Commandant of Auschwitz

APPENDIX 1 The final solution of the Jewish question in Auschwitz concentration camp

In the summer of 1941, I cannot remember the exact date, I was suddenly summoned to the Reichsführer SS, directly by his adjutant’s office. Contrary to his usual custom, Himmler received me without his adjutant being present and said in effect:

“The Führer has ordered that the Jewish question be solved once and for all and that we, the SS, are to implement that order.

“The existing extermination centers in the East are not in a position to carry out the large actions which are anticipated. I have therefore earmarked Auschwitz for this purpose, both because of its good position as regards communications and because the area can easily be isolated and camouflaged. At first I thought of calling in a senior SS officer for this job, but I changed my mind in order to avoid difficulties concerning the terms of reference. I have now decided to entrust this task to you. It is difficult and onerous and calls for complete devotion notwithstanding the difficulties that may arise. You will learn further details from Strumbannführer Eichmann of the Reich Security Head Office who will call on you in the immediate future.

“The departments concerned will be notified by me in due course. You will treat this order as absolutely secret, even from your superiors. After your talk with Eichmann you will immediately forward to me the plans of the projected installations.

“The Jews are the sworn enemies of the German people and must be eradicated. Every Jew that we can lay our hands on is to be destroyed now during the war, without exception. If we cannot now obliterate the biological basis of Jewry, the Jews will one day destroy the German people.”

On receiving these grave instructions, I returned forthwith to Auschwitz, without reporting to my superior at Oranienburg.

Shortly afterward Eichmann came to Auschwitz and disclosed to me the plans for the operations as they affected the various countries concerned. I cannot remember the exact order in which they were to take place. First was to come the eastern part of Upper Silesia and the neighboring parts of Polish territory under German rule, then, depending on the situation, simultaneously Jews from Germany and Czechoslovakia, and finally the Jews from the West: France, Belgium, and Holland. He also told me the approximate numbers of transports that might be expected, but I can no longer remember these.

We discussed the ways and means of effecting the extermination. This could only be done by gassing, since it would have been absolutely impossible by shooting to dispose of the large numbers of people that were expected, and it would have placed too heavy a burden on the SS men who had to carry it out, especially because of the women and children among the victims.

Eichmann told me about the method of killing people with exhaust gases in trucks, which had previously been used in the East. But there was no question of being able to use this for these mass transports that were due to arrive in Auschwitz. Killing with showers of carbon monoxide while bathing, as was done with mental patients in some places in the Reich, would necessitate too many buildings, and it was also very doubtful whether the supply of gas for such a vast number of people would be available. We left the matter unresolved. Eichmann decided to try and find a gas which was in ready supply and which would not entail special installations for its use, and to inform me when he had done so. We inspected the area in order to choose a likely spot. We decided that a peasant farmstead situated in the northwest corner of what later became the third building sector at Birkenau would be the most suitable. It was isolated and screened by woods and hedges, and it was also not far from the railroad. The bodies could be placed in long, deep pits dug in the nearby meadows. We had not at that time thought of burning the corpses. We calculated that after gas proofing the premises then available, it would be possible to kill about 800 people simultaneously with a suitable gas. These figures were borne out later in practice.

Eichmann could not then give me the starting date for the operation because everything was still in the preliminary stages and the Reichsführer SS had not yet issued the necessary orders.

Eichmann returned to Berlin to report our conversation to the Reichsführer SS.

A few days later I sent: to the Reichsführer SS by courier a detailed location plan and description of the installation. I have never received an acknowledgment or a decision on my report. Eichmann told me later that the Reichsführer SS was in agreement with my proposals.

At the end of November a conference was held in Eich-mann’s Berlin office, attended by the entire Jewish Section, to which I, too, was summoned. Eichmann’s representatives in the various countries reported on the current stage of the operation and the difficulties encountered in executing it, such as the housing of the prisoners, the provision of trains for the transports and the planning of time-tables, etc. I could not find out when a start was to be made, and Eichmann had not yet discovered a suitable kind of gas.

