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In the course of the nearly five years that the Auschwitz camp was in existence, the scope of its tasks was broadened several times, the methods by which it functioned were perfected, and its catchment area expanded. According to the original ideas of the local police authorities who proposed that it be established, it was supposed to be a camp for Polish residents of Silesia. However, the central authorities soon modified this concept. When he arrived in Oświęcim in May, 1940, commandant Rudolf Höss was under orders to set up a transit camp there, in which Poles designated for deportation to already existing concentration camps in Germany proper were to be held for quarantine. This concept, too, was soon modified. By the moment the camp opened, when the first political prisoners arrived there on June 14, 1940, Auschwitz was a typical concentration camp, and its geographical sweep extended beyond Silesia from the beginning to include all of occupied Poland. Indeed, the first transport of Poles to reach Auschwitz did not even come from Silesia, the source of the initiative for the camp, but from the General Government, which included the central part of the prewar Polish state.
The next expansion of the catchment area for deportations to Auschwitz occurred in 1941, with the arrival of the first Czechs and Yugoslavians, as well as the first Soviet prisoners of war (captured during fighting in the East and held for a time in the Lamsdorf and Neuhammer POW camps, or elsewhere).
Individuals from France, Belorussia, the Ukraine, and other countries also began arriving in Auschwitz.
The 1942 inclusion of Auschwitz Concentration Camp in the criminal operation known as the "final solution of the Jewish question" was the greatest influence in expanding the catchment area for deportations. >From that point on, Auschwitz's range extended almost throughout Europe. Auschwitz became the largest concentration camp, a place for the gradual liquidation of approximately 100,000 prisoners of various nationalities, the majority of them Poles and Roma (also known as "Gypsies"), as well as approximately 100,000 Jews classified as fit for labor. Auschwitz also became the site of the immediate extermination of some 900,000 other Jews, who were murdered in the gas chambers immediately after arriving in the camp and being classified as of no utility for the German economy.
Approximately 1,300,000 people from all over Europe (or, according to G. Wellers, approximately 1,600,000) were deported to Auschwitz during the nearly five years that the camp was in operation.
People deported for various reasons were exterminated in Auschwitz. In the case of the Jews and the Roma, the reasons lay in the racist Nazi ideology. In the case of Poles and prisoners of other nationalities, political considerations and long-range concepts of change in European demographics were dominant. The roads to Auschwitz led through the Jewish ghettos, the transit camps, the forced labor camps, the prisoner-of-war camps, and local jails and police lockups.
Jews made up the largest number of deportees-some 1,100,000 people. They constituted approximately 85% of the deportees and 90% of the victims. They were deported to Auschwitz as part of the operation that aimed at the total extermination of the Jewish population-some 11,000,000 Jews who lived in Germany, countries allied to Germany, the occupied and neutral countries, and countries fighting against Hitler but marked for conquest in the near future. Jews were also sent to the camp in small numbers as a result of individual arrest orders connected with various actual or alleged infractions under the occupation regime.
The deportation procedures varied according to a given country's relationship with the Third Reich. Another thing that varied was the degree of involvement in the deportations by the local administrative and government structures set up by the Germans. Everywhere, however, the deportations were either carried out by the Germans themselves, or at the initiative of, under pressure from, or in cooperation with the Germans.
In the western countries, where Jewish ghettos like those that the Nazis set up in occupied Central and Eastern Europe did not exist, transit camps, also known as assembly or internment camps, served as an intermediate link where Jews were held before being deported.
In numerical terms, largest group of Jews deported to Auschwitz were those who came from Hungary (in its 1944 borders). From May to July 9, 1944, 437,402 persons were deported from there to the camp.
Until 1944, the Hungarian government headed by Miklos Kallay (in power from 1942-1944) refused German demands for the deportation of the Jews. Only after the German army entered Hungary on March 19, 1944 and overthrew the government did the new, more pro-German regime of Dome Sztojay cave in. Under German supervision, the concentration of the Jews in ghettos and transit camps began. The first two transports, carrying 3,800 people, were dispatched to Auschwitz Concentration Camp at the end of April and early May, 1944. The main wave of transports, however, began on May 14. From then on, until July 9, from several thousand to over 10,000 men, women, and children-an average of about 8,600-were sent to Auschwitz almost daily (a conference in Vienna that ended on May 6 called for the dispatch of four trains a day, each carrying 3,000 people).
