Langbein Hermann. People in Auschwitz

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mary. It was also risky because dangers lurked everywhere in the camp for a

person who appeared debilitated.

Stanislawa Leszczynska identiﬁes dysentery as the illness that caused the

greatest casualties in thewomen’s camp. ‘‘Since the bunk beds were on top of

one another, the liquid bowel movement ran down on those lying below the

sick women.’’

A letter from the Polish resistance movement to Cracow, dated Novem-

ber 24, 1942, says that in the main camp diarrhea produced the highest mor-

tality rate, followed by typhus.

Patients with tuberculosis may be counted among those who suﬀered from

the consequences of malnutrition; 33.8 percent of the patients who died in

the quarantine section and 16.8 percent of those transferred from there to the

inﬁrmary had tuberculosis. Wolken’s investigations showed that in 63 per-

cent of these cases the tuberculosis had been contracted in the camp. Alfred

Fiderkiewicz has described the consequences of this illness in the hkb of the

Birkenau camp as follows:‘‘Hunger, lack of space, unhygienic conditions, and

the wet weather caused tuberculosis to spread rapidly. The mortality rate was

very high. Every day between four and ten corpses were removed from each

tuberculosis block that housed 130 to 140 patients. This continued until the

evacuation of the camp.’’ That most victims of a selection had been chosen

because of their obvious symptoms of malnutrition cannot be proved statis-

tically but is in line with the practice of the camp administration.

Typhus was a particularly dreaded disease—one feared by the ss as well,

because, strangely enough, well-nourished people found it harder to get over

this illness than undernourished ones. This observation was made by Fejkiel.

Inmates who were transferred to Auschwitz from the Lublin prison brought

in this epidemic in April 1941. Fejkiel estimates that in the main camp alone

10,000 to 15,000 inmates came down with typhus over the years. By the latter

half of 1943 the epidemic had already abated in the main camp, and it could

be contained in Birkenau as well. Haﬀner reports that in 1944 cases of typhus

were rare in the men’s camp. This is conﬁrmed by Fiderkiewicz, who men-

tions that the typhus epidemic was brought under control in January 1944. In

the ﬁrst four months covered by Wolken’s statistics (that is, in the fall of 1943

and the following winter), 401 typhus patients were recorded in the Birkenau

quarantine section, and only one in the last six weeks. ‘‘Only after the comple-

tion of the sauna and the installation of disinfectant tanks in all camps was

it possible to keep this epidemic under control,’’ writes Wolken.

In thewomen’scamp typhuswas particularly virulent in thewinterof 1943–

44. At ﬁrst the measures taken by the ss to disinfect the camp were totally

inadequate. Anna Palarczyk reports that the clothes that came back from the

disinfection station after the ﬁrst delousing of the women’s camp on Decem-

204 n the prisoners

ber 6, 1942, were full of lice. The inmates developed initiatives of their own.

Olga Lengyel remembers the struggle that ‘‘little Orli,’’ her name for the camp

elder in the hkb of the women’s camp, carried on against the infestation of

lice. Eventually typhus was brought under control in this section of the camp

as well. A few satellite camps where cleanliness was a top priority of the ss

remained typhus-free the whole time.

Typhoid fever could not be brought under control until 1943. Haﬀner re-

members that in that year all inmates of Birkenau were vaccinated against this

illness; this was the only general program of inoculations thatbecameknown.

Paratyphoid, diphtheria, and malaria appeared in waves.

In all statements about infectious diseases containedin oﬃcialdocuments,

an unreliability factor should be kept in mind. Since the ssall too often fought

epidemics in its own way—namely, by taking all sick patients, even those

suspected of being sick and convalescents, to the gas chamber—nurses sup-

pressed such a dangerous diagnosis wherever possible.

Wolken’s statistics also indicate the incidence of another cause of death.

In the period between September 20, 1943, and January 21, 1944, the cause

of death of 18 percent of those who died in the quarantine section is given

as ‘‘shot’’ or ‘‘frozen to death,’’ which means ‘‘murdered.’’ Later there was a

marked decline in obvious murders.

n Despite the close contact with patients suﬀering from so many contagious

diseases, the hkb was a desirable detail. Those who were assigned to work

there had a roof over their heads, were excused from roll calls, and could get

more to eat—because there were always patients with no appetite and dead

people whose rations could still be obtained, since they were prudently not re-

ported as having died until the numberof required meals had been submitted.

