Commandant of Auschwitz

1

Kommandant in Auschwitz, Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1958.

2

The relevant documents are IMG XXXIII, Doct. PS-3868: IMG XI, S.438 et seq: Nuremberg Doct. NI-035/037: and Nuremberg Doct. NI-039/041.

3

G. M. Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary, New York, Farrar, Straus, 1947.

4

Omissions are explained in footnotes.

5

Here omitted.

6

See also Auschwitz-Birkenau, by Dr. Jan Sehn, Wydawnictwo Prawnicze, Warsaw, 1957. This is published in English, as well as in Polish and German, and is the best short description of Auschwitz known to me.

7

For example: The Scourge of the Swastika, by Lord Russell of Liverpool, New York, Philosophical Library, 1954.

8

These were instructions issued by Wehrmacht Headquarters regarding certain categories of prisoners of war who were deprived of prisoner-of-war-status and sent to concentration camps to be shot in the neck.

Nacht und Nebel, Night and Fog. The object of the Nacht und Nebel decree issued by Hitler on December 7, 1941, was to insure that non-German civilians in occupied territories, alleged to have committed offenses against the German occupation forces, were taken secretly (hence night and fog) to Germany unless it could be guaranteed that a death sentence would be passed if they were tried by a military court in their own country.

9

the name was omitted

10

This was a reference to the Austrian Anschluss.

11

Rudolf Hoess’s father, Franz Xavier Hoess, was a salesman.

12

The 21st (Baden) Regiment of Dragoons.

13

Hoess was twice wounded, in Mesopotamia and Palestine. In 1917 and 1918 he received the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd class, the Iron Crescent, and the Baden Service Medal.

14

Volunteer units of former soldiers which sprang up in Germany at this time, and which were originally formed to safeguard the frontiers and prevent internal disturbance. The one he belonged to was the Freikorps Rossbach, with which he fought in the Baltic States, Mecklenburg, the Ruhr, and Upper Silesia.

15

Medieval courts that sat and passed sentence in secret.

16

The State Court for the Defense of the Republic was established in connection with the Law for the Defense of the Republic, enacted June 26, 1922. It is incorrect to say that it was “specially” created to deal with Vehm murders. Paragraph 7 of the law in question shows that this court was competent to judge cases in which the accused were tried for crimes directed against the Republic (as a state form) and against members of the government. This law was passed, and the court in question established, consequent on the murder of the Foreign Minister, Rathenau, on June 24, 1922. (For an interesting though not always reliable description of this murder by one of the murderers, see The Answers of Ernst von Salomon, London, Putnam, 1945.) The court was not concerned with Vehm murders as such. The reason why the Parchim trial was held in this court, at Leipzig, and not in the normal district court at Schwerin, was that the Schwerin State Attorney had declared that Hoess and almost all his accomplices in the crime belonged to the “Union for Agricultural Professional Training,” an illegal successor organization to the banned “Rossbach Labor Community,” which itself had been the Freikorps Rossbach, also declared illegal, under another name: since this organization was hostile to the republican form of government, political crimes committed by its members as such made them subject to the jurisdiction of this special court.

17

Hoess’s description of the Parchim murder is colored in his favor and contains inaccuracies. Evidence given before the court which sat in Leipzig from the 12th to the 15th of March 1924, shows this to have been a particularly brutal murder. It had been decided that a former elementary schoolteacher by the name of Kadow was a Communist spy who had infiltrated the Rossbach organization. Hoess and others—Martin Bormann was indirectly implicated— spent the night of May 31-June 1, 1922, drinking, and then abducted Kadow into the woods, where he was beaten almost to death with clubs and branches, after which his throat was cut and he was finally finished off with two revolver bullets. There is not the slightest scrap of evidence to show that Kadow was in any way connected with the Schlageter affair. However, since Schlage-ter had been condemned to death by the French authorities in the Ruhr only a few days before the Kadow murder, it is possible that Hoess had been confused by remarks that Kadow was a traitor “like the man who betrayed Schlageter to the French.” Nor is there any reason to believe that the man who gave evidence against Hoess and the others sold his story to Vorwärts. He was named Jurisch, and the Court for the Defense of the Republic decided that he told his story, thus implicating himself, because he feared lest he himself be murdered by members of the Rossbach organization for knowing too much.