The trains were sent to the camp by several routes. The principal route passed through Kosice (Kassa), Muszyna, Tarnów, and Cracow. The Hungarian authorities, police, and gendarmerie organized the transports under the direction of German security police officials headed by Adolf Eichmann, who was responsible for the deportation of the Jews within the framework of the Endlösung [Final Solution]. The transports of Hungarian Jews were subjected to selection on the railroad unloading platform or ramp that was hurriedly constructed inside the Birkenau camp just prior to the beginning of the deportations from Hungary.
The second most numerous group of Jews transported to Auschwitz were those deported from Poland (within its prewar borders)-a total of some 300,000 people. They were mostly deported from the ghettos, as well as from labor camps and transit camps where they had been assembled previously. The majority of these Polish Jews came from the land "annexed" to the Third Reich: Upper Silesia, Dąbrowa Górnicza, the Ciechanów and Białystok districts, and Wielkopolska ["Great Poland," the region centered on Poznań-trans.]. Approximately 220,000 Jews were deported from these areas. Another 70,000 reached the camp from the General Government.
The Drancy transit camp, set up in former French gendarmerie barracks on the outskirts of Paris, was the main transit camp from which Jews were deported from France to Auschwitz. The camp was founded on August 20, 1941, and remained under the control of the French police and gendarmerie, controlled by the German commander of the security police and security service in France, until July 1, 1943. During the last year of its existence, Drancy was directly administered and operated by the SS. The camp could hold about 4,500 people at a time. Until liberation in August, 1944, some 70,000 Jews passed through Drancy; 65,000 of them were sent to death camps, including 61,000 sent to Auschwitz. At first, these were Jews who had recently arrived in France and did not yet possess French citizenship; later, the net extended to French citizens as well.
Jews from France were also deported through transit camps in Pithiviers, Compiegne, Beaune-la-Rolande, and other places.
Before deporting them, the German authorities concentrated Jews from the Netherlands in the Westerbork transit camp which, from 1939-1941, had been a Dutch camp for Jewish internees from Germany and other countries. After the Germans took over the camp, approximately 100,000 people were sent from there to death camps in the period 1942-1944; 54,930 were sent to Auschwitz. Approximately 5,000 other Jews were sent to Auschwitz through the Herzogenbusch concentration camp. On the orders of the camp commandant, the Jewish "camp government" drew up transport lists of the of the Jews deported from Westerbork, while the "Jewish police" (Ordnungsdienst) were used during the loading of the transports.
Approximately 55,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz Concentration Camp from Greece. The majority of them were deported in 1943 from the ghetto in Salonika, the largest Jewish population center in the country. The following year, several thousand more Greek Jews were deported to Auschwitz from areas that had been under Italian occupation until 1943. Among the approximately 55,000 deportees from Greece, some 13,000 were selected as fit for labor, while the other 42,000 were killed in the gas chambers as soon as they arrived.
Approximately 23,000 Jews were sent directly to Auschwitz in transports from Germany and Austria (in their prewar boundaries). These transports departed from the train stations in the localities where the deportations were organized. The largest group, some 18,000 people, was deported from Berlin between July 1942 and January 1945. Others were dispatched from cities including Beuthen [now Bytom, Poland], Gleiwitz [Gliwice], Breslau [Wrocław], Hamburg, Munich, Hanover, Nuremberg, and Vienna.
Jews from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia [part of prewar Czechoslovakia, today the Czech Republic], were concentrated, beginning in November 1941, in the Theresienstadt [Terezin] ghetto, which was established a short distance from Prague. Not only Czech Jews, but also Jews from other countries were imprisoned there. Of the approximately 141,000 Jews placed in that ghetto, over 88,000 were deported to various death camps, including 46,000 sent to Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The first transport reached Auschwitz in October, 1942, and the last in October, 1944. Approximately 18,000 of the 46,000 deportees were imprisoned in the so-called "family camp" in Birkenau that, like the Theresienstadt ghetto, was intended to play an important role in misleading the general public, and indeed the victims themselves, as to the destination of the Jews deported "to the East."
