by Rudolf Hoess
The original female supervisors were, even so, far and away superior to those we got later. In spite of keen recruiting by the National Socialist women’s organizations, very few candidates volunteered for concentration camp service, and compulsion had to be used to obtain the ever-increasing numbers required.
Each armaments firm to which female prisoners were allotted for work had in exchange to surrender a certain percentage of their other female employees to act as supervisors. It will be understood that, in view of the general wartime shortage of efficient female labor, these firms did not give us their best workers.
These supervisors were now given a few weeks “training” in Ravensbrück and then let loose on the prisoners. Since the selection and allocation took place at Ravensbrück, Auschwitz was once again at the end of the line. Obviously Ravensbrück kept what seemed the best ones for employment in the new women’s labor camp which was being set up there.
Such was the position regarding the supervisory staff in the women’s camp at Auschwitz.
As was only to be expected, the morals of these women were, almost without exception, extremely low. Many of them appeared before the SS tribunal charged with theft in connection with the Reinhardt Action.[69]
But these were only the few who happened to be caught. In spite of the most fearful punishments, stealing went on, and the supervisors continued to use the prisoners as’ go-betweens for this purpose.
I will give one very bad case as an illustration.
One of these female supervisors sank so low as to become intimate with some of the male prisoners, mostly “green” Capos. In return for sexual intercourse, in which she was only too anxious to take part, she received jewelry, gold, and other valuables. As a cover for her shameless behavior, she started an affair with a senior noncommissioned officer of the SS guard unit and used his house as a safe place in which to lock up her hard-earned winnings. This poor fool was completely unaware of what his sweetheart was up to, and was very surprised when all these pretty things were discovered in his house.
The supervisor was sentenced by the Reichsführer SS to life imprisonment in a concentration camp, and to twice twenty-five strokes of the lash.
Like homosexuality among the men, an epidemic of lesbianism was rampant in the women’s camp. The most severe measures, including transfer to the punishment company, were inadequate to put a stop to this.
Time and again I received reports of intercourse of this sort between supervisors and female prisoners. This in itself indicates the low level of these supervisors.
Obviously they did not take their work or duties very seriously and most of them were inefficient as well. There were only a few punishments that could be inflicted for dereliction of duty. Confinement to their quarters was not looked on as a punishment at all, since it meant that they did not have to go out when the weather was bad. All punishments had first to be countersigned by the Inspector of Concentration Camps or Pohl. Punishment was to be kept to a minimum. “Irregularities” were to be put right by careful training and good leadership. The female supervisors knew all about this, of course, and the majority of them reacted as might be expected.
I have always had a great respect for women in general. In Auschwitz, however, I learned that I would have to modify my views, and that even a woman must be carefully examined before she is entitled to enjoy a full measure of respect.
What I have said certainly applied to the majority of the female supervisory staff. It is true that there were good, decent, reliable women among them, but they were very few. There is no need to emphasize that these suffered greatly from their surroundings and from the general conditions at Auschwitz. But they could not escape, being bound by their war service obligations. Many of them complained to me. about their troubles, and even more so to my wife. We could only tell them to hope that the war would soon be over. This was indeed a poor means of consolation.
Attached to the women’s camp, for the purpose of guarding the working parties employed outside the camp, were the dog handlers.
Already at Ravensbrück the female supervisors in charge of outside working parties had dogs allotted them, so as to reduce the number of guards. These supervisors were of course armed with pistols, but the Reichsführer SS believed that a greater terror effect would be produced by the_use of dogs. For most women have a powerful respect for dogs, whereas men do not bother about them so much.
Because of the mass of prisoners at Auschwitz, how to guard the outside working parties effectively was a constant problem. There were never enough troops. Chains of sentry posts were useful, in that they could be used to enclose the larger working areas. But the constant moving of work parties from one site to another, and the mobility necessitated by the nature of the work itself, made proper supervision impossible in the case of agricultural work, ditch-digging, and so on. Owing to the small number of female supervisors available, it was necessary to employ as many dog handlers as possible. Even our one-hundred-and-fifty-odd dogs were not enough. The Reichsführer SS calculated that one dog should be able to replace two sentries. This was probably so, as far as the female working parties were concerned, owing to the universal fear caused by the presence of the dogs.
The Auschwitz dog squad contained the most astonishing military material. Astonishing in the negative sense. When volunteers were sought for training as dog handlers, half the SS regiment applied. They imagined that such work would be easier and less monotonous. Since it was impossible to take on all the volunteers, the companies hit upon a cunning solution, and gave up all their black sheep, so as to be rid of them. Someone else could have the headaches now. Most of these men had been punished for some offense or other. If the commander of the guard unit had looked at these men’s conduct sheets a little more closely, he would never on any account have allowed them to be sent away for training.
