Langbein Hermann. People in Auschwitz
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always found suitable people, ss men or inmates. He also knew how to play
therole of caring commandant who always had only thewelfareof those under
his ‘protection’ in mind.Yet a handful of ss men subjugated tens of thousands
under his direction.’’
Schwarzhuber is to blame for the fact that even when the Greens had al-
ready been replaced by Reds in the main camp, Danisch as camp elder and
other criminals as block elders were able to continue their nefarious rule in
the Birkenau men’s camp. As long as Schwarzhuber used such types as tools,
he was able to practice personal restraint. To be sure, Baretzki also described
for the Frankfurt court an episode in which Schwarzhuber played a different
role. In his ponderousspeakingstyle,this defendant gasped out the following:
‘‘There was the Theresienstadt family camp, and it was common knowledge
that this camp was to be gassed. There were children, too; they established a
children’s theater, and we had already gotten used to these children.When the
camp was supposed to be gassed, we (evidently, several block leaders) went to
see the ss camp leader and said, ‘But not the children, too?’ It was a group of
sixty-eight or seventy children. ss camp leader Schwarzhuber saved the boys
by putting them in the men’s camp.’’ One of those spared was Otto Dov Kulka.
He remembers that in those days there was a spirited discussion among the
ss camp leaders, other ss men, and inmates who taught the inhabitants of
the children’s block before he and the others received the life-saving order to
move to the other camp.
Hofmann,who had been a friend of his colleague Schwarzhuber since their
service in Dachau, told me that Schwarzhuber was the only person who told
Höß straight to his face that he had not joined the ss to kill Jews. When I
asked Hofmann whether Schwarzhuber was drunk when he said that, he de-
nied it.While Höß does not mention this incident, he does give the following
report in connection with the inmates of the Gypsy camp: ‘‘It was not easy to
get them into the chambers. I did not see it myself, but Schwarzhuber told me
that no extermination of the Jews had been so difficult, and he had a particu-
lar hard time of it because he knew almost all of those inmates well and had
a good relationship with them.’’
Like all the others, Schwarzhuber freely helped himself to property when-
ever he had a chance. Viennese-born Franz Kejmar, one of the few Birkenau
capos with a red triangle and a good reputation, knew on the basis of his
ample camp experience how to ‘‘buy’’ an ss leader. One day he reported to
Schwarzhuber that he had found gold and jewelry in Canada. As a matter of
course, he imparted this information in such a way that no one was able to
overhear it, and he showed the ss camp leader valuables that he had ‘‘orga-
nized’’ for that purpose. Schwarzhuber understood immediately and told the
324 n the jailers
capo: ‘‘Fine, you are all right. Don’t talk with anyone about it.’’ And he added:
‘‘Any time you need schnapps, come and see me.’’
On one occasion Kejmar observed Schwarzhuber while inmates were once
again being led to the crematorium. As so often, he was drunk and weeping.
Alex Rosenstock worked in the inmates’ dental clinic, which was located in
a section of the camp that was under Schwarzhuber’s jurisdiction. Like many
others, Schwarzhuber preferred not to be treated by ss dentists but by this
inmate. One day Rosenstock learned that his brother, an inmate of the main
camp, had been chosen for gassing at a selection. Since the dental treatment
had created a certain personal contact between them, Rosenstock in his des-
peration ventured to ask the ss camp leader to save his brother. Schwarzhuber
took his number and actually managed to have him pulled out of the group of
selectees, even though he had no jurisdiction over the main camp.
Dawid Szmulewski recollects that Schwarzhuber regularly visited the block
elderof theSonderkommando, a Jew whose first namewas Georges. Schwarz-
huber brought him schnapps and in return received gold and jewelry that had
been ‘‘organized’’ by members of the Sonderkommando. ss roll call leader
Wilhelm Polotschek, whose home was nearby, followed the same practice.
Szmulewski presumes that Polotschek illegally sold the jewelry in his home-
town for the benefit of his boss and for his own pocket.
n As a block elder, Emil Bednarek observed folk dances performed at the
camp fence by Russian prisoners of war at Schwarzhuber’s behest while his
family watched outside the wire fence. ‘‘He always meant well in his dealings
with the Russians,’’ says Bednarek at the end of his account.