In the autumn of 1941 a secret order was issued instructing the Gestapo to weed out the Russian politruks, commissars, and certain political officials from the prisoner-of-war camps, and to transfer them to the nearest concentration camp for liquidation. Small drafts of these prisoners were continually arriving in Auschwitz and they were shot in the gravel pit near the Monopoly buildings[106] or in the courtyard of block II. When I was absent on duty my representative, Hauptsturmführer Fritsch, on his own initiative, used gas for killing these Russian prisoners of war. He crammed the underground detention cells with Russians and, protected by a gas mask, discharged Cyclon B gas into the cells, killing the victims instantly.

Cyclon B gas was supplied by the firm of Tesch & Stabenow and was constantly used in Auschwitz for the destruction of vermin, and there was consequently always a supply of these tins of gas on hand. In the beginning, this poisonous gas, which was a preparation of prussic acid, was only handled by employees of Tesch & Stabenow under rigid safety precautions, but later some members of the Medical Service were trained by the firm in its use and thereafter the destruction of vermin and disinfection were carried out by them.

During Eichmann’s next visit I told him about this use of Cyclon B and we decided to employ it for the mass extermination operation.

The killing by Cyclon B gas of the Russian prisoners of war transported to Auschwitz was continued, but no longer in block II, since after the gassing the whole building had to be ventilated for at least two days.

The mortuary of the crematorium next to the hospital block was therefore used as a gassing room, after the door had been made gasproof and some holes had been pierced in the ceiling through which the gas could be discharged.

I can however only recall one transport consisting of nine hundred Russian prisoners being gassed there and I remember that it took several days to cremate their corpses. Russians were not gassed in the peasant farmstead which had now been converted for the extermination of the Jews.

I cannot say on what date the extermination of the Jews began. Probably it was in September 1941, but it may not have been until January 1942. The Jews from Upper Silesia were the first to be dealt with. These Jews were arrested by the Kattowitz Police Unit and taken in drafts by train to a siding on the west side of the Auschwitz-Dziedzice railroad line where they were unloaded. So far as I can remember, these drafts never consisted of more than 1,000 prisoners.

On the platform the Jews were taken over from the police by a detachment from the camp and were.brought by the commander of the protective custody camp in two sections to the bunker, as the extermination building was called.

Their luggage was left on the platform, whence it was taken to the sorting office called Canada situated between the DAW and the lumberyard.[107]

The Jews were made to undress near the bunker, after they had been told that they had to go into the rooms (as they were also called) in order to be deloused.

All the rooms, there were five of them, were filled at the same time, the gasproof doors were then screwed up and the contents of the gas containers discharged into the rooms through special vents.

After half an hour the doors were reopened (there were two doors in each room), the dead bodies were taken out, and brought to the pits in small trolleys which ran on rails.

The victims’ clothing was taken in trucks to the sorting office. The whole operation, including assistance given during undressing, the filling of the bunker, the emptying of the bunker, the removal of the corpses, as well as the preparation and filling up of the mass graves, was carried out by a special detachment of Jews, who were separately accommodated and who, in accordance with Eichmann’s orders, were themselves liquidated after every big action.

While the first transports were being disposed of, Eichmann arrived with an order from the Reichsführer SS stating that the gold teeth were to be removed from the corpses and the hair cut from the women. This job was also undertaken by the Special Detachment.

The extermination process was at that time carried out under the supervision of the commander of the protective custody camp or the Rapportführer. Those who were too ill to be brought into the gas chambers were shot in the back of the neck with a small-caliber weapon.

An SS doctor also had to be present. The trained disinfectors (SDG’s) were responsible for discharging the gas into the gas chamber.

During the spring of 1942 the actions were comparatively small, but the transports increased in the summer, and we were compelled to construct a further extermination building. The peasant farmstead west of the future site of crematoriums III and IV was selected and made ready. Two huts near bunker I and three near bunker II were erected, in which the victims undressed. Bunker II was the larger and could hold about 1,200 people.