Finally, members of this detail belonged to the upper stratum of camp society,

for experienced inmates fostered friendships with the hkb personnel.

To be sure, the work of a nurse diﬀered basically from work on almost all

other details. While most inmates worked only in order not to attract atten-

tion and to avoid being punished, the conscientious activity of nurses was in

the interest of their sick comrades.The responsibility with which every nurse

and physician was burdened often assumed superhuman dimensions. It was

most diﬃcult to bear in the worst camps, which means Birkenau, and there

especially in its early period. André Lettich has providedthe following descrip-

tion of Block 7, which was for a long time connected with the inﬁrmary in the

Birkenau men’s camp:

Even from a distance one became aware of a terrible stench from decaying

and putrefying excrement. If one passed through the gate and reached the

The Inmate Inﬁrmary n 205

yard (this block was surrounded by a wall two meters high), there was a

truly horrible sight. To the left of the gate there were poor wretches with

broken limbs, cellulitis, edemas, and every conceivable deﬁciency disease.

A bit farther, other patients who seemed somewhat less frail and dragged

themselves along. Lastly, at the far end of this hideous yard, corpses and

living skeletons were intermingled. When we entered this courtyard in our

ﬁrst months in Birkenau, people who knew us stretched their imploring

hands toward us from all sides and we heard heartrending screams: ‘‘Doc-

tor, help us!’’ However, we were completely powerless, and so our help had

to be limited to a few words of encouragement, hope, and comfort, a solace

we ourselves lacked. This profusion of unimaginable human misery, this

host of diarrheic patients and enfeebled prisoners, was a frightful sight.

All were indescribably emaciated, most of them were almost completely

naked, and their underwear and clothes, which had not been changed,were

ﬁlthy all over. Three wooden boxes in the middle of the yard served as toi-

lets.Those boxes, which were rarely emptied, overﬂowed, and thus an area

within a radius of about two meters was ﬂoodedwith urine.What a horrible

sight it was when all those down-and-outers, the walking skeletons and

ailing people, pitifully dragged themselves to those boxes, and, no longer

able to stay on their feet, fell into the muck and struggled with death until

it ﬁnally put an end to their pitiable situation.

Block 7 was a wooden barracks like the others. Over the door there was

this cynical inscription: ‘‘Infection Department.’’ If one opened the door,

one’s ﬁrst spontaneous reaction was to step back and hold one’s nose, the

air was that repulsive, biting, stiﬂing, and unﬁt for breathing. Everything

was full of screams and moans. Eight or ten patients were lying on bunks

that barely had enough room for ﬁve, and thus most of them had to sit

up. In this jail for patients, all illnesses and every conceivable injury were

represented. Typhoid fever, pneumonia, cachexia, edemas, broken arms

and legs, fractured skulls, all helter-skelter. How could the physicians have

treated these poor wretches even if they had been given a chance to do so—

without medications and with paper bandages? It was impossible. Some-

times there were ten or ﬁfteen aspirin tablets for 800 or 900 patients. And

why tend to them and put on bandages when twice a week the nurses had

to load all patients on trucks that took them to the gas chambers? The Ger-

man method was thewholesale liquidation of the human material that only

took up space.

How to describe the frightful sight of this departure for a scientiﬁcally

conducted killing? Allpatients were driven out to thecourtyard;and if there

was not enough space there, they were lined up in rows of ten in front of

the block. Since most of them were not able to stay on their feet, they were

206 n the prisoners

allowed to sit down in rows of ten, one between the legs of another. Often

the number of the selectees was rounded oﬀ to the count demanded by the

ss physicians by including the dead. If there were not enough corpses, the

quota was reached by having the block elders add a few of those who had

been excused from leaving with a labor detail because they were exhausted.

This dismal sight presented itself to us regularly twice a week, on Mondays

and Thursdays, in 1942.

In the Frankfurt courtroom, the Pole Adam Gawalewicz described this

‘‘waitingroom fordeath,’’ as Block 7 was called. He had been transferred there

from the main camp—before the time described by Lettich—because he was

no longer ﬁt for work.