Like many others, Schwarzhuber liked music, and therefore the camp or-
chestra, which he sponsored, played a special role at his birthday celebration.
Simon Laks and René Coudy have reported that on that day, when the ss camp
leader’s automobile arrived, the band stopped the march that it customarily
played as the inmates’ columns marched off to work. A fanfare composed for
this occasion resounded, and the ss camp leader snapped to attention. When
the trumpets were silent and the orchestra began to play its festive program,
Schwarzhuber’s wife and two children got out of the car. The wife, who radi-
ated freshness, good health, and beauty, lovingly took the arm of her hus-
band, and the two blond children completed the idyllic picture. Pointing at
the camp, Schwarzhuber spoke to his family, and finally ordered his favorite
song, ‘‘Heimat, deine Sterne’’ (Homeland, your stars), to be played.
Laks and Coudy have described another episode. One evening, when the
details had marched back to the camp and the orchestra had completed the
last march, Schwarzhubercame tottering along,walking all over the place and
ssLeaders n 325
stumbling over invisible obstacles—in short, he was stinking drunk. With the
impatience of a spoiled child he motioned to some low-ranking ss officers
and privates who had followed him at a respectful distance to go and handle
the evening roll call. He walked up to the band, took a baton, and with a broad
smile ordered it to play his favorite song. He conducted as well as a drunken
man could.
Laks and Coudy report:
We played as usual and reached the end of the piece without any incident.
But we certainly were astonished when Schwarzhuber asked us out of the
blue whether we could play the ‘‘Internationale’’ for him. Everyone got
frightened, and nobody knew how to react to this question. Lucien was the
first to recover his balance, sat up straight, and said: ‘‘Herr Lagerführer,
we don’t have the music.’’ ‘‘And why don’t you have it yet?’’ asked Schwarz-
huber with the obstinacy of a lush. Then he added calmly, ‘‘It’s okay, you’ll
get it soon,’’ and went into the camp. After the roll call, he made a speech
in which he urged the inmates not to believe false rumors or let bombard-
ments and the roar of cannons demoralize them. He said that victory was
assured and that the inmates were perfectly safe in the camp.
In the Frankfurt courtroom Baretzki described a scene that no one could
have imagined.Whenhewasaskedwhetherchildren of ssmen were permitted
inside the camp, he answered in his clipped, harsh speaking style: ‘‘What’s
meant by children of members of ss in the camp? A child is a child, and chil-
dren, that’s many children. There was Schwarzhuber’s boy, he was six years
old, and when hewent to the camp to look for his father, he had a sign around
his neck that said he was the son of ss camp leader Schwarzhuber so they
wouldn’t grab him and send him to the gas chamber. He was only looking for
his father.’’ When I referred to this episode in a conversation with Baretzki in
the prison, he explained why the child wore this sign. Once Schwarzhuber’s
son disappeared, and since he frequently came into the camp, they frantically
looked for him there. ‘‘Because no transport had arrived on that day,’’ said
Baretzki, ‘‘he could not be in the gas chamber.’’ After the roll call the boy came
running along. From that time on, he wore the sign whenever he came into
the camp.
n Franz Hofmann pointed out to his Frankfurt judges that as an ss camp
leader he was more humane than Aumeier and Schwarz. This has been con-
firmed but does not mean much. Hofmann was from Bavaria like the other
men and was trained as a decorator, but he could not find a job in this field;
and when he was not unemployed, he kept afloat as a waiter, hotel porter,
326 n the jailers
and sales clerk. In 1933 he already was a member of the guard unit at Dachau,
where he rose through the ranks. In his own defense Hofmann told the court
how hard it was for an ss camp leader to stand up for inmates: ‘‘One time,
when I was still in Dachau (as ss camp leader), there were some problems
with clothing and food, and I reported these. Himmler himself sent for me
and told me that if I could not manage things, he would send me to a kz for a
year. Another time a firm offered us a thousand pairs of shoes, and I had the
money to buy them. Everything was set, but I could not get the shoes without
a miserable scrap of paper, and Pohl refused to give me this paper.’’ Hofmann
excitedly added: ‘‘Those were the guilty ones who sat at their desks and talked
on the phone! They simply told us to shift for ourselves.’’