During the summer of 1942 the bodies were still being placed in the mass graves. Toward the end of the summer, however, we started to burn them; at first on wood pyres bearing some 2,000 corpses, and later in pits together with bodies previously buried. In the early days oil refuse was poured on the bodies, but later methanol was used. Bodies were burned in pits, day and night, continuously.

By the end of November all the mass graves had been emptied. The number of corpses in the mass graves amounted to 107,000. This figure not only included the transports of Jews gassed up to the time when cremation was first employed, but also the bodies of those prisoners in Auschwitz who died during the winter of 1941-42, when the crematorium near the hospital building was out of action for a considerable time. It also included all the prisoners who died in the Birkenau camp.

During his visit to the camp in the summer of 1942, the Reichsführer SS watched every detail of the whole process of destruction from the time when the prisoners were unloaded to the emptying of bunker II. At that time the bodies were not being burned.

He had no criticisms to make, nor did he discuss the matter.

Gauleiter Bracht and the Obergruppenführer Schmauser were present with him.

Shortly after the visit of the Reichsführer SS, Standartenführer Blobel arrived from Eichmann’s office with an order from the Reichsführer SS stating that all the mass graves were to be opened and the corpses burned. In addition the ashes were to be disposed of in such a way that it would be impossible at some future time to calculate the number of corpses burned.

Blobel had already experimented with different methods of cremation in Culenhof and Eichmann had authorized him to show me the apparatus he used.

Hössler and I went to Culenhof on a tour of inspection. Blobel had had various makeshift ovens constructed, which were fired with wood and oil refuse. He had also attempted to dispose of the bodies with explosives, but their destruction had been very incomplete. The ashes were distributed over the neighboring countryside after first being ground to a powder in a bone mill.

Standartenführer Blobel had been authorized to seek out and obliterate all the mass graves in the whole of the eastern districts. His department was given the code number “1005.” The work itself was carried out by a special detachment of Jews who were shot after each section of the work had been completed. Auschwitz concentration camp was continuously called upon to provide Jews for department “1005.”

On my visit to Culenhof I was also shown the extermination apparatus constructed out of trucks, which was designed to kill by using the exhaust gases from the engines. The officer in charge there, however, described this method as being extremely unreliable, for the density of the gas varied considerably and was often insufficient to be lethal.

How many bodies lay in the mass graves at Culenhof or how many had already been cremated, I was unable to ascertain.

Standartenführer Blobel had a fairly exact knowledge of the number of mass graves in the eastern districts, but he was sworn to the greatest secrecy in the matter.

Originally all the Jews transported to Auschwitz on the authority of Eichmann’s office were, in accordance with orders of the Reichsführer SS, to be destroyed without exception. This also applied to the Jews from Upper Silesia, but on the arrival of the first transports of German Jews, the order was given that all those who were able-bodied, whether men or women, were to be segregated and employed in war work. This happened before the construction of the women’s camp, since the need for a women’s camp in Auschwitz only arose as a result of this order.

Owing to the extensive armaments industry which had developed in the concentration camps and which was being progressively increased, and owing to the recent employment of prisoners in armaments factories outside the camps, a serious lack of prisoners suddenly made itself felt, whereas previously the commandants in the old camps in the Reich had often had to seek out possibilities for employment in order to keep all their prisoners occupied.

The Jews, however, were only to be employed in Auschwitz camp. Auschwitz-Birkenau was to become an entirely Jewish camp and prisoners of all other nationalities were to be transferred to other camps. This order was never completely carried out, and later Jews were even employed in armaments industries outside the camp, because of the lack of any other labor.