When we arrived, thirty or more Muselmänner were already there and told

us they were the remnant of 1,200. Now we experienced the method of

killing that had been used before the gas chambers were in operation. In

two weeks we received twice or three times a liter of soup for three per-

sons and twice bread weighing 1,400 grams for eight to ten persons. Every

day we had to stand in front of the block, and sometimes the whole night.

Drunken ss men came around and drowned inmates in vats.This besotted

bunch included not only block leaders but also inmate functionaries, pos-

sibly from the penal company. One of them boasted that he could split a

brain by striking it with his stick.There was a command: ‘‘Heads out!’’ Ter-

rifying minutes ensued. Everyone asked himself: ‘‘Will he take a fancy to

my head?’’ There was no medical help for us.

Gawalewicz told the court how he had managed to escape from this in-

ferno. ‘‘At that time I became friends with a Polish comrade who had permis-

sion to visit our block. I recited Polish poems for him, and in return he gave

me bread at the latrine.’’ With the help of other friends, Gawalewicz was later

transferred back to the main camp. If a conﬁrmation was needed that Block 7

was furnished as a ‘‘waiting room for death,’’ it was given by ss medic Josef

Klehr. He disputed Gawalewicz’s testimony in these words: ‘‘That was cer-

tainly not so. Inmates were never returned to the main camp. Every transfer

meant that these people were liquidated.’’

n In the women’s camp, Block 25 was furnished as a counterpart of Block 7.

Even though these two blocks constituted something extreme, which existed

in this form only in Birkenau and not until the last period of this camp, they

did shape the atmosphere. Even in the ‘‘normal’’ blocks of the inﬁrmaries, an

inmate was never safe from selections, and all too often the selections frus-

trated all of the medical personnel’s eﬀorts.

The Inmate Inﬁrmary n 207

A passage from a letter smuggled out of the camp by a Pole forcefully de-

scribes the danger of despondency that threatened everyone in the inﬁrmary

who took his duties seriously: ‘‘On August 29, 1942, I had to watch as my

acquaintances and comrades went to their death. I saw how the physicians’

hands drooped helplessly. I spoke with one of them. He had tears in his eyes

and could not control himself. So much toil, so many sleepless nights, so

many patients snatched away from a cruel illness, and all this in vain.’’ As part

of the battle against typhus, the ss took the inmates of the infection block in

the main camp to the gas chambers on that day. It may be estimated that of

those 746 people 500 had already gotten over the critical stage.

At that time I was a clerk on the night shift of the hkb. I shall never forget

the voice of theyoung Pole who came to our room on that day and told us that

he had just been forced to help his father get on a truck. Falk reports about a

young Belgian nurse who was able to retain her sister, a convalescent, in the

inﬁrmary for a time. She wanted to keep her from resuming the hard labor

on her detail in a weakened state. After a surprise selection the nurse had to

help her eighteen-year-old sister board a truck bound for the gas chamber.

The nurse became completely apathetic and died soon thereafter.

The methods by which the ss forced the inﬁrmary personnel to help with

the extermination of those unﬁt for work are illustrated by what was done

in the death block 25 of the women’s camp. The daily reports indicated the

numbers of the patients and the medical staﬀ that were housed there. When

the trucks arrived, the members of the ss, who avoided coming to this block,

used the reports to determine the number of patients that had to be loaded

on them. If there was a discrepancy, the ss ordered that it be supplemented

with those on barracks duty. In this way the block personnel was forced to see

to it that no one hid out in the dark block when a gassing campaign was in

progress. The nurses could save their own lives only if a full complement of

patients was on the trucks.

The ss was aware that the medical personnel sought and found ways of

shielding acquaintances from selections, and thus it camouﬂaged these ac-

tions in the inﬁrmaries in various ways. ‘‘One day the camp physician de-

manded a list of all malaria patients,’’ writes Ella Lingens.

They were supposed to be transferred to a mosquito-free camp. I believed

this and made such a list. Then a Czech physician said to me: ‘‘I beg you,

put down only the seriously ill patients.’’ I replied that a transfer would be

the best thing for those suﬀering from malaria. ‘‘For God’s sake,’’ said the

Czech woman, ‘‘what are you doing? They’re all going to be killed.’’ In re-

sponse I removed three-fourths of the names from the list. But then the

inmates were not taken to the gas chambers but transferred, and full of

208 n the prisoners

guilt feelings I told myself, ‘‘You should have put them all on the list.’’ We

didn’t learn until later that those patients were taken to Lublin and gassed

there.We simply never knew whether we were sending people to the gas or

to freedom.