I don’t believe that this was one of the usual attempts bya defendant to talk
his way out of a conviction at the expense of people no longer alive. Hofmann
seemed too simple minded, and his account of Pohl was too characteristic for
that.
Some Poles who were interned in Auschwitz from the beginning and hence
had a better basis for comparisons than others have called Franz Hössler the
best Auschwitz ss camp leader. For a time he worked in the women’s camp.
Before the British military court to which Hössler had to answer after the end
of thewar, he declared that he had improvised a great deal in that camp,which
was in a catastrophic condition even by Auschwitz standards: ‘‘Since this con-
struction was not part of the official plan, as the ss women’s camp leader
I built by taking the material from other construction sites with the help of
capos and other inmate functionaries and smuggling it into my camp.’’ Up
to a point Anna Palarczyk, a former block elder, confirmed this defense when
she told me this: ‘‘Hewas a stove fitter by trade and could not stand it if some-
thing did not work. It was characteristic of him that he made sure the stoves
in the barracks were in order.’’
A transcript of Grabner’stestimony in September 1945 indicates that Höss-
ler ‘‘organized’’ not only for the camp that he was in charge of. ‘‘I remem-
ber,’’ said Grabner, ‘‘that early in 1943 I received a report that said that at
night a motor vehicle under the direction of the ss camp leader (Hössler) was
in the Canada section, where the confiscated and stolen possessions of the
executed Jews were stored. The vehicle was loaded, and the objects were dis-
tributed among the participants.This report bore the notation ‘Confidential.’
Even though I passed this confidential report on to the proper court, I never
heard anything about it.’’ Grabner was at loggerheads with Hössler,as with all
ss leaders who were regarded as ‘‘soft.’’ His attempts to defame his erstwhile
enemies can be demonstrated in other cases as well.
Alica Jakubovic, who was deported from Slovakia, emphasizes that it was
ssLeaders n 327
possible to speak with Hössler, something that was generally impossible with
ss leaders. ‘‘He was not as bad as the others,’’ she writes, though she admits
that he made many promises but often forgot to keep his word. At a selection
in March or April 1944, Hössler said that enough Slovak women had already
been selected, and so they were exempted at that time.
An episode described by Judith Sternberg-Newman corroborates Jakubo-
vic’s characterization. One day a Jewish woman named Frieda became the vic-
tim of a selection even though she did not yet look like a Muselmann.Inher
despair she begged ss camp leader Franz Hössler for her life. He replied that
he could not help her and that it would make no difference to her whether she
died sooner or later. In her mortal fear Frieda continued to implore him, as-
sured him that she was willing towork, and emphasized that her husband had
served at the front inWorld War I. Hössler now asked her where shewas from,
and she replied, ‘‘From Osnabrück.’’ At length he promised that he would
save her. However, when the selected women were loaded on trucks, Frieda
also had to board one; evidently Hössler had forgotten his promise. When
the trucks from the women’s camp drove by the ss camp leader, Frieda cried
as loudly as she could, ‘‘Herr Lagerführer!’’ This attracted Hössler’s attention
and he asked: ‘‘Are you the woman from Osnabrück?’’ When she answered in
the affirmative, Hössler took her out of the vehicle. She never found out what
Hössler associated with Osnabrück.
Eva Landstofova-Neumanova has described a similar incident. At a selec-
tion in the inmate infirmary, two healthy nurses were put on the list of those
to be gassed. Bozena Teichnerova, the block elder, was bold enough to ask
Hössler to help those two women. ‘‘This was an extremely inopportune mo-
ment because Hössler had just applied his boots to the necks of a few women
who were kneeling before him, begging for their lives.’’ Nevertheless, Höss-
ler granted the request of the courageous block elder. This happened in the
middle of 1943.
Krystyna Zywulska reports that Hössler took a liking to a five-year-old Rus-
sian boyand always asked about him when he visited the Russian block.While
other children shyly hid from the ss, Wolodja ran up to Hössler right away,
called him ‘‘Uncle,’’ and asked him how he was doing. This is what attracted
Hössler’s attention; and when Wolodja died, he seemed shaken.