The selection of able-bodied Jews was supposed to be made by SS doctors. But it repeatedly happened that officers of the protective custody camp and of the labor department themselves selected the prisoners without my knowledge or even my approval. This was the cause of constant friction between the SS doctors and the officers of the labor department. The divergence of opinion among the officers in Auschwitz was developed and fostered by the contradictory interpretation of the Reichsführer SS’s order by authoritative quarters in Berlin. The Reich Security Head Office (Müller and Eichmann) had, for security reasons, the greatest interest in the destruction of as many Jews as possible. The Reichsartz SS, who laid down the policy of selection, held the view that only those Jews who were completely fit and able to work should be selected for employment. The weak and the old and those who were only relatively robust would very soon become incapable of work, which would cause a further deterioration in the general standard of health, and an unnecessary increase in the hospital accommodation, requiring further medical personnel and medicines, and all for no purpose since they would in the end have to be killed.

The Economic Administration Head Office (Pohl and Maurer) was only interested in mustering the largest possible labor force for employment in the armaments industry, regardless of the fact that these people would later on become incapable of working. This conflict of interests was further sharpened by the immensely increased demands for prisoner labor made by the Ministry of Supply and the Todt Organization. The Reichsführer SS was continuously promising both these departments numbers which could never be supplied. Standartenführer Maurer (the head of department DII) was in the difficult position of being able only partially to fulfill the insistent demands of the departments referred to, and consequently he was perpetually harassing the labor office to provide him with the greatest possible number of workers.

It was impossible to get the Reichsführer SS to make a definite decision in this matter.

I myself held the view that only really strong and healthy Jews ought to be selected for employment.

The sorting-out process proceeded as follows. The railroad carriages were unloaded one after the other. After depositing their baggage, the Jews had to pass individually in front of an SS doctor, who decided on. their physical fitness as they marched past him. Those considered capable of employment were immediately taken off into the camp in small groups.

Taking an average of all the transports, between 25 and 30 per cent were found fit for work, but this figure fluctuated considerably. The figure for Greek Jews, for example, was only 15 per cent, whereas there were transports from Slovakia with a fitness rate of 100 per cent. Jewish doctors and administrative personnel were without exception taken into the camp.

It became apparent during the first cremations in the open air that in the long run it would not be possible to continue in that manner. During bad weather or when a strong wind was blowing, the stench of burning flesh was carried for many miles and caused the whole neighborhood to talk about the burning of Jews, despite official counterpropaganda. It is true that all members of the SS detailed for the extermination were bound to the strictest secrecy over the whole operation, but, as later SS legal proceedings showed, this was not always observed. Even the most severe punishment was not able to stop their love of gossip.

Moreover the air defense services protested against the fires which could be seen from great distances at night. Nevertheless, burnings had to go on, even at night, unless further transports were to be refused. The schedule of individual operations, fixed at a conference by the Ministry of Communications, had to be rigidly adhered to in order to avoid, for military reasons, obstruction and confusion on the railways concerned. These reasons led to the energetic planning and eventual construction of the two large crematoriums, and in 1943 to the building of two further smaller installations. Yet another one was planned, which would far exceed the others in size, but it was never completed, for in the autumn of 1944, the Reichsführer SS called an immediate halt to the extermination of the Jews.

The two large crematoriums I and II were built in the winter of 1942-43 and brought into use in the spring of 1943. They had five three-retort ovens and could cremate about 2,000 bodies in less than twenty-four hours. Technical difficulties made it impossible to increase their capacity. Attempts to do this caused severe damage to the installations, and on several occasions put them out of action altogether. Crematoriums I and II both had underground undressing rooms and gas chambers in which the air could be completely changed. The bodies were taken to the ovens on the floor above by means of an elevator. The gas chambers could hold about 3,000 people, but this number was never reached, since the individual transports were never as large as that.

The two smaller crematoriums III and IV were capable, according to calculations made by the constructional firm of Topf of Erfurt, of burning about 1,500 bodies within twenty-four hours. Owing to the wartime shortage of materials the builders were compelled to economize during the construction of crematoriums III and IV and they were therefore built aboveground and the ovens were of a less solid construction. It soon became apparent, however, that the flimsy construction of these two four-retort ovens did not come up to the requirements. Number III failed completely after a short time and later ceased to be used altogether. Number IV had to be repeatedly shut down, since after its fires had been burning for from four to six weeks, the ovens or the chimneys burned out. The gassed bodies were mostly burned in pits behind crematorium IV.

