Architects of Death

by Karen Bartlett

  Neither of us ever harboured the illusion that the fulfilment of these difficult leadership tasks would only ever meet with applause, or that general popularity would be the result of the work we did. On the contrary, no thoughtful employee, working for the benefit of the entire firm, will kid himself that he will therefore be the most popular person with every one of his workmates.

  Nonetheless, Topf concludes, the company must continue to be run as it was – while always maintaining the sensitivity towards its workers for which it was renowned.

  This brings us to a very important point that we have listed under the general heading of ‘sensitivity’. Personal sensitivity is one of the main features of our entire workforce. This has been the tradition for many decades now, and we know of countless individual examples, not just from hearsay, but from our own experience, too. We absolutely must get it through to every individual person that no new organisational measure is ever directed at them personally, but has, rather, been conceived and ultimately implemented for their benefit.

  Perhaps he was carried away with the relief of no longer being under investigation by the Third Reich – for it is not clear that Topf employees appreciated the brothers’ sensitivity. Nor had the series of air-clearing staff meetings resolved the mutual distrust between workers and directors. With little settled and emotions still running high, the Topf brothers met again, in secret in June 1942, to discuss the results of their investigation into the anonymous letter writer – and their conclusions were far nastier in style and substance than some of Ernst Wolfgang’s high-flown rhetoric: ‘Regarding further investigations into the identity of the anonymous letter writer, we again discussed the likelihood that it was someone from within the company.’

  The Topf brothers go on to discuss the ‘dirty liars’ in the company, working through the names of possible culprits one by one. Cyriax is ‘dishonest’, Geiling is a ‘stirrer’ who predicts that Germany is going to lose the war, Loffler was ‘born to complain’ and will ‘seize any opportunity to drag the names of the company directors through the mud’.

  These men have varied complaints and issues with management, but the Topf brothers conclude that they all have one thing in common:

  Without a doubt, the main culprits responsible for the complaints and moaning, as well as the attacks on the honour of the company directors, are located in Department D. It is a sorry situation that can only be improved if one of them leaves the company and finds a better future for themselves elsewhere.60

  In other words, the men the Topf brothers suspect of the greatest treachery towards the company all work in Department D – the most secretive location within Topf and Sons – alongside Fritz Sander and Kurt Prüfer.

  CHAPTER SIX

  AUSCHWITZ

  ‘When the doors opened for the last time we saw that the train had brought us to the place we dreaded the most – the flat, fetid swamp lands of South West Poland. We had arrived at Auschwitz, a death centre the size of a small city with thousands of workers busily dedicated to perfecting mass murder, and the extermination of the Jewish race.’ 61

  AFTER AUSCHWITZ, EVA SCHLOSS

  Auschwitz-Birkenau was a world of its own. For its inmates it was a world of filth and depravity; starvation and death. For its captors it was a world of solidarity, comfort and varied pleasures. A world where life and death sat literally side by side, where tens of thousands of slaves laboured in appalling hardship to drive forward the Nazi war effort, while hundreds of thousands of others experienced the camp for only a few moments, a few hours, before they were led straight to their deaths in the gas chambers. It was a place where the children of the camp commandant, Rudolf Höss, could enjoy picking fruit from the garden of their family villa – so long as they remembered to wash the strawberries that were always covered in a strange grey soot that blew over the wall from the crematorium next door.

  Although the concentration camp system had been a central feature of Nazi policy since 1933, its purpose and organisation had evolved – just as the Nazi policy towards the Jews had progressed towards its final, terrible conclusion. In truth, the Nazis were not as efficient, or monolithic, as they would have liked to believe – or as simplistic as historical accounts sometimes make them seem. Nazi policy was ever-changing and often subject to a surprising amount of internal criticism, although that criticism was about implementation and never about the ultimate objective.

