Langbein Hermann. People in Auschwitz
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Dr. Kosciuszkowa recalls a group of pregnant women who were taken to
the camp. Regardless of the state of their pregnancy, abortions were ordered
for all of them. ‘‘Many of these women lost their lives,’’ she writes at the end
of her report.
On September 18, 1943, a girl born in the women’s camp was the first baby
who was given an inmate number and added to the camp population. The
mother was a Pole from Kattowitz. Even after this, however, Jewish women
were not allowed to give birth. If such a woman managed to conceal her preg-
nancy until delivery, which had to take place in the utmost secrecy and under
unimaginably primitive conditions, the child had to die so that at least the life
of the mother could be preserved.
‘‘We stockpiled all the poison in the camp for this purpose, and it was not
sufficient,’’ writes Lucie Adelsberger, an inmate physician who had to deal
with this problem in 1944. ‘‘Once no poison was available, and so the mother
choked her newborn baby to death. She was a Pole, a good mother who loved
her children more than anything. Three small children were hidden at home,
and she wanted to live for them.’’
‘‘My husband perished in Buna. Our first child was born in October 1943 in
Birkenau and was given a lethal injection. Orli Reichert concealed me in the
German infirmary, where Jewish women were not permitted to be treated.’’
This is what a Jewish woman who had been deported from Germany wrote on
the margin of a letter, written at my request, in which she recorded her experi-
ences in Auschwitz. I suppose that such an occurrence can be reported only
with extreme sobriety. Later this woman assured me that ‘‘I could have killed
someone at that time.’’ It took her a long time to feel normal again.
Adelsberger realizes that some mothers ‘‘did not forgive themselves and
us.’’ Because a Jewish mother could be saved only if her baby was poisoned
and a miscarriage was pretended, ‘‘the Germans turned us into murderers’’
(Olga Lengyel). A female nurse had no other choice. Who will relieve her and
her colleagues of the torment of memory?
A twenty-one-year-old Czech woman who was pregnant when she came to
Auschwitz gave birth in the women’s camp. Mengele refused to let the woman
nurse her child and ordered her to ligate her breasts. Eight days later Mengele
notified the young mother that she would be picked up the next day, and she
knew that this meant death. When it was dark in the barracks, an unknown
woman walked up to the desperate mother with a hypodermic syringe in her
hand. ‘‘Give this to your child; it is a strong dose of morphine, and the child
will die.’’ ‘‘But I can’t murder my own child!’’ ‘‘You’ve got to do it! I’m a physi-
cian and have to save human lives. Your baby is not viable—it’s half-starved
and has hunger edemas. I must save you, you’re young.’’ ‘‘After resisting for
234 n the prisoners
two hours I was so exhausted that I committed the deed.’’ The young mother,
who survived the camp, concludes her report with thesewords: ‘‘My child died
slowly, very slowly, next to me.’’ On the following day Mengele was notified
of the child’s death, and he acknowledged it by saying, ‘‘Well, you were lucky
again. You’ll go to work with the next transport.’’
Janina Kosciuszkowa noted the next development. ‘‘In 1944 Jewish babies
were not murdered immediately after being born.’’ However, the mothers had
no milk, and no one had food for the babies. Krystyna Zywulska has reported
that they cried, whimpered, grew weaker and weaker, became bloated, and
died. Kosciuszkowa, who experienced the end of this episode, writes: ‘‘One
day the news spread that mothers with infants were being gassed. The chil-
dren who were still alive were ‘liquidated,’ and the mothers were hurriedly
released from the infirmary and added to the camp population. The next day,
a fellow prisoner discovered two live children wrapped in blankets, and we
managed to save them.’’ Zywulska states that those who had to witness this
greeted the death of the children with a sigh of relief, for this seemed to avert
the general killing campaign.
The camp administration did all it could to prevent secret births and abor-
tions. Thus it announced one day that pregnant women would receive addi-
tional rations, be exempted from roll calls, and transferred to theirown block.