The provisional structure number I was demolished when work was started on building section III of Birkenau.

Crematorium II, later designated bunker V, was used up to the last and was also kept as a stand-by when breakdowns occurred in crematoriums I to IV. When larger numbers of transports were being received, gassing was carried out by day in number V and numbers I to IV were used for those transports which arrived during the night. The capacity of number V was practically unlimited, so long as cremations could be carried out both by day and night. Because of enemy air attacks, no further cremations were permitted during the night after 1944. The highest total of people gassed and cremated within twenty-four hours was rather more than 9,000. This figure was attained in the summer of 1944, during the action in Hungary, using all the installations except number HI. On that day, owing to delays on the line, five trains arrived, instead of three, as expected, and in addition the carriages were more crowded than usual.

The crematoriums were erected at the end of the two main thoroughfares in Birkenau camp, first, in order not to increase the area of the camp and consequently the safety precautions required, and second, so that they would not be too far from the camp, since it was planned to use the gas chambers and undressing rooms as bathhouses when the extermination actions came to an end.

The buildings were to be screened from view by a wall or hedges. Lack of material prevented this from being done. As a temporary measure, all extermination buildings were hidden under camouflage nets.

The three railroad tracks between building sectors I and II in Birkenau camp were to be reconstructed as a station and roofed in, and the lines were to be extended to crematoriums III and IV, so that the unloading would also be hidden from the eyes of unauthorized people. Once again shortage of materials prevented this plan from being carried out.

Because of the increasing insistence of the Reichsführer SS on the employment of prisoners in the armaments industry, Obergruppenführer Pohl found himself compelled to resort to Jews who had become unfit for work. The order was given that if the latter could be made fit and employable within six weeks, they were to be given special care and feeding. Up to then all Jews who had become incapable of working were gassed with the next transports, or killed by injection if they happened to be lying ill in the sick block. As far as Auschwitz-Birkenau was concerned, this order was sheer mockery. Everything was lacking. There were practically no medical supplies. The accommodation was such that there was scarcely even room for those who were most seriously ill. The food was completely insufficient, and every month the Food Ministry cut down the supplies still further. But all protests were unavailing and an attempt to carry out the order had to be made. The resultant overcrowding of the healthy prisoners could no longer be avoided. The general standard of health was thereby löwered, and diseases spread like wildfire. As a result of this order the death rate was sent up with a jerk and a tremendous deterioration in the general conditions developed. I do not believe that a single sick Jew was ever made fit again for work in the armaments industry.

During previous interrogations I have put the number of Jews who arrived in Auschwitz for extermination at two and a half million. This figure was supplied by Eichmann who gave it to my superior officers, Gruppenführer Glücks, when he was ordered to make a report to the Reichsführer SS shortly before Berlin was surrounded. Eichmann and his permanent deputy Günther were the only ones who possessed the necessary information on which to calculate the total number destroyed. In accordance with orders given by the Reichsführer SS, after every large action all evidence in Auschwitz on which a calculation of the number of victims might be based had to be burned.

As head of Department DII personally destroyed every bit of evidence which could be found in my office. The heads of other offices did the same.

According to Eichmann, the Reichsführer SS and the Reich Security Head Office also had all their data destroyed.

Only his personal notes could give the required information. It is possible that, owing to the negligence of some department or other, a few isolated documents, teletype messages, or radio messages have been left undestroyed, but they could not give sufficient information on which to make a calculation.

I myself never knew the total number and I have nothing to help me make an estimate of it.

I can only remember the figures involved in the larger actions, which were repeated to me by Eichmann or his deputies.

I can no longer remember the figures for the smaller actions, but they were insignificant in comparison with the numbers given above.

I regard a total of two and a half million as far too high. Even Auschwitz had limits to its destructive possibilities.

Figures given by former prisoners are figments of the imagination and lack any foundation.

“Action Reinhardt” was the code name given to the collection, sorting, and utilization of all articles which were acquired as the result of the transports of Jews and their extermination.