Approximately 27,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz Concentration Camp from Slovakia. The deportation of Jews from this country resulted not only from the anti-Jewish policies of the Third Reich, but also from the anti-Semitic Slovakian People's Party, which ruled the country and viewed the removal of Jews from Slovakia as "the best solution to the so-called Jewish problem." Under an agreement that the Slovakian government concluded with the Third Reich, a total of 58,600 Jews, 18,725 of whom ended up in Auschwitz, were placed in German hands for the purpose of "employment" and, later, "for the purpose of resettlement" between March and October1942. The remainder were sent to other ghettos and camps. As a result of intervention by the Vatican and neutral countries, the Slovakian authorities suspended the deportation of Jews and stubbornly refused to resume them. Only in 1944, when the German army entered Slovakian territory, did the Germans transport a further 8,000 Jews to Auschwitz, mostly from regions where the Germans were engaged in operations against Slovakian insurrectionists.
Approximately 10,000 Jews were deported from the prewar territory of Yugoslavia. These were Jews living in the puppet state known as the "Croatian State." They were deported by the German police authorities, with the full cooperation of the Croatian fascist leadership, which itself murdered the majority of Croatian Jews at domestic sites, including the Jasenovac camp.
All of the Jews deported to Auschwitz from Belgium passed through the Malines (Mechelen) assembly camp, which the Germans set up 1942 in old barracks buildings in 1942. Throughout its existence, the camp was run by the Germans. From August 1942 to July 1944, a total of approximately 25,000 Jews were deported from Malines to Auschwitz in 27 transports.
Approximately 7,500 Jews were transported to Auschwitz from Italy in 1943-1944. Despite its pro-German affiliations, the Italian fascist government refused to turn Jews over to the Germans, whether those Jews resided in Italy or in Italian-occupied territory. The Germans tolerated this Italian stance for political reasons. Only after the overthrow of Mussolini and the declaration of a ceasefire by the new Badoglio government did the Germans occupy northern and central Italy and begin arresting Jews living there and dispatching them to death camps. The first transport, numbering over 1,000 men, women, and children, reached Auschwitz from Rome on October 23, 1943. During selection, only 149 men and 47 women were classified as fit for labor. The rest were killed in the gas chambers. More transports followed from Florence, Bolonia, Milan, Borgo, Verona, Bolzano, and Trieste. Four transports reached Auschwitz from the Fossoli di Carpi camp, founded by Italian fascists on December 5, 1943 at the site of a former prisoner-of-war camp. It was taken over by the Germans in late February or early March, 1944, and used as an assembly and transit camp for Jews, and also to hold Italian political prisoners.
A total of 690 Jews were deported to Auschwitz from Norway. They came from all over the country and made up approximately half of its Jewish population. They arrived in Auschwitz in two transports. The first, numbering 532 people, reached the camp on December 1, 1942. They covered the first leg of the journey, to Stettin [now Szczecin, Poland], by ship, and came the rest of the way by rail. 186 men were left alive in the camp, and all the rest killed in the gas chambers. The second transport, of 158 people, traveled to Stettin by sea and was then directed to Berlin, where 32 German Jews were added to it. This transport reached Auschwitz on March 3, 1942. We do not know how many of the people from this second Norwegian transport were registered in the camp, and how many were killed.
The deportation of Jews to Auschwitz almost always followed the same familiar pattern. First, the German authorities or authorities collaborating with them in satellite or occupied countries concentrated the Jews in special assembly camps-or, in the case of occupied Poland, in ghettos and labor camps. Next, the Jews were transported to Auschwitz according to a prearranged schedule. After a selection upon arrival, the majority were killed in the gas chambers, and the others registered as prisoners and exploited as slave laborers.