A satanic method was devised by the camp physician Heinz Thilo to de-

prive medical personnel of the chance to hide someone from his selections.

From time to time he conducted reverse selections—that is, he selected those

who were to be exempted from being transported to the gas chambers. This

automatically doomed anyone who had been hidden before the selection, for

his inmate number was kept in the roster of the block. When the trucks came,

his number was called.

n Other ss methods were also designed to break the spirit of the medical

personnel completely. Robert Waitz reports that one time a patient was diag-

nosed with a perforated ulcer, and there was a state-of-the-art operation as

well as expert postoperative treatment, but then the patient was sent to the

gas chamber. Another inmate, a man who had been wounded in a bombing,

was given a blood transfusion on special orders of an ss physician, but he,

too, was gassed. Evidently the ss physician had lost interest in these cases.

Otto Wolken has summarized his pertinent experiences as follows: ‘‘What

was possible one day was impossible the next. Patients were nursed back to

health and given a special diet but gassed after their recovery. One inmate was

badly beaten by an ss physician because as a nurse he had kept an incom-

plete medical record of a fellow suﬀerer, and then the patient was sent to the

gas chamber. It was impossible to foresee anything.’’ Even Oswald Kaduk,

the former ss roll call leader, asked this question of the Frankfurt court: ‘‘In

the inﬁrmary therewere inmates whowere put on a diet for two or threeweeks

after an operation and sent to the gas six weeks later. Now I ask myself as a

layman, Does this make any sense?’’

That even the best intentions could have negative consequences in Ausch-

witz is demonstratedby Ana Novac’saccount of Birkenauin 1944. ‘‘Halina,the

Polish block elder in the scabies block, was the most popular creature in the

whole camp. Her kindness was legendary. Nowhere else was the distribution

of bread so peaceful, were clothes so clean, was there so much singing. The

majorityof the inmates did not have scabies, and it was only because of Halina

that they had come to the inﬁrmary with all sorts of scratches and moles.

The female physician could hardly cope with all those phony scabietics.’’ Here

is Novac’s pithy description of the end of this idyll: ‘‘And now they’ve been

taken away, the many malingerers and the few inmates suﬀering from scabies.

Halina is standing in front of the barracks, leaning against the door and cry-

The Inmate Inﬁrmary n 209

ing.The empty bunk beds will be disinfected.’’ Novac does not deem it neces-

sary to report who took them and where they were taken. For ‘‘Auschwitzers,’’

that information is self-evident.

Those who had to accumulate such experiences reacted in the way that

Georges Wellers describes. In late 1944 the inmates working in the Mono-

witz inﬁrmary were ordered to record the inmate numbers of inﬁrm patients.

Supposedly, three blocks had been cleared for them where they could recu-

perate with better food and no work. Because the nurses distrusted the stated

aim,Wellers and a Polish physician listed only sixty-eight especially enfeebled

patients out of the 800 under their care in two blocks. In this case, however,

those listed were in fact transferred to newly furnished special-care blocks

where, until the evacuation, they were able to stay under incomparably more

favorable conditions than obtained in the other blocks.

Any help given could spell ruin, and any help denied could mean trouble.

The fatalistic mood that was created by the constant uncertainty and the per-

manent threat of the end has been described by KatalinVidor, who writes that

the ‘‘tired imagination’’ of those left behind after a selection left room for

only one thought: ‘‘Tonight we’ll have more room in the block, and that is the

important thing at the moment. We’re not interested in what tomorrow will

bring.’’

Only when a selection involved or threatened acquaintances did this ‘‘tired

imagination’’ receive a jolt. On numerous occasions I saw groups of selectees

waiting to be carted oﬀ and did nothing. Only when I received timely noti-

ﬁcation that someone I knew had become the victim of a selection did I set

everything in motion to save him, and a few times I succeeded thanks to my

connections. Ella Lingens writes that the inﬁrmary staﬀ had been forced to

realize that while the mass murder of the Jews was terrible, it was also in-

evitable. Only when we read a familiar name on a list of selectees were we

forced to act. On such occasions we told ourselves that there must be a way of

saving that inmate. ‘‘In most cases,’’ writes Lingens, ‘‘we were forced to look

on helplessly.’’