Any member of the SS who laid hands on this Jewish property was, by order of the Reichsführer SS, punished with death.

Valuables worth many millions of dollars were seized.

An immense amount of property was stolen by members of the SS and by the police, and also by prisoners, civilian employees, and railway personnel. A great deal of this still lies hidden and buried in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp area.

When the Jewish transports unloaded on arrival, their luggage was left on the platform until all the Jews had been taken to the extermination buildings or into the camp. During the early days all the luggage would then be brought by a transport detachment to the sorting office, Canada I, where it would be sorted and disinfected. The clothing of those who had been gassed in bunkers I and II or in crematoriums I to IV was also brought to the sorting office.

By 1942, Canada I could no longer keep up with the sorting. Although new huts and sheds were constantly being added and prisoners were sorting day and night, and although the number of persons employed was constantly stepped up and several trucks (often as many as twenty) were loaded daily with the items sorted out, the piles of unsorted luggage went on mounting up. So in 1942, the construction of Canada

II warehouse was begun at the west end of building sector II at Birkenau. A start was also made on the erection of extermination buildings and a bathhouse for the new arrivals. Thirty newly built huts were crammed to capacity immediately after completion, while mountains of unsorted effects piled up between them. In spite of the augmented labor gangs, it was out of the question to complete the job during the course of the individual actions, which always took from four to six weeks. Only during the longer intervals was it possible to achieve some semblance of order.

Clothing and footwear were examined for hidden valuables (although only cursorily in view of the quantities involved) and then stored or handed over to the camp to complete the inmates’ clothing. Later on, it was also sent to other camps.

A considerable part of the clothing was passed to welfare organizations for re-settlers and later for victims of air raids. Large and important munition plants received considerable quantities for their foreign workers.

Blankets and mattresses, etc. were also sent to the welfare organizations. In so far as the camp required articles of this nature they were retained to complete their inventory, but other camps also received large consignments.

Valuables were taken over by a special section of the camp command and sorted out by experts, and a similar procedure was followed with the money that was found.

The jewelry was usually of great value, particularly if its Jewish owners came from the West: precious stones worth thousands of dollars, priceless gold and platinum watches set with diamonds, rings, earrings, and necklaces of great rarity. Currency from all countries amounted to many thousands of dollars. Often tens of thousands of dollars in value, mostly in thousand-dollar notes, were found on single individuals. Every possible hiding place in their clothes and luggage and on their bodies was made use of.

When the sorting-out process that followed each major operation had been completed, the valuables and money were packed into trunks and taken by truck to the Economic Administration Head Office in Berlin and thence to the Reichsbank, where a special department dealt exclusively with items taken during actions against the Jews. Eichmann told me on one occasion that the jewelry and currency were sold in Switzerland, and that the entire Swiss jewelry market was dominated by these sales.

Ordinary watches were likewise sent in their thousands to Sachsenhausen. A large watchmaker’s shop had been set up there, which employed hundreds of prisoners and- was directly administered by Department DII (Maurer). The watches were sorted out: and repaired in the workshop, the majority being later dispatched for service use by front-line SS and army troops.

Gold from the teeth was melted into bars by the dentists in the SS hospital and forwarded monthly to the Sanitary Head Office.

Precious stones of great value were also to be found hidden in teeth that had been filled.

Hair cut from the women was sent to a firm in Bavaria to be used in the war effort.

Unserviceable clothing was sent for salvage, and useless footwear was taken to pieces and remade as far as possible, what was left over being converted into leather dust.

The treasures brought in by the Jews gave rise to unavoidable difficulties for the camp itself. It was demoralizing for the members of the SS, who were not always strong enough to resist the temptation provided by these valuables which lay within such easy reach. Not even the death penalty or a heavy prison sentence was enough to deter them.