  All concentration camps came under the central control of the SS, but different camps had different designations. Some, in occupied countries like France and the Netherlands, were transit camps intended to dispatch Jews to the East, while others, like Dachau and Buchenwald in Germany itself, were officially ‘work camps’ where inmates were punished and subjected to hard labour. Tens of thousands of people died in these camps, but they were not technically designated as ‘death camps’. After a series of discussions between Hitler and Himmler about the fate of the Jews in the winter of 1941, followed by a meeting about the implementation of this ‘Final Solution’, organised by Reinhard Heydrich at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, four camps were built in Poland: Treblinka, Chelmno, Sobibór and Bełżec. The sole purpose of these camps was the killing of the Jews. People who were transported there were virtually all murdered upon arrival. These were the ‘extermination camps’, and they were actually very small in size. There was no need to build barracks or administration buildings as huge numbers of victims were led through the woods and gassed immediately.

  In total, the Nazis operated more than 300 concentration camps across Europe, but the largest and, later the best known, of these was Auschwitz-Birkenau, which held a unique place in the concentration camp system.

  Auschwitz-Birkenau was unique because it was both an extermination camp and a vast labour complex consisting of forty separate camps including an industrial plant operated by IG Farben, a coal mine and a farm. The Nazis were very proud of Auschwitz; it was the jewel in their concentration camp crown and, under the watchful eye of Himmler himself, who personally oversaw the camp’s expansion and development, it became the engine of the Holocaust.

  Until the autumn of 1939, Oświęcim was an unassuming town with 12,000 non-Jews and 5,000 Jews in an industrial part of Upper Silesia with good railway connections. But the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 transformed the town’s fate in unimaginable ways. Suddenly the Nazi regime had three large, and completely self-created, problems to solve: how to find homes and land for the resettlement of hundreds of thousands of ‘ethnic Germans’ that it had agreed with the Soviet Union would be allowed to emigrate from the Baltic states and northern Romania; how to manage a large Polish population (which the Nazis regarded as a sub-human species to be treated as slave labour); and what to do with Poland’s two million Jews.

  The first of these issues had been resolved by the spring of 1940. Poland was divided into two areas – the ‘New Reich’, technically a part of Germany where ethnic Germans would live in homes and on land Poles had recently been evicted from, and the ‘General Government’ an area that encompassed Warsaw, Kraków and Lublin where Poles would live. Jews would initially be ‘relocated’ to ghettos within the cities – starting with the Lodz ghetto in February 1940.

  Oświęcim fell within the area designated as the ‘New Reich’ but its industrial landscape meant few ‘ethnic Germans’ would be resettled there. Instead the town was renamed Auschwitz, and its native population moved out to make way for a new concentration camp, initially planned on the site of an old barracks and horse-breaking yard. The Nazis had identified that building a concentration camp in the area would be important; they needed to incarcerate troublesome Polish prisoners and utilise a large slave-labour force, as well as create a symbolic location from which to terrify the general population. Yet, when Auschwitz’s first and most important commandant stepped off the train on 30 April 1940; he surely had no idea that within the course of five years he would be presiding over the site of the biggest single mass m
urder in world history. Instead, the dream of SS Haupturmführer Rudolf Höss was to create a model concentration camp, based on the lessons he had learned after six years’ service in the SS, first at Dachau and then Sachsenhausen.

  Höss, a forty-year-old ex-farmer from the Black Forest who had served as one of the youngest non-commissioned officers in the First World War, had been involved in violent right-wing politics since the early 1920s, and had joined the Nazi Party in 1922. Like many of his comrades, he later claimed his problem was not with Jews as individuals, but with the ‘international world Jewish conspiracy’ that he believed had brought Germany to its knees after the Treaty of Versailles (this rationale would crop up again when he later justified murdering Jewish children). Höss was a careerist Nazi who ‘looked like a grocery clerk’, according to the American lawyer Whitney Harris, who interrogated him at Nuremberg. Höss’s first post initially appeared unremarkable – as camp commandant of Auschwitz, he would preside over a small camp in an eastern European backwater.

