Langbein Hermann. People in Auschwitz
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the same time the camp elder of the inmate infirmary had to appear and
give him a report about what happened in the hkb.The inmate pharmacist
had to bring him medicines, which he took along. However, he did all this
only when the camp physician was not present.
When he was being interrogated by an examining magistrate, Klehr denied
ever having beaten prisoners and gave this rationale for it: ‘‘I was so highly
respected that as a rule I did not even need to give any beatings.’’
Klehr was ambitious enough to try to play physician. Jan Weiß has de-
scribed this as follows: ‘‘One time I had to carry two corpses out of Block
20 on a stretcher. On the steps the bodies fell off, and at that very moment
a female ss warden walked by with two inmates. She thought that we had
done this deliberately, slapped our faces, and took down our numbers. This
is why Klehr assigned me to the experiments.’’ Weiß was referring to Klehr’s
attempts to drain fluid from the spinal cord by means of a long hypodermic
needle—that is, to perform spinal taps. He selected as the victims of these
experiments mostly those who were destined to die, and they had to endure
this procedure before he killed them with an injection of phenol. It is rumored
that if an inmate cried out when Klehr did not apply the needle between the
dorsal vertebrae expertly, causing great pain, he beat this victim before killing
him.
Klehr also loved practical jokes. He liked to sit on one half of the desk at
which the clerk Paczula had to work. More than once he lifted one of his but-
tocks, emitted a pleasurable loud fart, and ordered Paczula to ‘‘inhale deeply.’’
The seventeen-year-old Bartosz Oziemkowski was gatekeeper in Block 21,
where Klehr regularly came and went. He testified that
it was the rule that Klehr manhandled me whenever he passed me. His
blows were not always painful. Often he hit mein the facewith his gloves or
ordered me to stand in a corner.Then I got a blow in the pit of my stomach;
and when I writhed with pain, he slapped my face. Once he made a typical
ss joke. He gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder and asked me, ‘‘Are you
afraid of me?’’ He was smiling, and so I said, ‘‘No.’’ Then he ordered me to
go to the room and drop my pants. I had to bend over a stool, and he took
a broom and beat me, all the while smiling. He beat me until I screamed,
whereuponhestopped. Finally hesaid, ‘‘You see, that comes from not being
afraid of me.’’
Once Klehr was jailed because, as he told his judges in Frankfurt, he had
given his superior a piece of his mind while intoxicated. Klehr gave the fol-
lowing reason for his little rebellion. ‘‘I complained that the ss leaders had in-
mates make new uniforms for them, even though this was strictly prohibited.
394 n the jailers
We noncommissioned officers would have liked to have had new uniforms,
too.’’ Evidently this was what depressed him most. Later he found ways of
matching the actions of his superiors.
Even this man’s inhumanity was not clear-cut, for there was another side
to him. In the latter half of 1942, the inmate Josef Farber was a medic in the
satellite camp Gleiwitz. Klehr was there at the same time, and his family lived
nearby. ‘‘One time his wife and two children visited him in Gleiwitz,’’ wrote
Farber. ‘‘This wife was a nice, decent woman. I overheard a conversation in
which she said: ‘I’ve heard that you people are gassing women and children
here. I hope you don’t have anything to do with that.’ Klehr answered: ‘I am
an sdg here. I don’t kill, I heal.’ Afterward he told me that I should not dare
to blab about it. When the wife talked to me, she always did so out of com-
passion. The children were also nice and really well brought up.’’
Klehr’s wife Frieda, who married him in 1933, was called to Frankfurt as a
witness for the defense. She was supposed to confirm that Klehr was at home
at Christmastime 1942 and therefore could not have conducted an arbitrary
selection at that time, which is what Paczula and other witnesses claimed. She
readily admitted that she knewabout these accusations. Frieda Klehr,whowas
ten years younger than her husband, was a likable woman dressed in black. At
first shewanted tobe excused fromtestifying, but at theurging of herhusband
she changed her mind. To the key question as to whether she could remem-
ber that her husband was home for Christmas in 1942, she replied: ‘‘I am not
100 percent certain.’’ After she had been excused, she shyly bid her husband
farewell with her eyes. It remains an open question how such different people
were able to live together for such a long time, how they influenced each other
so little in all those years.
n The records of the Frankfurt trial illuminate like a flash of lightning the
common attitude regarding the lives of the prisoners.