The arrival of these Jews with their riches offered undreamed-of opportunities to the other prisoners. Most of the escapes that were made were probably connected with these circumstances. With the assistance of this easily acquired money or watches and rings, etc., anything could be arranged with the SS men or the civilian workers. Alcohol, tobacco, food, false papers, guns, and ammunition were all in the day’s work. In Birkenau the male prisoners obtained access to the women’s camp at night by bribing some of the female supervisors. This kind of thing naturally affected the whole camp discipline. Those who possessed valuables could obtain better jobs for themselves, and were able to buy the good will of the Capos and block seniors, and even arrange for a lengthy stay in the hospital where they would be given the best food. Not even the strictest supervision could alter this state of affairs. Jewish gold was a catastrophe for the camp.

In addition to Auschwitz there existed, so far as I am aware, the following extermination centers for Jews:

I myself have only seen Culenhof and Treblinka. Culenhof had ceased to be used, but in Treblinka I saw the whole operation.

The latter had several chambers, capable of holding some hundreds of people, built directly by the railroad track. The Jews, went straight into the gas chambers without undressing, by way of a platform which was the height of the cars. A motor room had been built next to the gas chambers, equipped with various engines taken from large trucks and tanks. These were started up and the exhaust gases were led by pipes into the gas chambers, thereby killing the people inside. The process was continued for half an hour until all was silent inside the rooms. In an hour’s time the gas chambers were opened up and the bodies taken out, undressed and burnt on a framework made of railroad ties.

The fires were stoked with wood, the bodies being sprayed every now and then with oil refuse. During my visit all those who had been gassed were dead. But I was told that the performance of the engines was not always uniform, so that the exhaust gases were often insufficiently strong to kill everyone in the chambers. Many of them were only rendered unconscious and had to be finished off by shooting. I heard the same story in Culenhof and I was also told by Eichmann that these defects had occurred in other places.

In Culenhof, too, the Jews sometimes broke the sides of the trucks in an attempt to escape.

Experience had shown that the preparation of prussic acid called Cyclon B caused death with far greater speed and certainty, especially if the rooms were kept dry and gastight and closely packed with people, and provided they were fitted with as large a number of intake vents as possible. So far as Auschwitz is concerned, I have never known or heard of a single person being found alive when the gas chambers were opened half an hour after the gas had been inducted.

The extermination procedure in Auschwitz took place as follows:

Jews selected for gassing were taken as quietly as possible to the crematoriums, the men being separated from the women. In the undressing rooms, prisoners of the Special Detachment, detailed for this purpose, would tell them in their own language that they were going to be bathed and deloused, that they must: leave their clothes neatly together and above all remember where they had put them, so that they would be able to find them again quickly after the delousing. The prisoners of the Special Detachment had the greatest interest in seeing that the operation proceeded smoothly and quickly. After undressing, the Jews went into the gas chambers, which were furnished with showers and water pipes and gave a realistic impression of a bathhouse.

The women went in first with their children, followed by the men who were always the fewer in number. This part of the operation nearly always went smoothly, for the prisoners of the Special Detachment would calm those who betrayed any anxiety or who perhaps had some inkling of their fate. As an additional precaution these prisoners of the Special Detachment and an SS man always remained in the chamber until the last moment.

The door would now be quickly screwed up and the gas immediately discharged by the waiting disinfectors through vents in the ceilings of the gas chambers, down a shaft that led to the floor. This insured the rapid distribution of the gas. It could be observed through the peephole in the door that those who were standing nearest to the induction vents were killed at once. It can be said that about one-third died straight away. The remainder staggered about and began to scream and struggle for air. The screaming, however, soon changed to the death rattle and in a few minutes all lay still. After twenty minutes at the latest no movement could be discerned. The time required for the gas to have effect varied according to the weather, and depended on whether it was damp or dry, cold or warm. It also depended on the quality of the gas, which was never exactly the same, and on the composition of the transports which might contain a high proportion of healthy Jews, or old and sick, or children. The victims became unconscious after a few minutes, according to their distance from the intake shaft. Those who screamed and those who were old or sick or weak, or the small children, died quicker than those who were healthy or young.