  The first prisoners to arrive at Auschwitz were thirty German criminals who had been transferred from Sachsenhausen. These men, who arrived at the start of June 1940, would become the Kapos – they would preside over other prisoners, supervising the forced labour. Soon after, the first group of Polish prisoners arrived on 14 June. Previously held at Tarnów Prison, these were former university students, who were now charged with building the camp itself. As the Nazis had not secured any construction materials, the prisoners’ first task was to try and steal some. ‘I worked at demolishing houses that used to belong to Polish families,’ Wilhelm Brasse explained.62 ‘There was an order to take building materials such as bricks, planks and other kinds of wood.’ This method of stealing what was needed, even from other work gangs in the camp, also applied to Rudolf Höss himself, who drove as far as 60 or 70 miles to get kettles for the kitchen or straw sacks for bedding. ‘Whenever I found depots containing materials that I needed urgently, I would simply cart whatever I needed away without worrying about the formalities … I didn’t even know where I could buy 100 metres of barbed wire. So I just had to pilfer the badly needed barbed wire.’63

  This seemingly bizarre method of makeshift camp construction offers a much larger insight into Nazi policy – and its failings. Although the Nazis liked to present themselves as supremely organised and efficient, their policies were often dreamt up on the spur of the moment and were ill-thought through. For example, by the autumn of 1940, Oswald Pohl, head of the SS main administration office in Berlin, had visited the camp and instructed Höss to increase its capacity so that prisoners could be forced to labour in industries. This began with a plan to mine sand and gravel, while Himmler envisioned the camp as an agricultural utopia where ‘every necessary agricultural experiment was to be attempted,’ according to Rudolf Höss – this would include cattle breeding and massive plant cultivation experiments. Yet both of these policies proved to be pipe dreams. The prisoners of Auschwitz were engaged in slave-labour projects, both for the SS and private industry – but later studies demonstrated that even the IG Farben plant was massively inefficient, as its workers were weak and starving. Himmler’s passion for farming, which he shared with Höss, was impracticable, as the marshy flat lands and flooding rivers near Auschwitz were completely unsuited to agriculture. But according to Laurence Rees, ‘Until the day the camp closed Auschwitz prisoners would labour in pursuit of Himmler’s vision, digging ditches, draining ponds, shoring up riverbanks – all because it was much more exciting for the Reichsführer SS to dream a dream than to discuss practicalities.’64

  In 1941, the SS decided to increase the capacity of Auschwitz from 10,000 to 30,000 in order to accommodate the needs of the IG Farben plant. The number then grew to over 100,000 after a huge new camp was built at Birkenau, only two miles away from the Auschwitz main camp. This vast new camp was designed to accommodate the victims of the next stage of Nazi aggression.

  The launch of Operation Barbarossa and the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 would transform the role of the camp and its prisoners. Hitler’s war against Stalin would lead to a vast influx of Soviet prisoners into concentration camps throughout the old Reich in Germany and the ‘New Reich’ in occupied lands. According to a letter he wrote to Italian dictator Mussolini, such a dramatic move left Hitler feeling ‘spiritually freed’ and he could now fulfil his most radical dreams. The fast progression of the German invasion surprised even senior Nazis who believed that the war against the USSR could now be won within weeks, a victory so vast that they believed almost anything was possible and within their grasp – and by that they meant the annihilation of the Jewish race.

  Over summer and autumn several events happened almost simultaneously. In July 1941, the first 500 prisoners from Auschwitz were gassed – but these initial victims were not Jews and they were murdered not at the camp itself, but were transported instead to a former mental hospital near Danzig, several hundred miles away. These prisoners, deemed too sick to work, were the victims of the Nazi adult euthanasia programme which began in September 1939 and first targeted mentally ill and physically disabled Germans, before being extended to concentration camps two years later. (A similar law applied to disabled German children, who were perceived to be a drain on society.) It was not until August or early September, when Höss was away on a break that his deputy Fritzsch began experimenting with gassing prisoners using Zyklon B, a chemical made up of crystallised cyanide that was normally used to stop insect infestations. These first gassings occurred in Block 11, the barracks where prisoners were sent to be tortured. When Höss returned to the camp he watched the process, and deemed it highly satisfactory: ‘Protected by a gas mask, I watched the killing myself. In the crowded cells death came almost instantaneously the moment the Zyklon B was thrown in. A short, smothered cry and it was almost all over.’65