It even promised that both ‘‘Aryans’’ and Jews would be taken to a hospital
to deliver. Such unexpected orders kept fostering the insecurity that the ss
spread intentionally. ‘‘In late 1943 or early 1944,’’ writes Kosciuszkowa, ‘‘a
block was established for mothers with children from area of Witebsk and
Dnjepropetrowsk. One day it was announced that the children were going to
be taken to a different camp, and of course without their mothers. Scream-
ing, crying, and outbursts of despair were in vain. The children left for parts
unknown.’’
Anna Palarczyk remembers that in 1944 women were released who had
given birth in the camp to babies fathered by ss men.
At the time of the Hungarian transports in 1944, women who had been
found fit for work at the initial selection were gathered in Section B II c of
Birkenau. Gisella Perl, who worked as a physician there, soon noticed that
all pregnant women were taken away and gassed. In an effort to save at least
the mother, it was her bitter duty to perform abortions. At a later date the
ss gave the order to kill only the newborn babies and let the young mothers
live. From then on, the abortions could be stopped and deliveries did not have
to be secret anymore. ‘‘I was jubilant,’’ writes Perl. There were 292 women
waiting to give birth when Mengele surprisingly revoked this order and had
all pregnant women taken to the gas chamber. In September 1944 abortions
Those Born in Auschwitz n 235
were permitted again and the killing of newborn babies was stopped. Even so,
many of them died because their mothers were not able to feed them.
Immediately after the liberation, Dr. Otto Wolken testified that in the fall
of 1944 a room was equipped for abortions in Block 2 of the Birkenau men’s
infirmary and that three inmate physicians had to perform this surgery.
n For a time family camps were established in two sections of Birkenau; the
Gypsy camp was in operation for a year and a half, and the Theresienstadt
family camp for ten months. Families stayed together, and women were able
to give birth. The first child was born in the Gypsy camp on March 11, 1943,
when the family camp had been in operation for less than two weeks. From
that day on, births were regularly registered. The physician Lucie Adelsberger
has given the following description of the children, both newborns and those
who were brought into the camp:
The children’s block in the Gypsy camp did not really differ much from
the blocks of the grown-ups, but the plight of these poor little things was
even more heartrending. Like the adults, the children were all skin and
bones, without muscles and body fat; their thin, parchmentlike skin was
chafed everywhere from being stretched over the hard bones of the skele-
ton and produced inflammation and ulcerous wounds. Scabies covered the
malnourished bodies from top to bottom and drained them of the last bit
of energy. Their mouths were corroded by noma ulcers that gnawed at the
skin, hollowed the jaws, and riddled the cheeks like a cancer. In many chil-
dren hunger filled the disintegrating organism with water, and they be-
came swollen, shapeless lumps that could not move. Weeks of diarrhea
dissolved their unresisting bodies until the constant drainage of substance
left nothing.
Many of those who had been unaccustomed to eating for such a long
time no longer asked for food, but they all wanted something to drink;
even those whose bodies had already accumulated an excessive amount of
liquid kept begging for water. Thirst, unquenchable thirst, was one of the
great torments of Birkenau. Water was forbidden because it was polluted;
the three buckets with coffee or tea, a light-colored beverage, were like a
mockery on the thousand parched throats in the block. Hunger destroys;
thirst that is never quenched stupefies. No threat and no plea could keep
the children from drinking. They traded their last bread ration for a cup
of the dangerous water; and when they could hardly walk any more, they
crept from their bunks at night and stealthily crawled on all fours under
the beds to the buckets of dish water and swilled the dirty liquid down.
236 n the prisoners
Hunger and thirst, along with the cold and the pain, kept the children from
getting some rest even at night. Their moans swelled hurricane-like and
resounded in the entire block until exhaustion caused them to abate, only
to start a new crescendo after a brief pause.
The Gypsy Elisabeth Guttenberger has made this concise statement: ‘‘The
first to die were the children. They cried for bread day and night, and soon all
ofthemstarvedtodeath....Thechildren who were born in Auschwitz did
not live long, either.’’