HermannKleemann,who headedthesatellitecamp Janinagrube,was forty-
five years old when he testified as follows on January 31, 1961: ‘‘I still remem-
ber injuring an inmate’s hand when I wanted to shoot some object out of his
hand. However, this inmate did this on his own. I assume that it was a play-
ing card. I did not hurt this inmate intentionally, of course.’’ Kleemann, who
was trying to present himself in as favorable a light as possible, immediately
added this: ‘‘It could only have been on a bet that I did this. In any case, the
inmate was a German. I believe the bullet went between the inmate’s fingers,
forhe only had a flesh wound.’’ How,onewonders, did this absolute sovereign
of Janinagrube deal with non-German prisoners?
The infamous head of the crematoriums, ss Technical Sergeant Otto Moll,
was the top man in the camp Fürstengrube in its final phase. One day he es-
Subordinates of the ssLeaders n 395
corted several inmates to the camp in Birkenau where they ‘‘organized’’ under
his supervision 600 quilts for his camp. Joseph Hermann, who was part of
that group, reports as follows: ‘‘The theft was successful, and Moll was very
pleased about it and in high spirits. As we were leaving the camp, he saw a
two- or three-year-old girl and said to us that this child was going to be gassed
and we wanted to spare her this fate. He lifted the child up by her hair, shot
her in the neck, and threw her in front of a woman’s feet.’’
As for the female wardens, one is tempted to say that they were even more
demoralized than the male guards. Their health records, which we were able
to examine, indicate that there was hardlyany warden who was not treated for
a venereal disease during her service in Auschwitz.
The head of the female wardens was ss women’s camp leader Maria Man-
del, who was born in 1912 in Upper Austria. On the basis of the ‘‘credits’’ that
she earned in Ravensbrück, she was appointed to her top position. Her ap-
pearancewas largely in keepingwith the picture thatNazi propaganda painted
of a blonde German woman; it was marred only by a brutal line around her
mouth. Mandel ordered beatings and did some flogging herself. Once I heard
hercomplain to Dr.Kitt, at that time the camp physicianin thewomen’scamp,
that there had been no selections in her camp for a long time. She said that
because of its overpopulation she could hardly keep order, and she urged him
to reduce it by means of a selection.
Mandel had her ‘‘weak’’ sides, too. She loved music and therefore spon-
sored the orchestra in thewomen’s camp and its conductor,theviolin virtuoso
Alma Rosé.When Rosé fell ill, Mandel arranged for her to be nursed in a single
room even though she was Jewish. Once she assured her protégée Rosé that
she would surely be the last to be sent to the gas chamber.
Wladimir Bilan, an ss sergeant who worked in the women’s camp, has de-
scribed Mandel as highly intelligent. In his opinion Mandel was convinced
that what she did was good for the Reich.
Another ‘‘weakness’’ could be observed in Mandel. She loved children.This
did not deter her from executing all orders to exterminate inmates, including
children, but sometimes she let her feelings be expressed in a gesture. Ella
Lingens once observed that she invited two children to see her in the block
leader’s room. When they came out, they had cookies and chocolate in their
hands. Lingens also heard the all-powerful sscamp leader ask a pregnant Ger-
man prisoner to let her have the baby after the prisoner gave birth because she
was unable to have children. Her request was denied.
n Courts made detailed examination of the background of two men who put
on the ss uniform at a very early age and were posted to Auschwitz. Thus we
are able to become acquainted with them retrospectively.
396 n the jailers
The expert witness, Dr. Helmut Lechler, reported to the Frankfurt judges
on whether Hans Stark could be regarded as having been of age when he com-
mitted the crimes in Auschwitz of which he was accused. ‘‘Defendant Stark
was born in Darmstadt on June 14, 1921,’’ he testified.
His father was the police chief there. He had a typically Prussian education
based on the principle ‘‘Someone who cannot obey can never command.’’
After attending elementary school Stark became a pupil in a Realgymnasium
in Darmstadt, where hewas an average student. Later his achievements de-
clined, and this caused vehement arguments with his father, who deemed
it necessary to instill some real discipline into his son. He wanted to send
him to the Labor Service or the armed services, but neither was possible
because Stark was not much more than sixteen. At that time the father re-
ceivedaleafletofthess Totenkopfverbände (death’s head units). He thought
that this kind of unit was suitable for his son’s education, and on Decem-
ber 1, 1937, he gave his written permission for his son, then aged sixteen
and a half, to join one. Stark was sent to Oranienburg as the youngest re-
cruit of his unit. The ss gave him intensive indoctrination in Nazi ideol-
ogy. Stark spent the first six months of his basic training with this unit
without any leave. As early as January 1938 he was assigned guard duty in
the Oranienburg concentration camp (Lechler probably meant the nearby
Sachsenhausen concentration camp). He was strictly forbidden to say any-
thing about the goings-on in the kz on his first home visit. At home he
seemed depressed, and for this reason his father tried to get his son out of
the ss. From June 1938 to September 1939 Stark received further training
in the ss unit at the Buchenwald concentration camp and later in Dachau.