Tadeusz Borowski, a keen observer, writes: ‘‘The crematorium is part of our

daily bread; there are a thousand cases of cellulitis and tuberculosis; we know

what the wind and the rain are; we know about the sun and bread and turnip

soup and work; we know how to keep from getting caught; we know serfdom

and authority—because we have, so to speak, made friends with the beast.’’

n Tadeusz Paczula has recorded the consequences of thewidespread demoral-

ization in the inmate inﬁrmaries. ‘‘There were smarty-pants who hung around

the rooms in the inﬁrmary in search of dying patients. When such a person

saw someone ‘at death’s door,’ he approached him, put his hands on his fore-

210 n the prisoners

head and then under his head, said a brief prayer, and ﬁnally blessed the mori-

bund person with his right hand while retrieving from under that person’s

head with his left hand a slice of bread, the existence of which he had veriﬁed

during his initial inspection.’’

Every inﬁrmary was a battleﬁeld in the struggle for survival. Anna Suss-

mann recognized that in such a situation ‘‘one cannot and must not expect

an average person who is leading a hopeless, brutish existence not to turn

into an animal himself.’’ She observed that female nurses stole packages from

patients under their care.

Maria Zarebinska-Broniewskahas describeda compatriot of hers, the nine-

teen-year-old Pole named Pelagia, who was a cleaner and a sort of nurse’s

assistant:

Regrettably, camp life brought out in her all the bad qualities that human

nature can have. Shewas not only heartless and egotistical but also insanely

greedy and concerned only with her own advantage. As soon as a patient

received a package, Pelagia’s attitude toward herchangedinstantly. She im-

mediately evinced great interest in the patient’s well-being, readily ﬂuﬀed

up her straw pallet, washed her, and promised to get her a fresh shirt or

raw potatoes to make soup that evening. She was ﬁnally given something

edible from the parcel, crawled back to her bed, stated with profound con-

tentment that the most important things in the camp were food and im-

passivity, and then consumed her gifts. A few patients who received food

packages regularly turned her into their obedient, faithful servant who did

anything for them, was at their beck and call, and was ready to fulﬁll even

their most capricious wishes.When seriously ill inmates received packages,

Pelagia quietly took charge of them. Instead of swapping the contents of

such a package for medicine, an injection, milk, or a clean shirt (unfor-

tunately barter ﬂourished), Pelagia consumed the food herself. She often

said, ‘‘I’m eating the sausage of thewoman who’s lying there in a coma and

is sure to die soon. And even if she comes out of it, the food will be spoiled

bythenanyway...’’Whenthelights were turned oﬀ at night, one could

hear the rustling of paper from her bed (she was unwrapping packages)

and regular lip-smacking. Every day Pelagia grew plumper and fatter.

Zarebinska-Broniewska has made the following addition tothe storyof this

nineteen-year-old. Pelagia had been in Auschwitz for a year and a half and

had survived several illnesses as well as two months in the penal company. Al-

most all those who had arrived on her transport (from the Stanislau area) had

died, but Pelagia was ‘‘healthy, cheerful, and doing splendidly. ‘It’s because

I’ve learned how to live,’ she said by way of an explanation.’’

Youngpeoplewere most susceptibleto such temptations,thoughOlga Len-

The Inmate Inﬁrmary n 211

gyel says quite frankly that mature people succumbed to them as well. One

day she and a friend who was also on the staﬀ of the inﬁrmary gave two as-

pirin tablets to a patient on barracks duty who was not seriously ill and had

promised them platzkis, potatoes baked in margarine, in return. She describes

how their scruples melted away when they savored the odor of those platzkis.

‘‘Undernormal circumstances,’’ she assures us, ‘‘neither I nor my friend would

have made such a deal, but we were in Birkenau and hungry.’’

n Even those who were not starving and hence were more likely to withstand

all temptations faced a dilemma. Robert Waitz, a physician in the inmate in-

ﬁrmary at Monowitz, has given a vivid account of this.