The main concern of the camp administration was to have each newborn
get a tattoo with its inmate numbers so that its death could be properly re-
corded and the camp count was always correct. Since a baby’s forearm, the
place where grown-ups had their numbers tattooed, was too small for such an
identification, the upper thigh was used. Entries were made in the register of
births of the Auschwitz registry office that looked just like regular births. A
physician was listed as the obstetrician. Julia Skodova, who worked in the reg-
istry, remembers clearly how careful those in charge were to avoid any irregu-
larity in the register of births. The camp administration also provided some
visual effects by building a playground in the Gypsy camp. ‘‘Like any proper
playground, it had a merry-go-round with rocking horses and the like as well
as all kinds of gym equipment, such as rings and parallel bars, and a wooden
fence without barbed wire’’ (Lucie Adelsberger).
From the information received by the ss garrison physician, I had learned
that at that time the mortality ratewas greatest in the newlyestablished Gypsy
camp. I wanted to find out the reason for this and thought of a pretext to go
there with a guard. Nurses took me through the hkb and also to the block
that housed the women who were waiting to give birth. This is what I wrote
about it in my Bericht:
Six babies are lying on a pallet of straw; they can’t be more than a few days
old.Whata sight! Scrawny limbs and bloated bellies. Onthe bunk beds next
to them lie the mothers—emaciated and with burning eyes. One of them
softly sings to herself. She is best off, she has lost her mind. They lie there,
wasted away, all skin and bones, many of them naked. They are evidently
no longer aware of their nudity. ‘‘Come along, you shall see everything.’’ A
Polish male nurse whom I know from the main camp escorts me out of the
barracks. A wooden shed has been built as an extension of the back wall: it
is the morgue, which he opens for me. I have already seen many corpses in
the kz, but this makes me recoil. A mountain of dead bodies at least two
meters high. Almost all of them children, babies, adolescents. Rats scurry
back and forth.
Those Born in Auschwitz n 237
At that time I did not see the playground, the camp administration’s show-
piece that was always displayed to visitors.
Through tactically prudent actions, which will be described in the next
chapter, the prisoners in the Theresienstadt family camp were able to secure
preferential treatment for the children. They even managed to obtain butter
and white bread as additional rations for mothers and children. Hanna Hoff-
mann, who was put in charge of distributing this additional food, found out
how egotistical excessive deprivation can make a person: ‘‘One woman envies
another; they are brutish in their greed. I can understand them and obtain
more food for them. One has too little milk, and I must give her more café au
lait—secretly, so the others won’t notice. One inmate is sick and cannot nurse
her child, and the other six mothers refuse to give her some of their milk. ‘Let
it croak; we can’traise it here. Our children mustn’t get less.’ OnlyafterI bring
them more food are they prepared to keep that child alive.’’
n AftertheWarsaw uprising had beenquelledinAugust 1944,anotherchapter
in Janina Kosciuszkowa’s chronicle of children’s fates in Auschwitz was writ-
ten. She describes ‘‘huge transports that suddenly came from Warsaw, elderly
women, newborn babies, children, and adults. Again the children were taken
fromthemothers.Two blocks wereset up, andtheyweretheworst.Three hun-
dred children in a block, ten per bunk—so crammed that it was almost dark.
Unwashed, hungry, badly dressed, worn out from their experiences during the
uprising and the days on the transport, the children fell prey to illnesses.’’
Romualda Ciesielska was appointed block elder in a children’s block in the
women’s camp. She remembers that 800 children arrived fromWarsaw at that
time; 300 were taken to the men’s camp and the others to her block. The
youngest was two years old, and the upper limit was fifteen, but a few older
youths were also admitted to the children’s block.There was a lot of cheating,
and thus a three-year-old Gypsy girl who had been saved by prisoners when
all Gypsies were murdered was illicitly brought to the block. At first mothers
with babies were also transferred there; but later they were taken to another
block, and mothers were barred from entering the children’s block. The chil-
drenwere secretly taught byfemaleteachers.BeginninginSeptember mothers
with one child were taken to Germany to work—and later mothers with sev-
eral children as well. According to Seweryna Szmaglewska, the last children’s
transport left Auschwitz in January 1945. In addition to Polish and Russian
children, there were Jewish and a few Italian children in the camp. ‘‘All these
children had eczema, lymphatic edemas,and scurvy.They were starved, poorly
dressed, often barefoot, and had no facility for washing.’’ Ciesielska recalls
that when Auschwitz was evacuated, there were perhaps fifty or sixty children
in her block.