Witnesses at the first Auschwitz trial in Vienna who had been able to ob-
serve Hössler closely—because they had greater freedom of movement as
capos—unanimously testified that Hössler had displayed great zeal in super-
vising the construction of the extermination facilities. It was probably due to
this initiative that he was promoted to the position of ss camp leader with
unusual rapidity. Tadeusz Paczula describes Hössler as a man who changed
completely when he had advanced to the rank of a Führer. ‘‘In the beginning
328 n the jailers
he made the worst impression; nobody was worse than he. But as a Führer he
was quite different; for us inmates he was really the best ss camp leader.’’
Must it be pointed out yet again that former prisoners tend to remember
exceptions well and that to them it often no longer seems worth mentioning
the rule that every ss camp leader ordered and implemented selections?
Like most of his colleagues, Hössler, who was born in Swabia in 1906, be-
longed to the old guard of the concentration camp guards. He and Schwarz-
huber received the same sentence as Aumeier and Schwarz: death. What has
been said about the same sentence for Höß and Liebehenschel applies here
as well.
n ‘‘Everyone who was there,’’ writes Ella Lingens, ‘‘did something good at
some time, and that was the worst thing. If the ss men in Auschwitz had
always committed only evil deeds, I would have told myself that they were
pathological sadists and could not act differently. However, these peoplewere
able to distinguish between good and evil. They decided in favor of good once
and in favor of evil 999 times.’’
One exception from this rule was Maximilian Grabner, the head of the Po-
litical Department, who, except for Höß, was the most vigorous exterminator
of human beings. No report indicates that he decided in favor of good even a
single time. This is what I wrote about him in my notes:
Today I met Grabner, the dreaded head of the Political Department, for the
first time.
Ernst told me his story. He was an Austrian from the Waldviertel, a
former policemen. Under [Chancellor Kurt] Schuschnigg he worked in the
Communist Department. After the Anschluß, he was integrated into the
Gestapo. Since the construction of the Auschwitz camp, he has been head
of the Political Department. The periodic shootings in the bunker are his
work. No one, not even the commandant, is as feared as Grabner.
‘‘Hey you, come down!’’
From below me in the stairwell of the ss infirmary, I hear a voice—soft,
terse, eerie. The person addressed, a member of our detail who has been
standing at the window in the hallway, runs down the stairs. I can hear him
click his heels.
‘‘What were you doing at the window? Come with me.’’
Once again a truck had arrived at the yard of the crematorium, and our
comrade had been watching the unloading of the victims. That inmate did
not return to our detail, and the next day his number arrived at the office.
Pneumonia was given as the cause of death.
The voice I heard was Grabner’s.
ssLeaders n 329
Just a few words spoken by him maycharacterize his mind-set.When Albert
Matz, a German civilian worker, requested additional food for inmates who
were doing forced labor in his plant near Auschwitz, this was Grabner’s re-
sponse: ‘‘Take a stick and kill those bedbugs.’’
His subordinate Pery Broad, who got a taste of Grabner’s hatred of any-
thing intellectual, has given this drastic description of his boss: ‘‘In the office
of thedirectorof Department II of thecommandant’s office, all of the officials
and clerks are assembled. The boss, ss Second Lieutenant Max Grabner, is
conducting a staff meeting. Grabner, a man of average height, prattles pomp-
ously behind his desk. His incoherent sentences and faultyGerman reveal that
despite his silver epaulets this is an utterly uneducated person. Insiders know
that in civilian life he was a cowherd on some alpine pasture.’’
An account composed by Grabner in his own defense at the Cracow prison
shows that Broad was not exaggerating. Here is an excerpt, quoted verbatim:
‘‘So konnte ich doch nicht gegen dieses unheimliche und rücksichtslose Regim, schon war ich
doch schwarz über schwarz beschrieben. Drohung über Drohung mit dem ssund pol. Gericht
wegen Befehlsverweigerung, Militärischen Ungehorsam, Sapotage usw. und wie man die
Leute einfach verschwinden lies, zwang mich Folge zuleisten.’’ (Well, I couldn’t against
this uncannyand ruthless regime,I was already marked black on black.Threat
afterthreat with the ssand political court on account of refusal toobeyorders,
military disobedience, sabotage etc. and how they simply made the people
disappear, forced me to toe the line.)