At the Training and Experimental Establishment for Dog Handlers at Oranienburg some of the trainees were returned to their units before they had even finished their course, because of total unsuitability.
When those who had completed their training returned to Auschwitz they were formed into a unit, the Hundestaffel,[70] and it was not hard to see what a splendid new formation had here been created. And now it was time for them to be put to work. Either they played games with their dogs, or they found an easy hideout and went to sleep, their dogs waking them up on the approach of an “enemy,” or else passed the time in pleasant conversation with the female supervisors or the prisoners. A great many of them formed a regular liaison with the “green” controllers. Since the dog handlers were always employed in the women’s camp, it was not difficult for them to continue this liaison.
When they were bored, or wanted to have some fun, they would set their dogs on the prisoners. If they were caught doing this, they would maintain that the dog had done it of its own accord, owing to the peculiar behavior of the prisoner, or that its lead had been lost, and so on. They always had an excuse. Every day, according to their regulations, they had to give their dog further training.
Because of the time and trouble it took to train fresh dog handlers, they could only be relieved of their posts if they had been guilty of some grave offense, such as one that entailed punishment by SS court-martial, or alternatively if they had badly ill-treated or neglected their dogs. The kennelman, a former police sergeant, who had looked after dogs for more than twenty-five years, was often driven to despair by the behavior of the dog handlers. But they knew that nothing much could happen to them, and that they were unlikely actually to lose their jobs. A better commanding officer might have been able to knock this gang into shape. But the gentleman concerned had far more important things to think about. I had much trouble with the Hundestaffel, and many clashes with the commander of the guard regiment over this.[71]
I had no understanding of what was actually required of troops, at least according to Glücks’s way of thinking. Hence I was never able to get him to post away officers as soon as the
y became intolerable at Auschwitz.
A very great deal of trouble could have been avoided if Glücks’s attitude toward me had been different.
As the war went on the Reichsführer SS was constantly insisting on ever greater economies in the manpower employed on guard duties. The men were to be replaced by devices such as movable wire fencing, by encircling permanent places of work with electrified wire, by mine fields, and by ever larger numbers of dogs. Should a commandant manage to devise a really efficient method of economizing in the use of guards, he was given immediate promotion. But all this achieved nothing at all.
The Reichsführer SS even imagined that dogs could be trained to circle around the prisoners, as though they were sheep, and thus prevent them from escaping. One sentry, aided by several dogs, was supposed to be able to guard up to one hundred prisoners with safety. The attempt came to nothing. Men are not sheep. However well-trained the dogs were in recognizing the prisoners by their uniforms and their smell and so on, and however accurately they were taught to know how close prisoners might be allowed to approach, they were all only dogs, and could not think like human beings. If the prisoners purposely attracted them to one spot, the dogs would then leave a wide section unguarded through which they could escape.
Nor were the dogs any use in preventing a mass breakout. They would of course savagely maul some of the escapers, but they would be immediately slaughtered along with their “shepherds.”
It was also proposed that dogs should replace the guards in the watchtowers. They were to be allowed to run loose between the double wire fencing that encircled the camp or the permanent places of work, each dog guarding a certain sector, and would give warning of the approach of a prisoner thus preventing a break through the wire. This, too, came to nothing. The dogs either found a spot in which to go to sleep, or they let themselves be tricked. If the wind was in the wrong quarter the dog would notice nothing, or its barking would not be heard by the sentry.
The laying of mines was a two-edged weapon. They had to be accurately laid and their precise situation plotted on the plan of the mine field, since after three months at the most they became defective and had to be replaced. It was also necessary to walk through the mine field from time to time, and this gave the prisoners a chance to observe the lanes where no mines had been laid.
Globocnik[72] had used mines in this way at his extermination centers. But despite the carefully laid mine fields at Sobibor, the Jews knew where the lanes through the mine field ran, and were able by force to achieve a major breakout during which almost all the guard personnel were wiped out.
Neither mechanical devices nor animals can replace human intelligence.
Even the double electrified fence can be neutralized in dry weather with a few simple tools, provided a man is sufficiently cold-blooded and gives the problem a little thought. This has frequently succeeded. Often too the sentries outside the wire have come too close to it, and have had to pay for their lack of caution with their lives.
I have referred several times to what I regarded as my main task; namely, to push on, with all the means at my disposal, with the construction of all the installations belonging to the SS in the Auschwitz camp area.
Sometimes, during a period of quiet, I used to think that I could see an end in sight to the construction work resulting from the numerous schemes and plans that the Reichsführer SS had laid down for Auschwitz, but at that point new plans would arrive, involving further urgent action.
The perpetual rush in which I lived, brought about by the demands of the Reischsführer SS, by wartime difficulties, by almost daily problems in the camps, and above all by the unending stream of prisoners flowing into the whole camp area, left me no time to think of anything except my work. I concentrated exclusively on this.