238 n the prisoners
Some statistics about children in Auschwitz have been preserved. Accord-
ing to a compilation by the Labor Assignment Office, 619 boys ranging in
age from one month to fourteen years were living in Birkenau on August 30,
1944. On January 14, 1945, shortly before the evacuation, 773 male children
and youths were registered. Mira Honel, who stayed in the camp to nurse the
sick children, stated that 270 were liberated in Birkenau. A Russian commis-
sion examined these children and announced the results for 180 of them. Tu-
berculosis was diagnosed in seventy-two and frostbite in thirty-one children;
forty-nine were suffering from utter exhaustion and twenty-eight from other
illnesses. The oldest children were fifteen, and fifty-two were less than eight
years of age.
The children brought something into the camp that could otherwise not
get past the electrified barbed wire: feelings. This is what Maria Zarebinska-
Broniewska has written on the subject:
On the camp road a little girl with long blonde pigtails kept running
around; she was always very nicely dressed and wore an armband with
‘‘Runner’’ on it. That child was a Slovak Jew whose entire family had been
murdered. Some ss woman had taken pity on the charming girl, who did
not look Jewish at all, and saved her from death by burning. Lightheartedly
threading her way between biers, she completed all errands very speedily.
On warm summer days she often changed clothes twice or three times a
day, and people regularly saw her in new dresses. She surely had no idea
where these had come from, that they had been taken off girls her age who
had just been incinerated or removed from their luggage.
Zarebinska-Broniewska says nothing about the further fate of this girl, but
she does know what happened to another child who also enjoyed preferential
treatment. ‘‘For a time a lovely three-year-old Gypsy boy who seemed to be
made of chocolate could be seen near the guard by the gate, saluting when-
ever a German walked through it. He was the darling of the ss women, who
were often seen holding the boy and his constant companion, a teddy bear.
However, the career of this cute little Gypsy boy came to an end after a few
weeks. He died.’’
A female nurse who took care of a six-year-old Yugoslav boy named Olek
in the children’s block has described her feelings when the boy put his arms
around her neck and gave her a kiss. ‘‘For a year I had forgotten what tender-
ness is.’’
Those Born in Auschwitz n 239
resistance
nnn
The system developed by the ss was intended to make not only resistance but
also the very idea of it impossible. Again and again an inmate was shown in
drastic fashion how impotent he was and how omnipotent even the lowest-
ranking ss man was. Any thought of rebelling against such demonstrative
omnipotence was supposed to seem absurd. Finally, the ss saw to it that no
inmate who thought of resistance could hope that his deed would become
known to posterity if he had to pay for it with his life. It would sink without
a trace in the general chaos of destruction, and no one would ever bear wit-
ness to it. Heroes, however, are most likely to arise if they can hope that their
actions will outlive them.
Nevertheless, acts of resistance against the authorities of the camp have
been reported.
Charlotte Delbo has written about a Frenchwoman named Maria Alonso
who struck back when she was beaten by a capo. She was beaten half to death
and soon thereafter died of double pneumonia.
Ana Novac reports that Frenchwomen gave their Slovak block elder, who
had threatened to send them to the gas, such a thrashing that she had to be
laid up in her room.
Albert Menasche has told the story of Albert Benaviste, a Jew from Saloniki
who had to work at the ramp. He called out in Greek to new arrivals who had
been deported from his homeland: ‘‘You young mothers, give your children to
an older woman near you. Elderly women and children are under the protec-
tion of the Red Cross.’’ He had found out that a quasi-official announcement
in a language the ss did not understand was less risky and much more effec-
tive than whispered warnings that might be misunderstood. If mothers took
his advice, they could save their lives, for old women and children as well as
women with children were destined to die in the gas chambers.