That Grabner was also feared by the guards is indicated by the testimony of
ss Sergeant Horst Czerwinski. ‘‘Grabner was very arrogant toward us ss men
and constantly yelled at us.’’
It was one of Grabner’s duties as head of the Auschwitz Gestapo to fight
corruption among the guards.The testimony of Feliks Mylyk, a former inmate
who occupied a position of trust on the Political Department Commando,
documents Grabner’s qualifications for this task: ‘‘At Grabner’s request I had
to ‘organize’ various things for him. In his Auschwitz apartment I saw many
suitcases, coats, and other items from ‘Canada.’ The suitcases still bore the
names of their former rightful owners.’’ At Grabner’s trial in a Cracow court-
room, Mylyk testified thatthedefendant had ordered him toputtogethersome
parcels and send them to Vienna, where Grabner’s family lived. These pack-
ages contained items from Canada. The testimony of Grabner’s orderly, ss
Corporal Heinrich Pyschny, sounds relatively harmless: ‘‘One time I had to
shoot foxes so a fur coat could be made for his wife.’’
Pery Broad reports that Grabner had capos of the leather and equipment
factories, the slaughterhouse, the dairy, and the garden center provide him
with commodities of all kinds, including furniture and food. In return, he
wrote favorable reports about these capos.
330 n the jailers
n When a confiscated overweight package that contained dental gold made
it impossible to cover up this corruption any longer, ss judges were sent to
Auschwitz for an investigation, and they discovered the source of all offenses
against property: the extermination of the Jews and Canada. (This has al-
ready been discussed elsewhere.) At first the commission received ‘‘full sup-
portfromall sides,includingHimmler,’’ asDr. Morgen put it, butthis changed
when the investigation was extended beyond cases of corruption. As it was,
no ss judge dared to include the mass destruction of the Jews in the legal pro-
cess; a reference to Hitler’s order sufficed to close the eyes of these jurists
and tie their hands. However, they also encountered Grabner and the execu-
tions at the Black Wall that he supervised. Unlike prisoners who were gassed
on their arrival on rsha transports and reported to the Central Office as sb—
that is, sonderbehandelt (given special treatment), the common euphemism for
killing—the inmates who had been shot were reported to the Central Office
as having died of fictitious illnesses. For this reason the ss judges felt autho-
rized to regard these killings as arbitrary and include them in their investiga-
tion, especially because the great majority of the victims were Poles and thus
‘‘Aryans.’’ Proceedings against Grabner were started.
After the war Kurt Mittelstädt, the former director of the Central Office of
the ss Court, called it a success on Dr. Morgen’s part that the investigation,
which had originally been started on account of corruption, was extended
to crimes against the bodies and lives of prisoners. However, he confirms
that ‘‘certain forces opposed these investigations.’’ Helmut Bartsch remem-
bers that the proceedings were not limited to arbitrary killings: ‘‘ss Second
Lieutenant Grabner, the head of the Political Department at that time, was
also accused of having appropriated the property of inmates, and preliminary
proceedings were started against him for theft.’’
Such proceedings were started against Höß, Schwarz, and Aumeier as well,
but they petered out. Liebehenschel did support the work of the ss judges,
but when ss judge Dr. Gerhard Wiebeck reported that he had found a female
inmate with whom Höß had had an affair, Commandant Baer’s only reaction
was this: ‘‘Through the chimney with her!’’ Wiebeck remembers that Baer said
this ‘‘in a very sharp tone of voice.’’
At a later date Reinecke, the deputy director of the Central Office of the ss
Court, testified in Nuremberg that the criminal proceedings against Höß were
stopped at the preliminary examination stage.
This left, apart from some judgments against low-ranking ss men for cor-
ruption, only the proceedings against Grabner. According to Boger, who was
a witness, his trial began in Weimar on October 13, 1944. Boger believes that
Grabner was supposed to take the blame ‘‘for the bigwigs.’’ ‘‘Höß and Dr.
Mildner disappeared, and Grabner was to be hanged.’’ On another occasion
ssLeaders n 331
Boger said, ‘‘To me Dr. Morgen is a henchman of the top leaders in the wran-
gling among the various departments.’’