In August 1940 Stark had a riding accident near Munich and was classified
as fit only for service in a garrison in the homeland. Stark was assigned to
outside guard duty in Dachau and later transferred to Auschwitz.
The report given above was based on information supplied by Stark, but it
was impossible to verify every detail.
Stark’s father continued his efforts to get his son out of service in the ss,
and he was advised to have his son apply to continue his education: that was
the only way. Stark did so, passed his Abitur [the qualifying exam for entering
highereducation] during a leave, and on another leave attended courses at the
law school of the University of Frankfurt. After that he applied for frontline
duty. In Auschwitz Stark was soon entrusted with the leadership of the ad-
missions detail of the Political Department. Several Polish inmates who spoke
German and as students were qualified for office work were his subordinates
there.
Stark participated in the shootings that members of the Political Depart-
Subordinates of the ssLeaders n 397
ment had to attend regularly. Kazimierz Smolen, one of the students, gave
the following account: ‘‘When Stark returned from such a duty, he was always
nervous,washedhis hands, took off his coat, and orderedhis Kalfaktor (handy-
man)to shinehis boots.Stark was not a heavysmoker, but at such times hedid
smoke.’’ The Kalfaktor was Erwin Bartel, a Pole two years younger than Stark.
This is how he described the behavior of his boss to the Frankfurt judges:
‘‘When he returned from shootings, he said, ‘Bartel, a bowl and water—I
would like to wash my innocent hands.’’’ When Stark was expected to return
from a shooting, the inmates in the admissions section tried to catch all of
the flies in the room because at such times Stark was capable of becoming
enraged if he was bothered by a fly.
Bartel reported this revealing episodeto the court: ‘‘I rememberexactly that
one time ss roll call leader Palitzsch told Stark to go to Block 11. On that occa-
sion two or three inmates may have been shot there. When Stark came back,
he said: ‘Now an inmate has been shot who should not have been shot. My
God, what is Grabner going to say about this?’’’
Stark loved testing the inmates working for him while he was preparing
for his Abitur. The Dutchman Johann Beckmann said, ‘‘It was typical of him
that hewanted to show that German schools were better than schools in other
countries. He repeatedly gave us a kind of test and was proud when he knew
something better.’’ Kazimierz Smolen expanded on this when he wrote:
Stark always found a pretext for asking us questions about history, mathe-
matics, physics, or German literature. These questions were directed pri-
marilyat inmateswho hadpassed their Abitur.Posingasaconceited teacher,
he tested their knowledge of the teachings of Thales, the axioms of Euclid,
and the laws of Archimedes. Then he started analyzing works of Schiller,
Goethe, and Eichendorff. Since he was a German, it was only natural that
hehad a superior knowledgeof German literatureand history.That marked
the end of the examination, and Stark began his ironic criticism of the level
of the Polish educational system.
He developed a rather peculiar relationship with his Kalfaktor Bartel. On
the one hand, he wanted to make him ‘‘hard’’ because he evidently regarded
this method as ideal; on the other hand, he sometimes sent good things his
way. On their return from Birkenau one day, where they had done some work,
Stark said to Bartel at the camp gate: ‘‘Look at all the bricks here! At the end
of the war each brick will bear the name of an inmate who has been killed.
Perhaps there won’t be enough bricks then. There are lots of bricks here for
your family, too.’’
When Stark was transferred to a frontline unit in 1943, hevisited Auschwitz
398 n the jailers
on his way to the easternfront. ‘‘Hecameinto his office,’’ writes Smolen about
their meeting, ‘‘but he was no longer the same man. His arrogance and pre-
sumptuousness were completely gone. He feared the ‘Russkies,’ as he called
the Russians. He had some questions for us, but these had nothing to do with
literature or history. It was a matter of getting warm gloves, socks, and soap.
He got these things from some storeroom.’’
In theFrankfurtcourtroom the Polish pedagogue Józef Kret,who had come
into contact with Stark as an inmate, testified as follows: ‘‘He was young and
had an attractive appearance. I could not understand why he was so cruel. A
comrade who worked on his detail once told me: ‘I don’t know what’s the
matter with Stark. He is basically a decent man.’ It seems to be that he came
under the influence of a bad ideology too early. This saying was affixed over
his desk: ‘Compassion is weakness.’’’
