Langbein Hermann. People in Auschwitz

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almost as many Czechs who, like the Russians, could easily communicatewith

Poles and whose homeland was not far away. Although Germans undoubtedly

were best qualiﬁed to break out of the camp, only 4 percent of all escapees

were members of that nation. The obstacles they faced in freedom after their

escape from the camp were greater than those of other groups. Since a lone

German could not count on the support of the population, most of the Ger-

mans who decided to ﬂee took along a comrade of another nationality.

The overwhelming majority of the fugitives were young. However, one of

the escapees was a ﬁfty-three-year-old man who had come on a Jewish trans-

port from France. The youngest fugitives whose age became known were

fourteen- and ﬁfteen-year-old Gypsies. The elderly Jew and the Gypsy boys

were caught and killed.

A little over 25 percent of the escapes were from the main camp, which was

guarded most closely. From Birkenau, which housed many more inmates than

the main camp, there were almost as many escapes as from all of the satellite

camps together, even though the satellite camps oﬀeredthe relatively best op-

portunities for ﬂight. They were not as stringently guarded as the big camps,

and it was easier for inmates working in the arms factories to establish con-

tact with the outside world because there were non-German workers as well.

In Birkenau the proximity of Canada, with its greater opportunities for bribes,

enhanced the opportunities for a ﬂight.

n When inmates had to do forced labor in the arms industry, the resistance

movement undertook a new assignment, sabotage. The cruelty with which

the ss persecuted anyone who attempted sabotage may be illustrated by one

example out of many. In the labor camp Blechhammer in January 1945, an

inmate named Tuschenschneider was tortured and publicly executed. He had

committed thecrime of taking a piece of wire in the chemical factory where he

worked in order to tie his shoes. A German master noticed and reported this.

According to a report by Luzer Markowicz,Tuschenschneider and a Greek Jew

whose number had also been taken down by the master, as well as a young

French capo who was responsible for the labor unit to which both belonged,

were sentenced to death for ‘‘sabotage.’’

Despite this terror the resistance movement did not shrink from the task of

organizing systematic sabotage in armament plants. There is no comprehen-

sive accounting of the occurrences. Thus only isolated results can be given,

and this list cannot claim to approach completeness.

Roger Abada has testiﬁed that in the daw (Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke)

production declined by 50 percent within a few months after systematic sabo-

tage had been organized. According to a report by Thérèse Chassaing, the

successful activities of the women’s detail that was assigned to work in the

264 n the prisoners

munitions factory of Union Werke were indicated by the daily complaints that

grenades manufactured there had failed to explode. Often it was possible to

render machines inoperative because of defects. In the Rheinmetall ag Düs-

seldorf, which operated a factory in Laurahütte, the inmates who worked in

the engineering oﬃce found a way of damaging the mechanisms of the ar-

tillery manufactured there after it had already passed inspection. Thus they

avoided being suspected of having caused these defects.

Sabotage was also carried on in the biggest factory in which inmates of

Auschwitz worked, the BunaWorks of IG Farben. On one occasion, defects in

the power plant aroused suspicion. In the course of an investigation, the bar-

racks that housed the senior capo of the cable-building detail was checked,

and, according to Elie Wiesel, the ss found weapons there.The popular senior

capo, a strikingly tall Dutchman named Jupp Snellen van Vollenhoven, was

locked in the bunker and tortured but then released.

At that time a young Pole named Viktor Lies, who was also popular with

everyone, was hanged. Franz Unikower, who was best informed as an inmate

working in the Political Department in Monowitz, believes that Lies was exe-

cuted because an informer had reported that he was preparing his escape.

When sabotage in arms factories became relevant, the resistance move-

ment endeavored to smuggle cadres onto those details that oﬀered oppor-

tunities for sabotage. There is no doubt that prisoners who had no contact

with the Combat Group Auschwitz also committed sabotage. Finally, it must

be mentioned that production in some factories was also sabotaged in a less

risky way in cooperation with ss men and civilians employed in those plants.

Inmates were glad to fulﬁll the private wishes of these masters and did work

on the side instead of working on production. Such illicit work deprived the

arms industry of much important raw material.

n In the ﬁnal phase of the camp, Combat Group Auschwitz shifted the em-

phasis of its work again. What happened in the liquidation of Majdanek, the

second extermination camp, in July 1944, when Russian troops approached

the camp area, alarmed us. From reports by ‘‘Aryans’’ who were brought to

Auschwitz, we learned that the mass of inmates were murdered at the liquida-

tion, while the ‘‘Aryans’’ who were allowed to live let themselves be led away

without any thought of ﬂeeing, even though such an escape would have been

possible in the initial confusion and prisoners had formed a secret organiza-

tion. This taught us that it was our task to prevent a repetition of this sort of

thing when Russian troops reached Auschwitz. In those days a special mili-

tary leadership was added to the general leadership of the group, and other

Polish resistance groups subordinated themselves to this military leadership.