The door was opened half an hour after the induction of the gas, and the ventilation switched on. Work was immediately begun on removing the corpses. There was no noticeable change in the bodies and no sign of convulsions or discoloration. Only after the bodies had been left lying for some time, that is to say after several hours, did the usual death stains appear in the places where they had lain. Soiling through opening of the bowels was also rare. There were no signs of wounding of any kind. The faces showed no distortion.

The special detachment now set about removing the gold teeth and cutting the hair from the women. After this, the bodies were taken up by elevator and laid in front of the ovens, which had meanwhile been stoked up. Depending on the size of the bodies, up to three corpses could be put into one oven retort at the same time. The time required for cremation also depended on this, but on an average it took twenty minutes. As previously stated, crematoriums I and II could cremate about 2,000 bodies in twenty-four hours, but a higher number was not possible without causing damage to the installations. Numbers III and IV should have been able to cremate 1,500 bodies in twenty-four hours, but, as far as I know, these figures were never attained.

During the period when the fires were kept burning continuously, without a break, the ashes fell through the grates and were constantly removed and crushed to powder. The ashes were taken in trucks to the Vistula, where they immediately drifted away and dissolved. The ashes taken from the burning pits near bunker II and crematorium IV were dealt with in the same way.

The process of destruction in bunkers I and II was exactly the same as in the crematoriums, except that the effects of the weather on the operation were more noticeable.

The whole of the work in connection with the extermination process was performed by special detachments of Jews.

They carried out their grisly task with dumb indifference. Their one object was to finish the work as quickly as possible so that they could have a longer interval in which to search the clothing of the gassed victims for something to smoke or eat. Although they were well fed and given many additional allowances, they could often be seen shifting corpses with one hand while they gnawed at something they held in the other. Even when they were engaged in the most gruesome work of digging out and burning the corpses buried in the mass graves they never stopped eating.

Even the cremation of their near relations failed to shake them.

When I went to Budapest in the summer of 1943 and called on Eichmann, he told me about the further actions which had been planned in connection with the Jews.

At that period there were rather more than 200,000 Jews from the Carpathio-Ukraine, who were detained there and housed in some brickworks, while awaiting transport to Auschwitz.

Eichmann expected to receive from Hungary, according to the estimate of the Hungarian police, who had carried out the arrests, about 3,000,000 Jews.

The arrests and transportation should have been completed by 1943, but because of the Hungarian government’s political difficulties, the date was always being postponed.

In particular the Hungarian army, or rather the senior officers, were opposed to the extradition of these people and gave most of the male Jews a refuge in the labor companies of the front-line divisions, thus keeping them out of the clutches of the police. When in the autumn of 1944, an action was started in Budapest itself, the only male Jews left were the old and the sick.

Altogether there were probably not more than half a million Jews transported out of Hungary.

The next country on the list was Romania. According to the reports from his representative in Bucharest, Eichmann expected to get about 4,000,000 Jews from there.

Negotiations with the Romanian authorities, however, were likely to be difficult. The anti-Semitic elements wanted the extermination of the Jews to be carried out in their own country. There had already been serious anti-Jewish rioting, and abducted Jews had been thrown into the deep and isolated ravines of the Carpathians and killed. A section of the government, however, was in favor of transporting unwanted Jews to Germany.

In the meantime Bulgaria was to follow with an estimated two and a half million Jews. The authorities there were agreeable to the transport, but wanted to await the result of the negotiations with Romania.

In addition, Mussolini was supposed to have promised the extradition of the Italian Jews and those from the Italian occupied part of Greece, although not even an estimate had been made of their numbers. But the Vatican and the royal family, and consequently all those opposed to Mussolini, wanted at all costs to prevent these Jews from being surrendered.

Eichmann did not count on getting these Jews.

Finally there was Spain. Influential circles were approached by German representatives over the question of getting rid of the Jews. But Franco and his followers were against it. Eichmann had little faith in being able to arrange for an extradition.

The course taken by the war destroyed these plans and saved the lives of millions of Jews.