Dr. Werner Hansen, the ss judge who presided at the Grabner trial, later
described the course it took:
Grabner was accused of having murdered 2,000 inmates.They were said to
have been shot when the Auschwitz jail was overcrowded. The deaths were
said to have been camouflaged with fictitious medical histories and causes
of death. Grabner testified that he had received special orders for these
2,000 killings from the rsha with instructions to destroy these orders
immediately after they had been carried out. To be sure, Grabner did not
say this until I had pushed him into a corner. We asked the Central Office
whether there had been such orders but received no answer. As a witness,
Höß tried to exonerate Grabner, but he certainly took no responsibility for
what had been done.
Franz Hofmann has described the atmosphere of the trial. He said that be-
fore testifying as a witness inWeimar, he had met withWirths, the ssgarrison
physician,and sscampleaderSchwarz,who had also been calledas witnesses.
Even though both of them were against Grabner and Wirths had seriously in-
criminated him in the preliminaryexamination, theyagreed at that meeting to
exonerate Grabner. Neither Wirths nor Hofmann dared to express to Schwarz
their intention not to minimize Grabner’s guilt. Dr. Wiebeck recalls Boger’s
theatrical proclamation in a courtroom: ‘‘We don’t kill nearlyenough of them!
Everything was done for the Führer and for the Reich!’’
The prosecutor requested that Grabner be sentenced to twelve years in the
penitentiary. The court was adjourned. ss Second Lieutenant Kaiser was sent
to the Central Office of the Gestapo to ascertain whether Grabner had actually
been given the orders he claimed he had received. Heinrich Müller, the head
of the Gestapo, thwarted an examination, and therefore the proceedings were
never completed.
Grabner later described his future fate as follows: ‘‘Afterward (that is, after
the interrupted trial) I went to Berlin again and from there to Kattowitz. An-
other investigation was started. From Kattowitz I went to Breslau, and then
I was supposed to be accompanied to Berlin by an officer and report to the
Reich Criminal Investigation Office, but this never happened because the two
of us went our own ways.’’
‘‘The bigwigs of the wvha were at loggerheads with the rsha.’’ This is
how Boger summed up the proceedings, and he was probably right.
332 n the jailers
physicians in the ss
nnn
The physicians attached to the guard unit in Auschwitz were different from
theotherssleaders.They were academics,whereas the others usually had only
an inadequate education, and they were not conscripted until the beginning
of the war, whereas many others had already been molded in Eicke’s school
for years. Even though this meant that these physicians were less prepared for
the program of extermination than the others, they were assigned a special
role in it. As a rule, they had to decide at selections who had to die in the gas
chambers. It is not clear whether the highest leadership had ordered this in
order to keep up the fiction that such decisions were made on the basis of
a physical examination. Already at the very first Nazi mass murder operation
against mental patients, only physicians in the ‘‘euthanasia’’ institutions were
permitted to turn on the gas.
The task assigned to the physicians in the mechanism of killing completely
ran counter to their professional training, and it created conflicts in many of
them, most severely among those who took their medical profession seriously
and were not true believers in Nazism.
Because of theirkey positions, thessphysicianswerewatchedverycarefully
by the prisoners, for it was extremely important to find out who had moral
conflicts and how thesemight be put to use. Inmatephysicians and clerkswere
in the most favorable position to make such observations because their work
brought them into contact with the ss physicians. Added to this was the fact
that many ss physicians were young and inexperienced, and they attempted
to make their service in a kz count toward their professional advancement.
For this reason many of them sought to have medical discussions with inmate
physicians, and frequently they did not hesitate to learn quite openly from
them. The professional contact led to a personal one, and this was promoted
by the fact that the intellectual level of the other ss leaders was in glaring
contrast to the level of the physicians, who experienced the contempt foredu-
cation and intellect that was widespread among the ss. Thus the intelligence
of the inmate physicians and clerks was capable of tempting them to engage
in conversations that went beyond what was necessary in the line of duty.
Having been a clerk in the inmate infirmary of Dachau, I brought to Ausch-
witz experience in associating with ss physicians. In Dachau I had learned
not to address them as ‘‘Herr Hauptsturmführer’’ or ‘‘Herr Obersturmführer,’’
as regulations would have required, but always as ‘‘Herr Doktor.’’ No physi-