Its tasks were deﬁned as follows in a letter directed to Cracow:

Resistance n 265

The military camp council is the joint leadership of all military combat

groups. It organizes themilitary work in thecamp, trains thecadres, forms

combat groups, and assigns them tasks. The military camp council unites

leading cadres that rely on military men of various nationalities as well as

those who by virtue of their positions in the camp and through personal

respect are gathering the illegal groups on the details and in some sections

around themselves and in the decisive moment will be ready to sweep the

fellow inmates in their sections along and subordinate them to the military

command.

The cadres were assigned to details from which such important centers as

the power station, the arms depot, the motor pool, and the telephone switch-

board could be reached. Since the correspondence indicated that the partisan

groups operatingin thevicinityof Auschwitz, especiallyin the nearby Beskids,

had several times been greatly weakened by the ss and did not seem properly

prepared for vigorous cooperation in the event of a liquidation of Auschwitz,

we decided to transfer part of the leadership to the outside to ensure a well-

coordinated action at the decisive moment.

This escape was planned for August 1944. Ernst Burger, Zbyszek Raynoch,

and I were to participate. On the eve of the projected ﬂight we were informed

that the partisanswhom wewere scheduled to meet at a prearrangedplace and

whowere going to arm us had been attacked. Our escape had to be postponed.

I could not participate in it, for I was transferred to Neuengamme shortly

after the failed attempt. Originally I was supposed to wear an ss uniform and

escort out Ernst and Zbyszek, who would have retained their inmate’s garb,

as though I were taking them to work, but this was now canceled. In its new

plan the organization again refrained from using the usual escape route, via

the hiding place inside the camp area. The reason for this was that it had

to be assumed that the ss would depart from its routine practice of keeping

the great cordon in place for three nights when the fugitives included Ger-

mans known in the camp. In addition to Burgerand Raynoch, three Poles were

supposed to ﬂee, for the escape was to be aided by two ss men who were to

drive a truck with wooden crates to a place seven kilometers away. The crates

were big enough to hide ﬁve men, and partisans were waiting at the meeting

place. However, one of the ss men who had been recruited for this plan was

a traitor. Instead of being driven to freedom, the ﬁve men were taken to the

bunker on October 27, 1944. As soon as they became aware of the betrayal,

they took the poison that they carried on them as a precaution. Since the ss

wanted to learn what was at the bottom of this extraordinary attempt to es-

cape, it had the stomachs of the prisoners pumped out. In the case of Zbyszek

Raynoch and Czeslaw Duzel, this endeavor was too late, and they died be-

266 n the prisoners

fore they could be tortured. At the meeting place the partisans were attacked,

and Kostek Jagiello, who had escaped from Auschwitz four months earlier,

was killed. Finally, the aforementioned ss man also betrayed Rudi Friemel and

Vickerl Veseley, the two Austrian members of the resistance movement who

had recruited the two members of the ss for the escape on the Motor Pool

Detail.

A letter from the combat group to Cracow reports about their further fate:

Very urgent! According to our very accurate information regarding the ﬁve

men incarcerated in the bunker for attempting to escape, a telegram from

the commandant (Baer) has arrived in Berlin proposing that all ﬁve be con-

demned to death as a deterrent for trying to escape, persuading ss men

to ﬂee, and maintaining contact with the partisans. This information is

strictly conﬁdential. We, on the other hand, regard it as absolutely neces-

sary to disseminate the following news to save the lives of our ﬁve com-

rades. ‘‘In Auschwitz a few political prisoners, Poles and Germans whose

only crime was an attempted escape, face execution. They are the victims

of the provocation of an ss man, the Romanian-German Viktor Roth, who

persuaded them to ﬂee in order to provide the camp authorities with fresh

bloody victims.’’ Add a call for retribution in whatever form you deem best.

These eﬀorts were in vain. The execution was postponed once for a short

time, but on December 30, 1944, a cross beam was put up on posts in the

roll call area to serve for the last time as a gallows. Ernst Burger, who was

still under thirty, was executed together with four comrades, two Poles and

two Austrians.Thus members of the two nations that were prominently repre-

sented in the leadership of the Combat Group Auschwitz stood united under

the gallows shouting battle cries that caused them to be beaten when the

nooses were already around their necks.

Shortly before the evacuation of Auschwitz, there was an execution in the

women’s camp. On January 5, 1945, four young Jewish women were hanged

in front of all the lined-up inmates because the ss had learned from informers

and tortures that they had smuggled the explosives out of the Union arms fac-

tory that had been used in the uprising of the Sonderkommando. The four

were Roza Robota from Ciechanow, age twenty-three, Ella Gartner, Toszka,

and Regina. The family names of the last two can no longer be determined.

n In the last chapter of the history of Auschwitz, the resistance movement

was not able to play a decisive role.