The process of deportation was usually preceded by various sorts of regulations limiting the personal freedom of the Jewish population to move from place to place, use public transport or other vehicles, leave their homes, or work in specified occupations. Jews were also frequently ordered to wear special insignia-the Star of David, or armbands. Buildings and premises owned or used by Jews were frequently marked so that they could be identified easily.
Confinement to the transit camps was camouflaged under the pretext that it was necessary for administrative or security reasons, or because of orders for departure "to work in the East" or "for resettlement."
The dispatch of transports from countries outside Poland was usually accompanied by certain bureaucratic procedures and preparations. These were not applied to the majority of the transports from occupied Poland. Lists of the names of deportees, like those for many Jews deported from the west, are not extant for the transports from occupied Poland, and probably never existed. The dispatch of a transport in occupied Poland was usually associated with the partial or complete liquidation of a given ghetto or camp, from which the people were driven to waiting trains and loaded on board. Many were killed on the spot at this time, so that the final number of people in a transport could not be known with precision.
One characteristic of each deportation was the fact that, for most of the deportees, it was a journey into the unknown. Even when they were informed of some sort of destination (as when the Greek Jews were told that they were being sent to Cracow, and were even sold Polish occupation currency), they had no way of learning anything more. They were usually told that they were being sent to labor in Germany (the lie told to the Hungarian Jews), or to labor camps "in the East," as the French Jews were assured. Polish Jews were seldom informed at all of their destination, except for general assurances that they were going to a place where they would labor and have bearable living conditions. They had received similar assurances before being deported to the ghettos, transit camps, and labor camps. The deportees were therefore susceptible to the delusion that this would be one more stage in their wartime odyssey. Keeping people unaware of what lay before them was a way of avoiding resistance and panic. This made it possible to carry out the "deportation operations," as they were called, without any great difficulties and with the use of the smallest number of police.
The deportees made the journey to Auschwitz in freight cars for the most part, although initially, as from France, they were carried in passenger cars. As a rule, the transports from Western Europe were smaller than those from Central and Eastern Europe. Those originating in France, Holland, and Belgium, for instance, carried an average of 1,000 persons, while the majority of those from Hungary carried over 3,000, those from occupied Poland an average of 2,000 to 3,000 (but, on occasion, more than 3,000), while those from Bohemia (Theresienstadt) usually carried approximately 1,500, 2,000, or 2,500 people. The transports of Greek Jews mostly numbered from 2,500 to 3,000 people. The transports of Jews to Auschwitz organized by the Slovak authorities in 1942 were an exception in this region. They were generally smaller and, like those from Western Europe, included 1,000 people each.
It is estimated that some 140,000 to 150,000 Poles were imprisoned in the concentration camp in the city of Oświęcim. Half of them perished there, and many more died after being transferred to various other concentration camps.
Despite the fact that Auschwitz was neither a labor camp nor a penal camp for Poles, labor was officially required, and being there was punishment. Like all the other concentration camps, it was a German state institution and an instrument for accomplishing the concrete political goals of the German state. Whatever the formal reasons for arresting them, Poles were imprisoned there for political and ideological reasons, and the most important purpose and result of their stay in the camp was their death. The camp achieved two goals simultaneously through the gradual extermination of Poles: the short-term goal of pacifying and terrorizing the local population, and the long-term goal of depopulating the regions regarded as German Lebensraum [living space]. The Nazis planned to Germanize these regions, by bringing in settlers or permitting only Germans to continue living there. By camouflaging the genocide process behind various formalistic deceptions (telegrams to the families of the deceased and death certificates listing false causes of death), the German authorities attempted to maintain the pretences of legality in the eyes of the public, and to downplay the methods of repression applied against people who "violated German regulations."
The fact that 30,000 personal files on Polish prisoners were rescued from destruction makes it possible for us to examine one of the items on the information form-the reasons for imprisonment in the camp, which ended in death for half of the people involved: reading illegal newspapers (Przemysław Duś), shirking work (Stanisław Karnas), leaving the workplace (Władysław Krzywda), smuggling food into the ghetto (Franciszek Kwiecień), listening to foreign radio stations (Zbigniew Generowicz), manifesting hostility towards Germans (Franciszek Gawęda), attempting to cross into Hungary for the purpose of joining the Polish army (Alojzy Drzazga), failing to inform to the German authorities upon learning that someone possessed a pistol and ammunition (Józef Rutkowski), or involvement in the resistance movement (Mieczysław Morawa). In some cases, such as that of Leonard Chłądzyński, no reason was given at all.