The previously mentioned expert, Dr. Lechler, has summed up his findings
in thesewords: ‘‘Defendant Stark is an example of howa young man with aver-
age talents and an entirely normal, inconspicuous disposition readily submits
to what may be called a reversal of conscience. He is an example of a person’s
vulnerability to letting himself be perverted and turned into a tool of totalitar-
ian potentates. As a result his moral control is replaced with the mind-set of
a Führer. The final consequence is the development of functionaries without
a conscience.’’
Stark’s father committed suicide after the end of the war, reportedly be-
cause he could no longer bear the guilt he had incurred by sending his son
to the ss. Stark himself received a prison term of ten years, the maximum
sentence that could be imposed under the criminal law governing minors.
n The caseof thewardenIrmaGreseconstitutes a parallel case.Shewasbarely
ten years of agewhen Hitler became chancellor, and Nazi propaganda reached
even the village school in Mecklenburg that Grese attended. As a child she
never participated in brawls but preferred to run away. Her father, a conser-
vative farmer, prohibited his daughters from joining the Nazi organization.
After leaving elementary school at the age of fourteen, Irma Grese did farm
work for a year; then she left her parental home and studied nursing. She was
sent to a sanatorium for Nazi vips at Hohenlychen, where she was indoctri-
nated and joined the ss at the age of eighteen. This caused such vehement
quarrels with her father during a leave that she never went home again.
She was trained as a warden in the Ravensbrück camp and transferred to
Auschwitz when she was a little over nineteen. Gisella Perl has provided this
description of her: ‘‘One of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Her
face had an angelic clarity, and her blue eyes were the liveliest and most inno-
Subordinates of the ssLeaders n 399
cent eyes imaginable.’’ Perl adds to this by stating that Grese was the cruelest
warden she encountered. Olga Lengyel also writes that it defied belief that
such a pretty girl could be so cruel. When she walked through the camp with
a whip in her hand, she was surrounded by a cloud of choice perfume.
A woman who had once run a respected salon in Budapest had to be Grese’s
seamstress. She was always fully occupied, and Grese ‘‘organized’’ the costli-
est fabrics. It was Grese’s ambition to become a film star, and she often posed
in front of a mirror for a long time. She also beat women on the breast with
her whip and made selections without displaying any emotion. In that way she
rapidly advanced and became ss roll call leader and eventually ss camp leader
in Birkenau, where the able-bodied women who were waiting for a transport
to a labor camp were taken in the summer of 1944. Once Gisella Perl, a physi-
cian, had to perform an abortion on Grese, who threatened to kill her if she
talked about it but promised to pay her with a coat (which Perl never received).
Grese made amorous advances toward Iris Langer. When the latter tried to
fend off the warden by pointing to her Star of David, Grese said that Iris was
a Jew who was different from the other Jews.
I have heard something good about Grese from only one woman. On one
occasion Ruth Kersting was caught conversing with a male inmate. Grese lit
into her: ‘‘Don’t you know that this is forbidden?’’ When Kersting replied that
she did know, Grese let her go.
After the evacuation of Auschwitz, Grese was transferred to the kzBergen-
Belsen along with other female wardens. She was called to account in the first
kz trial before a British military court in Lüneburg. Journalists who observed
this sensational trial described the beauty of the very young Grese, who at-
tracted attention with her blonde hair and blue eyes. Her behavior was also
striking.When a codefendant tried to wiggle out with dumb excuses, she had
to cover her face with her hand because she was unable to stifle her laughter.
She herself admitted that she had always carried a whip and used it for beat-
ings even after the commandant had forbidden the use of whips. When she
was asked whether she had ordered others to flog inmates, she answered only,
‘‘Yes,’’ and when asked if she was authorized to give such orders, all she said
was ‘‘No.’’
Because of her unreserved confession,other statements by herare credible.
Once she mentioned that Himmler personally gave a female warden twenty-
five blows on her buttocks becauseshehad helpedinmates.Theother wardens
were forced towatch the administration of this punishment, and Höß ordered
Grese to deal the last two blows. In this way, which Eicke had taught him, he
wanted to make the warden, who was less than twenty at the time, ‘‘hard.’’
Grese said this about the difficulties she encountered as the ss camp leader
400 n the jailers
in the c-camp: ‘‘When the hunger was great, the distribution of food was dif-
ficult. At everycorner twenty to thirty women were waiting to attack the trans-
port (of the food pails from the kitchen to the barracks).’’ The only expedient
she could think of was to use her whip to restore order.