Harassed thus by circumstances, I passed on my harassment in double measure to all who came under my jurisdiction, whether SS, civilians, officials, business firms, or prisoners. I had only one end in view: to drive everything and everyone forward in my determination to improve the general conditions so that I could carry out the measures laid down. The Reichsführer SS required every man to do his duty and if necessary to sacrifice himself entirely in so doing. Every German had to commit himself heart and soul so that we might win the war.
In accordance with the will of the Reichsführer SS the concentration camps were to become armaments plants. Everything else was to be subordinated to this. All other considerations must be set aside.
His words made it quite clear that the unwarrantable general conditions in the camps were of secondary importance. Armaments came first, and every obstacle to this must be overcome. I dared not allow myself to think otherwise. I had to become harder, colder, and even more merciless in my attitude toward the needs of the prisoners. I saw it all very clearly, often far too clearly, but I knew that I must not let it get me down. I dared not let my feelings get the better of me. Everything had to be sacrificed to one end, the winning of the war. This was how I looked on my work at that time. I could not be at the front, so I must do everything at home to support those who were fighting. I see now that all my driving and pushing could not have won the war for us. But at the time I had implicit faith in our final victory, and I knew I must stop at nothing in my work to help us achieve this.
By the will of the Reichsführer SS, Auschwitz became the greatest human extermination center of all time.
When in the summer of 1941 he himself gave me the order to prepare installations at Auschwitz where mass exterminations could take place, and personally to carry out these exterminations, I did not have the slightest idea of their scale or consequences. It was certainly an extraordinary and monstrous order. Nevertheless the reasons behind the extermination program seemed to me right. I did not reflect on it at the time: I had been given an order, and I had to carry it out. Whether this mass extermination of the Jews was necessary or not was something on which I could not allow myself to form an opinion, for I lacked the necessary breadth of view.
If the Führer had himself given the order for the “final solution of the Jewish question,” then, for a veteran National Socialist and even more so for an SS officer there could be no question of considering its merits. “The Führer commands, we follow” was never a mere phrase or slogan. It was meant in bitter earnest.
Since my arrest it has been said to me repeatedly that I could have disobeyed this order, and that I might even have assassinated Himmler, I do not believe that of all the thousands of SS officers there could have been found a single one capable of such a thought. It was completely impossible. Certainly many SS officers grumbled and complained about some of the harsh orders that came from the Reichsführer SS, but they nevertheless always carried them out.
Many orders of the Reichsführer SS deeply offended a great number of his SS officers, but I am perfectly certain that not a single one of them would have dared to raise a hand against him, or would have even contemplated doing so in his most secret thoughts. As Reichsführer SS, his person was inviolable. His basic orders, issued in the name of the Führer, were sacred. They brooked no consideration, no argument, no interpretation. They were carried out ruthlessly and regardless of consequences, even though these might well mean the death of the officer concerned, as happened to not a few SS officers during the war.
It was not for nothing that during training the self-sacrifice of the Japanese for their country and their emperor, who was also their god, was held up as a shining example to the SS.
SS training was not comparable to a university course which can have as little lasting effect on the students as water on a duck’s back. It was on the contrary something that was deeply ingrained, and the Reichsführer SS knew very well what he could demand of his men.
But outsiders simply cannot understand that there was not a single SS officer who would disobey an order from the Reichsführer SS, far less consider getting rid of him because of the gruesomely hard nature of one such order.
What
the Führer, or in our case his second-in-command, the Reichsführer SS, ordered was always right.
Democratic England also has a basic national concept: “My country, right or wrong!” and this is adhered to by every nationally conscious Englishman.
Before the mass extermination of the Jews began, the Russian politruks and political commissars were liquidated in almost all the concentration camps during 1941 and 1942.
In accordance with a secret order issued by Hitler, these Russian politruks and political commissars were combed out of all the prisoner-of-war camps by special detachments from the Gestapo.[73]
When identified, they were transferred to the nearest concentration camp for liquidation. It was made known that these measures were taken because the Russians had been killing all German soldiers who were Party members or belonged to special sections of the NSDAP, especially members of the SS, and also because the political officials of the Red Army had been ordered, if taken prisoner, to create every kind of disturbance in the prisoner-of-war camps and their places of employment and to carry out sabotage wherever possible.
The political officials of the Red Army thus identified were brought to Auschwitz for liquidation. The first, smaller transports of them were executed by firing squads,
While I was away on duty, my deputy, Fritzsch, the commander of the protective custody camp, first tried gas for these killings. It was a preparation of prussic acid, called Cyclon B[74], which was used in the camp as an insecticide and of which there was always a stock on hand. On my return, Fritzsch reported this to me, and the gas was used again for the next transport.