The Pole Teddy Pietrzykowski carried on a struggle against the enemy in
his own way. He was a cleaner in the staff building where ss men with minor
illnesses were treated.When one of these men was about to be released,Teddy
had to get his clothes ready. From his friend Staszek Baranski he obtained lice
infected with typhus that were kept in a bottle. This is what Teddy told me
many years later: ‘‘I used this opportunity to put lice from the bottle under the
coat collar of some ss men. I remember that four of them came down with
typhus and died.’’
The best-known act of resistance was that of Maximilian Rajmund Kolbe,
who deprived the camp administration of the power to make arbitrary deci-
sions about life and death.
Kolbe, a Catholic clergyman, arrived in Auschwitz on May 29, 1941. When
an inmate made a successful escape in July of that year, the administration
ordered the reprisal that was usual at the time. The inmates of the escapee’s
block had to remain standing after the evening roll call. Karl Fritzsch, the ss
camp leader, picked out fifteen men, and everyone knew that they would be
locked up in a dark cell in the bunker where they would have to remain without
food and water until the escapee was caught or they died. When Fritzsch di-
rected a young Pole named Franz Gajowniczek to the bunker, he moaned: ‘‘My
poor wife and children! What’s going to happen to my family?’’ Another Pole,
Dr. Franz Wiodarski, who had also lined up, has described what followed:
After the fifteen prisoners had been selected, Maximilian Kolbe broke
ranks, took his cap off, and stood at attention before the ss camp leader,
who turned to him in surprise: ‘‘What does this Polish swine want?’’ Kolbe
pointed at Gajowniczek, who was destined for death, and replied: ‘‘I am a
Catholic priest from Poland. He has a wife and children, and therefore I
want to take his place.’’ The ss camp leaderwas so astonished that he could
not speak. After a moment he gave a hand signal and spoke only one word:
‘‘Weg!’’ (Away!). This is how Kolbe took the place of the doomed man, and
Gajowniczek was ordered to rejoin the lineup.
Kolbe and his companions in misfortune had to spend almost three weeks
in an unlit cell. On August 14 a lethal injection ended the suffering of the man
whose bearing elicited the respect of the supervising ss men to the very end.
Gajowniczek was able to survive the camp.
Teddy Pietrzykowski remembers Kolbe taking a walk with him and other
Poles on Birkenallee, a road in the back part of the camp, after work and tell-
ing them about his missionary work in Japan. One time Teddy beat an inmate
who had stolen bread from Kolbe. When Kolbe saw this, he told Teddy that
he would not be allowed to come to him if he beat a fellow inmate.
Kolbe’s deed was not the first of its kind. When the camp commandant
ordered the first reprisal after an escape on April 23, 1941, and had ten com-
rades from the escapee’s block locked in the bunker so they would starve
there, Marian Batko, a forty-year-old secondary school teacherof physicsfrom
Chorzow, volunteered for this group. He died after four days in the dark cell.
There is almost nothing about Batko’s sacrifice in the literature.
n Resistance in an extermination camp meant the protection of life. I have al-
ready shown how hard and often hopeless that was and how easily an inmate
Resistance n 241
could become discouraged. Lucie Adelsberger has drawn attention to a factor
that nevertheless induced many to keep trying: ‘‘Having to watch helplessly
how another person is tortured and suffers without being able to do anything
about it is one of the very worst things in the world.’’ I agree with her. Never
did I have such strong feelings of revenge as at such moments.
Added to this is the fact that anyone who was in a better situation as a func-
tionary was drawn into the machinery of extermination in some way. Dormi-
tory orderlies and block elders, capos and foremen, clerks and nurses—all of
these had to serve the camp administration directly or indirectly in its cam-
paigns of murder. Carl Laszlo has pointed out that the realization of either
being among the moribund (if an inmate lost his position and was thrust back
into the gray host of the nameless) or among the involuntary murderers was
barely endurable. Only if a prisoner sought to use any opportunity to work
against the machinery of killing, at least in a small way, could he have a bear-
able awareness of being lifted out of the mass of those who were constantly
and directly threatened by death.