  In reality, death by gassing was neither painless nor instantaneous – but as Höss had realised, it was a solution to the mass murder the Nazis were embarking on. Einsatzgruppen death squads had been sweeping through Soviet territory killing at first all Jewish men, and then all Jewish women and children. Mass killing by firing squads raised some logistical problems, however, not to mention the fact that actually having to look their helpless victims in the eyes strained the nerves of many soldiers. The development of gassing as a means of mass murder, and the vast expansion of Auschwitz-Birkenau to accommodate large numbers of Jewish prisoners were both procedures Topf and Sons would become intimately involved in.

  Rather than the swift victory they’d anticipated, by the winter of 1941 the German invasion of Russia had ground to a standstill, with German forces halted at the gates to Moscow. Realising that there was unlikely to be a fresh influx of Soviet prisoners, the SS recognised that those still alive and in captivity were too valuable a labour resource to waste.

  Auschwitz-Birkenau would be transformed into the final destination for millions of deported Jews, starting with the arrival of Slovakian Jews in March 1942.

  The camp at Birkenau eventually covered a vast area, more than 432 acres, and was teeming with many different groups of people. In the four years of its existence, the camp housed Jews of all nationalities from as far away as Norway and Greece, Roma and Sinti children, political prisoners and criminals – at one stage there was even a ‘family camp’ with a kindergarten for Roma children that had pretty pictures on the walls and story books. But this camp was eventually ‘liquidated’ and all of the children were sent to the gas chambers.

  There was even a Birkenau orchestra, led by a Viennese violinist called Alma Rose, who was forced to play during executions and entertain the SS guards at camp concerts. Alma Rose was the daughter of the leader of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the niece of Gustav Mahler; she was known to exact the same professional standards that she had been used to before the war. In one memorable incident, she told some SS women guards to be quiet when they were chatting in the middle of a piece a
nd, with German respect for ‘authority’, they recognised her role as the orchestra leader and fell silent. Like most things at Birkenau, however, Alma’s story ended in tragedy, with various accounts suggesting that she was either murdered or died of botulism.

  As at Buchenwald, and other concentration camps, there was a strict camp hierarchy with the criminal prisoners and Kapos at the top, and the Jewish prisoners at the bottom.

  Over time non-Jewish prisoners accrued small concessions and benefits; they could receive food parcels, and in Auschwitz I some could even avail themselves of a rudimentary swimming pool (really a water tank with a wooden plank diving board created for the Auschwitz fire-fighters) and a brothel. Non-Jewish prisoners also received better medical care and sanitation – and could sometimes rise up the camp hierarchy into positions of authority in relation to other prisoners.

  Jewish prisoners received no concessions – the Nazi goal was extermination by any means possible. For Jews the world was turned on its head, with all the normal experiences of life perverted. A non-Jewish prisoner might get a brief consultation with a doctor and some basic medicine; an ill Jewish prisoner receiving ‘medical attention’ was injected in the heart with a lethal dose of poison. Pregnant women were either subjected to late-term abortions, or had their babies killed at birth.

  Of course, there were divisions between the Jewish prisoners, too. Kept in fenced-off areas of the camp depending on nationality, some groups fared better than others. Polish Jews, who were already accustomed to very harsh conditions in the ghettoes, usually outlasted Dutch and French Jews who had been living much more comfortable lives. Those who could not adjust to camp life acquired a vacant gaze, gave up hope and died. In camp language these people were called muselmann, because their lifeless stoop was perceived to resemble Muslims bent over in prayer.

  As the first Polish prisoners of Auschwitz had quickly realised, survival very much depended on what work you were assigned. The main aim of every prisoner was to get a job with a ‘roof’, as being protected from the harsh weather could guarantee they would live longer.