In the fall of 1944 many members of the organization were assigned, in

increasing numbers, to transports that were bound for other camps—even

though the camp administration did not suspect that those involved belonged

Resistance n 267

to the resistance movement, whose leadership was not identiﬁed until the

very end. The isolated rebellion of part of the Sonderkommando meant an

additional weakening. Finally the organization was, as Eugène Garnier put

it, decapitated by the arrests on October 27. Then, too, the oﬃcer whom the

Polish underground organization had sent to the Auschwitz area in order to

keep up the contact with the organization in the camp fell into the hands of

the Gestapo. He was carrying documents that gave the ss an outline of the

illegal organization. A report from the commander of the security police in

Kattowitz, dated December 18, 1944, describes the organization of the Polish

underground movement; it indicates just how seriously the ss took this ille-

gal activity. Here is an excerpt from the section headed ‘‘Inspector’s Oﬃce,

Bielitz’’:

The district commander’s oﬃce in Auschwitz plays a special role in this

command. As some captured material indicates, the concentration camp

in Auschwitz is also part of the ak (Armia Krajowa). The camp is serviced

on behalf of the inspector’s oﬃce by the ‘‘military council of the camp,’’

thewro (Wojskowa Rada Obozu). Contact with the camp is maintained by

a number of persons, particularly the district commanders Danuta and the

pps man Kostka (pps stands for Sozialistischen Partei Polens [Polish So-

cialist Party]). A certain ‘‘Rot’’ (cover name of Cyrankiewicz) was appointed

as the ak commandant of the camp. He concerns himself particularly with

making reports about the kl and transmits these to the area via a cer-

tain ‘‘Urban’’ (cover name of the Polish liaison oﬃcer who was captured by

the ss). The reports about the Auschwitz camp contain information about

the comings and goings of inmates, the structure of the camp, personnel,

evaluation of ss leaders, the organization of the inmates, and plans for the

future. Among the tasks of the wro are preparations for the escape of in-

mates. Sending these on is the responsibility of the Bojowka organization,

which was founded especially for this purpose and has connections with

Cracow via various places of refuge.

Although the resistance organization no longer was at full strength in the

ﬁnal period, its spirit did not disappear, and it manifested itself in a declara-

tion composed in the summer of 1944. Here is an excerpt: ‘‘Only an interna-

tional collaboration based on solidarity and the ﬁght for freedom give us the

right to regard ourselves as comrades in arms struggling against the disaster

that Hitler’s fascism has brought upon the world.’’ In keeping with this idea,

the members of the Combat Group Auschwitz were active after the evacuation

and transfer to other camps in the ﬁnal phase, shortly before the liberation of

those camps.

268 n the prisoners

Theresultsoftheactivitiesoftheresistancemovement in Auschwitz,which

have here been brieﬂy outlined, prove that prisoners found a way out of the

dilemma that the ss wanted to force on them, the dilemma that oﬀered them

the choice of becoming casualties or involuntary murderers. They succeeded

in throwing sand into the machinery of death.

Resistance n 269

The Jailers

the guards

nnn

‘‘I pledge to you, Adolf Hitler, Führer and Chancellor of the Reich, my loyalty

and bravery. I vow to you and the superiors appointed by you obedience unto

death, so help me God.’’ This is the formulaic oath taken by every member of

the ss.

The obedience demanded of every ssman is deﬁned in detail in the Lehrplan

für die weltanschauliche Erziehung in der ssund Polizei, erarbeitet und herausgegeben vom

ss-Hauptamt (Syllabus for the ideological education of the ss and the Police,

composed and edited by the ss Central Oﬃce): ‘‘It is an obedience that is

diﬃcult because it stems from pure voluntarism and demands all the sacri-

ﬁces that a man is able to make relative to personal pride, external honors,

and many other things dear to him. It requires an unconditional commitment

without the slightest hesitation as well as the execution of every order of the

Führer even when an individual believes that he cannot personally accept it.’’

Added to this unconditional obedience is blind loyalty—‘‘a matter of the

heart, never of the mind,’’ as Himmler preached. The words ‘‘MeineEhreist

Treue’’ [My honor is loyalty] were engraved on the belt buckles of the ss men.

Hans Buchheim is one of the scholars who have investigated the factors

that induced so many people wearing ss uniforms to commit deeds that ap-

pear unfathomable under normal circumstances. He makes the following

comment on the obedience demanded of the ss. ‘‘It was not the obedience of

a military man’s fulﬁllment of duty that can be demanded of every citizen, but

rather the obedience of an ideological ﬁghter that was based on a loyalty that,

as Himmler often emphasized, is demonstrated by a man doing more than his

duty.’’

The psychoanalysts Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich have pointed to

other consequences of an unconditional submission to the ‘‘will of the Füh-

rer’’: ‘‘The fascination that emanated from Hitler and his demands of the na-

tion partook not only of sadism but also to a great extent of masochism, a

desire to subjugate oneself that was based on a tendency toward a desecra-

tion of authority much further removed from consciousness. Since the ideal

of obedience was very binding, kicking against the pricks evoked in thought

unbearable guilt anxieties that were compensated for with excessive subservi-

ence.What other peoplewould be prepared to pursue the aims of their leader-

ship, which were slowly revealed as delusional, with such patience and endur-