Grese was sentenced to death. She is said to have sung in her cell on the
eve of her execution.
Subordinates of the ssLeaders n 401
sexuality
nnn
Since there were sexual relations between prisoners and guards, this chapter
about sexuality in Auschwitz does not appear in the part of the book that deals
only with the inmates and their problems, for it presupposes some knowledge
of the problems faced by ss members. The second part of this chapter will
deal with people who have already been introduced in earlier chapters.
Did the prisoners have sexual problems? ‘‘My estimate surely is not too
high,’’ writes Benedikt Kautsky, ‘‘when I say that 90 percent of the inmates
did not have a sexual problem.’’ This estimate is valid for Auschwitz as well,
even though men’s and women’s camps existed next to one another there.
Chronic undernourishment was not the only reason for this. Elie A. Cohen
observed that even normally nourished new arrivals immediately lost any
sexual urge, and he attributes this to the shock caused by contact with the
mass murders. Jews experienced this shock most strongly. Primo Levi con-
firms that sexual abstinence did not cause them any suffering.
Désiré Haffner observed in Birkenau that even after years of imprisonment
inmates had neither erections nor nocturnal emissions. To be sure, he ex-
cepts Green vips, among whom the sex drive did play a role. Haffner also
learned that women no longer had their periods and that those who were
having their period when they arrived in Auschwitz abruptly stopped bleed-
ing and did not bleed in the camp. The physician Janina Kowalczykowa con-
firms the stoppage of menstruation. She agrees that in addition to malnutri-
tion there was a psychic component, namely constant fear. Even women who
received above-average nourishment lost their period. Professor Carl Clau-
berg confirmed this: as soon as they arrived at the camp, ‘‘almost 100 percent
promptly lost their menstruation.’’ The Russian commission that examined
the inmates remaining in the camp after the liberation came to the conclu-
sion that 97 percent of the women examined had no period during their im-
prisonment. When female corpses were autopsied after the liberation, it was
observed that their genitals were reduced in size. It should be borne in mind,
however, that only sick people and those unable to march had been left be-
hind.
Along with the reproductive instinct, the sense of shame was eliminated;
the camp administration saw to that. Again and again inmates had to line up
without clothes, whether they were headed for the bath, the disinfection, or
a selection. ‘‘Thousands of naked people next to one another—this is noth-
ing human but a herd. Then any sensitivity is as ludicrous as it is futile.’’ This
statement by Ana Novac has general validity.
Zofia Posmysz has described the washing facilities in the penal company:
‘‘One liter of water in the bowl used for eating had to suffice for everyone. In-
mates poured water in the hollow of their hands and washed their genitals. A
guard was strolling up and down behind thewire.The sight of the figures with
their legs apart did not bother him any more than his presence bothered us.’’
Everyone had become accustomed to the sight of naked inmates. However,
if men encountered naked women, the sight was very depressing.Grajan Fijal-
kowski has described it in these words: ‘‘A few hundred women were wait-
ing their turn to take a bath. A compressed heap of naked hairless skeletons
looked at us with dim, completely expressionless eyes, and only dry flaps of
skin hanging from their chests indicated that these had once been women full
of life.’’
An encounter with dressed female Muselmänner stirred men more than the
accustomed sight of run-down members of their own sex. Józef Kret writes:
‘‘A procession of female inmates came from the women’s camp. A few hun-
dred women with shaved heads passed us, wearing, as we did, the uniforms
of Soviet prisoners. The lack of water for washing, underwear, and even the
most primitive facilities had caused their indescribable condition.These were
no longer human beings but only some apathetic humanoid automata, masks
without life and expression. When we passed their column, we got a whiff of
a stench that took our breath away.’’
I still have before my eyes the image of a column of women who were
being taken to the main camp—to be disinfected, I believe. Since we were not
allowed to approach the women, we tossed them some bread, but we soon
stopped because they pounced on it, hit one another, and were then beaten by
the guards. Instead of helping, we had only worsened their situation. Gizela
Strebingerremembers a similar scene.Whena group of women threwbread to
half-starved men, they rushed to it like hyenas, whereupon the guards sicced
their dogs on the wranglers, which made the women reproach themselves for
their well-intended deed.
Thoughts of sex were precluded in human beings in that condition. They
played a role only in the thin stratum of well-nourished prisoners who did not
have to fear the machinery of destruction directly. These were primarily in-
mates with functions, particularly Germans—not only because German pris-
oners hardly needed to be afraid of the gas chamber but also because most
of them got to see women again for the first time after years of imprison-
ment. In this regard there was no difference between criminals and politi-
Sexuality n 403