For an individual this was not as easy as it may seem in retrospect. One ex-
ample may illustrate this. The most primitive form of help was to give some
food to hungry inmates. Those of us who were clerks, cleaners, or assistants
in the pharmacyor the dental clinic, comprising the ss Infirmary Commando,
were among the more fortunate. Members of our detail had to get the food
fromthesskitchen forssmen whowere laid up in the ssinfirmary withminor
illnesses. By means of friendshipwith the inmates who worked in the kitchen,
by bartering with generally desired medications that were ‘‘organized’’ in the
ss pharmacy, and by bribing ss guards, we received more food than the pa-
tients needed.Whatever was left over was taken to the basement, where every
member of our detail could eat it. The ss tolerated this sort of thing, for it
was interested in good work by inmates on details that served them directly
and knew that in the long run such work could not be exacted from under-
nourished inmates. Besides, the ss also profited from such activities. If the
top sergeant in the ss infirmary needed anything, he asked our capo. Since we
were interested in keeping him in a good mood, we did our best to fulfill his
wishes.
Thus we did not go hungry. However, even with the best of intentions, we
could share this nourishing ss food with others in onlya very limited way.This
was simplest in the case of inmates who were able to come to the ss infirmary
under some pretext, but as a rule only the better-fed prisoners had freedom
of movement. Anyone who suffered from chronic starvation had no chance to
leave his workplace.
It was very dangerous to smuggle food into the camp. When the labor de-
tails marched back to the camp, spot checks were made; and if someone was
242 n the prisoners
caught smuggling, he was subject to harsh punishment and the loss of his
detail. Of course, smuggling went on anyway, primarily the smuggling of the
coveted medications from the ss pharmacy that were easier to conceal on
one’sbody than food.Without any risk we could only share the camp food that
we received on our block in the evening. Karl Lill and I gave our rations to two
young Frenchmen. It seemed most practical always to help the same inmates,
for only regular additional food could keep someone from descending to the
levelofaMuselmann. We chose French inmates because this national group
had hardly any acquaintances who had some source somewhere. Our choice
of young people was based on our camp experience that a young inmate had
a better chance of weathering the dangers of camp life than an older one. In
point of fact, those two Frenchmen did survive Auschwitz.
Thesameexample also illustrates the role happenstance sometimesplayed.
When I was sent to the bunker in August 1943, the Frenchmen were in the
quarantine section that had been established on the floors of the isolated
bunker block, for at that time all French inmates were scheduled to be trans-
ferred to other camps. The inmates in the quarantine section were allowed to
take a brief daily walk in the walled-off courtyard of the block to which the
windows of our cells opened as cellar shafts. The young Frenchman whom I
had helped with my camp food found out that I was in the bunker and located
my window. Through the bars he slipped me food and newspapers and also
transmitted letters to my friends in the camp. If he had been caught doing
this, he would have been a candidate for death.
n Anyone who had the desire and the chance to offer resistance looked for
like-mindedpeople because therewere too fewopportunities for someone left
to his own resources.
One group gained respect for its moral unity and purity: Jehovah’s Wit-
nesses. In Auschwitz there were hardly more than two dozen males, and they
did not particularly stand out. There were a somewhat greater number of fe-
male Jehovah’sWitnesses (areport datedAugust 1944 mentions 122), and they
played an important role. Exploiting the principle of this religious community
not to flee or appropriate the propertyof otherseven in exceptional situations,
the ss employed female Jehovah’s Witnesses as domestic help in the homes
of leaders. Each woman was given a photo id that entitled her to move about
freely outside the camp area by day. All the female Jehovah’s Witnesses that I
met were proper, helpful, and friendly; they clearly rejected Nazism and did
not let themselves be corrupted by their privileged position.
Maximilian Grabner, the head of the Political Department, testified that
these Jehovah’s Witnesses used the personal contact with ss leaders that their
employment in their homes had given them to identify particular cases of
Resistance n 243