Poles caught in the sweeps of the streets known as łapanki [round-ups] also ended up in the camp. For instance, 1,153 of the 1,666 people deported to Auschwitz from Warsaw on August 15, 1940, had been captured during "street round-ups," while only 513 had earlier been imprisoned in Pawiak prison under charges by the Gestapo.
Death sentences passed against Poles by the Summary Court of the Katowice Gestapo were also carried out in Auschwitz. It is estimated that between 3,000 and 4,500 Poles from the eastern part of Silesia and the Dąbrowa Basin were executed in such procedures.
Another group of Poles deported to Auschwitz consisted of the rural residents of the Zamość region, who were expelled from their homes in late 1942 and early 1943. The expulsions from the Zamość region were intended to be the beginning of the Germanization not only of the areas incorporated into the Third Reich, but also of the General Government, which the Nazis themselves had classified as native Polish land. The initial plans called for sending three transports to Auschwitz per week, with 1,000 people in each. The German defeat at Stalingrad and operations by Polish partisan units forced the Germans to forsake these intentions. In the end, they managed to deport 1,300 people from the Zamość region to Auschwitz.
Another group of deportees consisted of the approximately 13,000 men, women, and children from Warsaw who were captured during the Uprising there in August and September 1944.
People sentenced to the death without trial by the police under "special treatment" (Sonderbehandlung) procedures were also transported to the camp and put to death immediately after arriving there.
People sentenced to death under the euthanasia program were also deported. In one case, 566 mental patients from the Kobierzyn psychiatric hospital outside Cracow were killed in the gas chamber (Bunker no. 1) on June 22, 1942.
The so-called "re-educational" prisoners were a special group. These were Poles from the Katowice notarial district who, in the eyes of the German police, had violated the labor regulations by being late for work, absent, or insufficiently productive. They were supposed to return to work after several weeks of "re-education" in the camp. Some of them never lived to see their release because they fell victim to the inhuman living conditions and mistreatment there. A total of 11,000 prisoners in this category were imprisoned in Auschwitz.
The majority of Poles reached Auschwitz by way of the central Gestapo prisons in various districts, such as Pawiak prison in Warsaw (for Poles from the Warsaw district), Montelupi prison in Cracow (for Poles from the Cracow district), the prison in Radom (for the Radom district), and the prison at the castle in Lublin (for the Lublin district). These were the four principal places where Poles were concentrated before deportation to Auschwitz. Significant numbers of prisoners from the Cracow district were transferred to the prison in Tarnów, where the Gestapo had wide-ranging autonomy in making arrests and conducting investigations in the area under its control. Prisoners were also transferred to Tarnów when Montelupi prison reached the limits of its capacity.
From the parts of prewar Poland annexed to the German Reich, the largest numbers of Poles were deported to Auschwitz Concentration Camp through the prisons in Mysłowice, Poznań, and Łódź. Relatively smaller numbers of people reached Auschwitz from the so-called Galician district, centered on Lwów [now Lviv, Ukraine], which was set up after the German aggression against the Soviet union in 1941.
Deportation to Auschwitz was usually preceded by Gestapo investigations of long duration combined with beating, torture, starvation, and permanent injury. The prisoners were therefore sometimes already in a very poor physical state at the outset of their stay in Auschwitz.
Transports took place either on special trains, on prison cars attached to scheduled trains, or in trucks.
The transport trains were unloaded at three ramps: the ramp at the railroad spur next to the Main Camp, near Birkenau at the ramps next to the sidings at the Oświęcim freight station, or, beginning in May 1944, at the ramp inside the Birkenau camp. When brought in trucks they were unloaded at the camp gates.