The physicians played a very important role. They tried to obtain medi-

cations, particularly sulfa drugs. These were stolen even from the ss in-

ﬁrmaries. The physicians endeavored to get sick or enfeebled comrades to

the inﬁrmary secretlyand withthe cooperation of clerks, thus sparing them

an oﬃcial admission, which was fraught with danger. Before selections

they concealed emaciated and ill inmates; they also forged medical records

and hid unfortunate inmates who were destined for the gas chamber. This

very necessary activity of the physicians repeatedly confronted them with

a dilemma. Either do nothing, which would have been a solution dictated

by cowardice, or act, which would have meant that they could help only a

limited number of people and turned a physician into a judge. Only those

could be helped who had chances of recovering physically and morally after

receiving such help. Making a choice is one of the knottiest problems that

a physician who is worthy of that title can face.

The physicians in Monowitz decided to give the few medications to the

youngest patients because they had the greatest chances of surviving. ‘‘There

was no point in giving an old man sulfa drugs,’’ said Siegfried Halbreich.

Heartless though this may sound, it was impossible to evade such decisions

in Auschwitz.

Ella Lingens has given this description of the same dilemma: ‘‘Shall I give

the small number of cardiotonic injections at my disposal to a gravely ill

woman who maydie anyway? Or shall I divide them between two less seriously

ill patients who might get well without the aid of these drugs? Shall I help a

mother with many children or a young girl who still has most of her life ahead

of her?’’

Vilo Jurkovic, who worked at the tb station for a time, has described the

courses of action that were taken to help the patients. The physicians ‘‘orga-

nized’’ raw calcium chloride, recrystallized and dissolved it, and then injected

the patients with it intravenously. ‘‘Even though it did not act directly,’’ writes

212 n the prisoners

Jurkovic, ‘‘these injections were eﬀective because the patient believed that

something good was being done for him.’’ In point of fact, this treatment

reduced hopelessness, and the general condition of the patients improved.

All nurses had to ‘‘organize’’ medications. They were frequently able to do

this only if they promised to give preferential treatment to a friend of the per-

son who was able to procure medicines. Anyone who declined to do this had

to do without additional medications.

Every selection in the inﬁrmary confronted inmate nurses and physicians

with decisions that could be evaded only at the cost of relinquishing their

functions and thereby losing any chance to help. The inmate responsible for

a barracks had to accompany the ss man who made selections. Sometimes

the escort could use this opportunity to intervene helpfully—for example, by

emphasizing that the inmate whom the ss physician wanted to select was a

sought-after specialist or by pointing out that another patient had recently

had such a speedy recovery that he would probably be fully ﬁt for work in the

near future. However, he was able to save only a fraction at best, and he had

to decide on the spot in which cases he should intervene.

Sometimes the ss let the inmate personnel make preselections. Claudette

Block remembers a young physician named Tamara who, like her colleagues,

was ordered to make selections in her barracks. The order called for seventy

patients, and Tamara would have had to select about twelve victims from the

two barracks under her care.The ﬁrst time that this was demanded of her, she

did not select anyone. After she had to watch, as a result of her refusal, the

capricious selection of the twelve victims, she resolved that the next time she

would name those whose condition was hopeless.

Ella Lingens has described the conduct of the physician Ella Klein. ‘‘When

there was a selection in her block, she would guide the camp physician to the

patients for whom there was no hope. She regarded it as pointless to hide

the seriously ill, for then he would have selected for gassing the more vig-

orous patients who might still have recovered. The others died anyway, and

she would have had twice as many dead. What she said could not be refuted.’’

Nevertheless, Dr. Klein was called to account in Czechoslovakia after the lib-

eration.

Olga Lengyel cannot forget how the victims of a selection screamed like

wounded animals at herand theother nurses as they were led out of the blocks

after the arrival of the trucks: ‘‘Ihr auch!’’ (You too!).

Primo Levi tells about Henek König, who was deported from Transylvania

at the age of fourteen and was the sole survivor of his family. He was ap-

pointed capo of the children’s block because he was the strongest and had

good connections with inﬂuential adults. When selections were ordered in

that block, Henek made the choices. When Levi asked him soon after the lib-

The Inmate Inﬁrmary n 213