Incarceration in the camp ended in death for half of the Poles, who, like other prisoners, were deprived of the elementary requisites for life. They did not receive even the minimal amount of food that would have made survival possible. Uninterrupted hunger accompanied prisoners from their first to their last days in the camp. All this is described in accounts by those who survived. Starvation was the cause of death for the majority of prisoners. All attempts at alleviating hunger and obtaining food above and beyond the official camp rations were met with severe penalties from the supervisors, and treated as one of the gravest infractions.
In numerical terms, the Roma (also known as "Gypsies") were the third largest group deported to Auschwitz Concentration Camp. As was the case with the Jews, the Nazis wanted to rid German territory of the Roma. At the beginning of November 1941, approximately 5,000 Roma were deported from Austria to the Łódź ghetto, from where they were sent to the Chełmno [Kulmhof] death camp and murdered.
Systematic registration and classification into various categories (the "racially pure" Sinti and Lalleri, and the "half-breed" Roma Gypsies) were undertaken on the basis of RSHA decrees of October 13, 1942 and January 11, 1943. The findings of the Racial Hygiene Research Offices (Rassenhygienische Forschungsstelle) in the Reich Health Bureau (Reichsgesundheitsamt), which had begun investigating the genealogy of the Roma and racial criteria for classifying them before the war, were helpful in this effort.
On the strength of a decree from Himmler of December 16, 1942, all Roma residing on German territory were to be sent to concentration camps. The Reich Main Security Office, charged with carrying out the decree, chose Auschwitz Concentration Camp for this purpose (implementation regulations of January 29, 1943, to accompany Himmler's order). Similar regulations for the Białystok district, Alsace and Lorraine, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the Alpine and Danube Reich Districts (Alpen- und Donau Reichsgauen) were issued on January 28 and 29, and March, 1943.
The deportations were entrusted to state criminal police local offices. Since the RSHA orders provided for some exceptions (including "racially pure" Roma of the Sinti and Lalleri clans and "socially adjusted Gypsy half-breeds"), the police relied on the findings of the Racial Hygiene Research Offices. Where no such guidance was available, the police carried out selections on their own. The criteria exempting certain groups of Roma were not observed in practice, with the result that not only "socially maladjusted" Roma, but even Wehrmacht officers were while they were home on leave ended up in Auschwitz. This enabled zealous local police offices to speed up the rate at which various localities became Zigeunerfrei [free of Gypsies].
The deportation of Roma from the Third Reich was seen to by local government offices and police and gendarmerie posts, whose personnel also participated in escorting the groups of Roma on the trains to Auschwitz.
Deported Roma were placed, in whole families, in BIIe, one of the Birkenau camp sectors. A "Gypsy family camp" was set up there. >From February 26, 1943 through July 1944, approximately 23,000 people-men, women, and children-were held there. Some 20,000 of them perished in the camp. Approximately 3,000 others were transferred to other concentration camps; some of them were returned to Auschwitz and killed there.
Approximately 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war were brought to Auschwitz Concentration Camp from 1941 to 1944. The majority of them-10,000-arrived in October 1941 from the Neuhammer am Quais (Świętoszów nad Kwisą) and Lamsdorf (Łambinowice) POW camps. They were all registered and placed in a specially fenced-off part of the camp. A further 2,000 POWs arrived in smaller transports and were registered in the camp from 1942 to 1944. Another 3,000 POWs were killed shortly after arriving at Auschwitz, without ever being entered in the records. This group included political officers, persons with higher education, and state officials who had been selected in the POW camps.
Approximately 600 of them, together with 250 sick Poles, were killed in the cellars of Block no. 11 during the first mass killing with Zyklon B gas.
The POWs existed in dreadful conditions before being transported to Auschwitz: they had spent whole weeks huddled under the open sky or in dugouts that they excavated with their own hands, while receiving only small amounts of food on an irregular basis.
As former camp commandant Rudolf Höss wrote in his testimony and memoirs, "Their condition at the moment of their arrival was shocking. In a conversation with the camp physician in Lamsdorf, I learned that it was found, during the very high number of selections carried out in Lamsdorf by both military physicians and specialists from the University of Breslau, that the cause of this illness was the lack of vitamins in the organism that appears at a certain stage of starvation, and which causes the digestive glands to stop functioning, beginning with the glands that produce saliva... I observed how Soviet POWs keeled over and died with rutabagas or bowls of soup at their lips... With the help of such POWs, often barely able to stand, I was supposed to build the Birkenau POW camp. According to the decrees of the Reichsführer SS, only such Soviet POWs were to be sent to Auschwitz for this purpose as were particularly strong and fully fit for work. The escorting officers reported that they had chosen the best human material from among the POWs at their disposal."
Prisoners in the camp also witnessed the arrivals of the POWs in Auschwitz. Here are several excerpts from their accounts:
"On the evening of October 7, it might have been nine or ten o'clock p.m., when we were lying in our beds, an SS man came in with the block supervisor and, shouting Raus! [Out!], herded us out in front of the block. It was cold and muddy. They lined us up in rows of five, counted us, and forced us to run to the ramp at the Bauhof [construction material yard]. A long train made up of freight cars stood at the ramp, all along the length of the siding. The cars were closed. It was explained to us that there were Soviet POWs inside, and that we were supposed to translate the orders given by the SS into Russian.
"The cars were opened and the POWs ordered to get out quickly. We saw terribly miserable people, dressed in khaki fatigues, who were clearly starving. They were feeble and looked like skeletons... With us acting as interpreters, an SS man ordered them to line up in rows of five and columns of one hundred. Kettles of soup were set up at the front of the columns and, as SS men hurried them along with sticks, [the POWs] were ordered to come up with their army mess kits (which they carried).
"After obtaining the longed-for soup, many of them fell under the blows of the sticks. After this meal, they were lined up in columns and herded into the camp. As they marched, the stronger POWs dragged their weaker comrades along."
Another prisoner who witnessed the arrival of the POWs recounted that: "All day on October 7, 1941, beginning in the morning, naked Soviet POWs were herded outside by the hundreds and through the Arbeit macht frei gate to the POW camp. It was a frosty day and snow lay on the ground... I remember that, after they arrived, the POWs had been put through disinfection at the Industriehof [factory area], where they went into a tub full of liquid disinfectant."
A resistance movement report noted that "It was the cold evening of October 7 when we saw the first POWs. Heavy snow, the first of the year, was falling... Suddenly, we heard shouting. The SS were driving a crowd of naked people through the gate, striking and kicking them. The prisoners had been bathed and had their heads shaved at a separate building twenty minutes' quick march from the camp, and obviously had to go from there to the camp wearing nothing but their boots. For a long time, the naked men, frozen stiff, were counted and divided into blocks, where they lay on beds for several days without underwear or blankets, warming themselves only with their own body heat. After these thousands, more arrived in a comparable way."
Aside from the Jews, Poles, Roma, and Soviet POWs, approximately 25,000 prisoners of other origins were brought to Auschwitz.
The most numerous were residents of the Minsk and Vitebsk regions. Approximately 6,000 men, women, and children, captured during fighting between the Germans and partisans, were deported from there in 1943 and 1944.
Political prisoners, including members of the Sokol patriotic organization, were deported from Bohemia and Moravia.
Several thousand non-Jews were deported from France to Auschwitz. The two largest transports carried 1,000 people on July 8, 1942, and 1,655 people on April 30, 1944. These transports included members of the resistance movement, intellectuals, politicians, and senior officers.
Aside from some 10,000 Jews, at least 1,500 other people, including 783 Slovenes-men, women, and children whose photographs can be found at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum-and, probably, 791 Serbs, were deported from Yugoslavia.
Veterans of the Spanish Civil War formed a distinct group among the Austrians.
People were deported to Auschwitz for various reasons. They came from various countries and represented all age groups, levels of education, and occupational qualifications. Their common destiny was death. Of the 1,300,000 people who arrived at the camp, 1,100,000 never left. For them, Auschwitz was the end of their life's journey. This great mass grave, which is now a memorial site, is a warning against sowing the hatred and chauvinism that led to genocide and the Holocaust.
Franciszek Piper holds a Ph.D. in history and is director of the Historical Research Department at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim.
See also: Homosexuals—A Separate Category of Prisoners
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