18

Hoess was arrested on June 28, 1923. On March 15, 1924, he was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, six months of this sentence to count as already served.

19

Dr. Erich Zeigner had attempted to set up a Communist government in Saxony, and was deprived of his functions as Prime Minister and Minister of Justice for Saxony by a decree of the President of the Reich dated October 29, 1923. He was later tried on a charge of abuse of public office, specifically for destroying public documents and subverting public funds for political party ends. On March 29, 1924, he was sentenced to three years in prison.

20

The Amnesty Act in question was passed on July 14, 1928.

21

Rossbach was responsible for Hoess visiting Munich, where he joined the NSDAP in November 1922 with Party number 3240.

22

In 1929.

23

This statement requires amplification. According to his SS record file, Hoess joined the SS as “candidate” (Anwärter) on September 20, 1933. On April 1, 1934, he was accepted as SS-Mann, and promoted on April 20 to SS-Sturmmann (private first class). In the affidavit that he signed in British custody on March 14, 1946, he described his career between leaving prison and going to the Dachau concentration camp as follows: “Period 1929-1934, with various agricultural organizations in Brandenburg and Pomerania. Heinrich Himmler was also a member of the League of Artamanen (Gau leader, Bavaria)…. In 1933 on the Sallentin estate in Pomerania I formed a troop of Mounted SS. As a former cavalryman I was asked to do this by the Party and the estate owners…. While he was reviewing the SS in Stettin, Himmler’s attention was drawn to me—we already knew one another from the Artamanen League—and he urged me to join a concentration camp administration. That is how I came to Dachau in November 1934.”

24

The SS unit that Hoess joined as SS-Unterscharführer (corporal) on December 1, 1934, had been formed earlier that year by Theodor Eicke under the name of Guard Unit Upper Bavaria as part of the General SS. From the end of June 1933 Eicke had been Commandant of Dachau. In that same year Eicke drafted the Disciplinary and Punishment Regulations for use in concentration camps, and also the regulations for the guard units in the camps. In May 1934 Eicke was given the job of rationalizing the concentration camps, some of which, such as Oranienburg near Berlin, had been set up by the SA, while others, such as Dachau, were run by the SS. Eicke played a very prominent part in the murder of Roehm and his followers and the elimination of the SA as a political force on June 30, 1934, and in the following month was appointed Inspector of Concentration Camps and of the Death’s Head Formations, into which the Guard Unit Upper Bavaria was now incorporated. For Hoess’s views on Eicke, see Appendix 8.

25

The commandant was responsible for the concentration camp as a whole. The SS officer responsible for the camp in which the prisoners were kept was called the Schutzhaftlagerführer (commander of the protective custody camp), whose chief assistant—and the SS official with whom the prisoners came most directly in contact—was called the Rapportführer. Under him were the SS non-commissioned officers responsible for the various blocks, originally called companies.

26

On March 1, 1935, Hoess was made block leader at Dachau, being promoted SS-Scharführer (sergeant) on April 1 and SS-Oberscharführer (staff sergeant) on July 1, 1935, and SS-Hauptscharführer (sergeant major) on March 1, 1936. From April 1, 1936, until September of that year he was Rapportführer at Dachau. In June 1936 Himmler and Bormann visited the camp, and Hoess was specially recommended for promotion both by the commandant, Loritz, and by his predecessor, Eicke. Himmler and Bormann both being aware of his “past services,” he was promoted SS-Untersturmführer (2nd lieutenant) on September 13, 1936, thus becoming a member of the SS officer corps. From September 1936 until May 1938, when he was transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, he was Effektenverwalter, that is to say, the officer responsible for the administration of stores and of prisoners’ property, at Dachau.

27

Prisoners who acted as supervisors of the prison barrack rooms, the other prisoners’ work, etc.

28

Arbeit macht frei was the slogan which Hoess placed above the main gate of Auschwitz concentration camp.

29

See also Hoess’s description of Eicke as given in Appendix 8.

30

National SS Leader, Heinrich Himmler; abbreviated RFSS.

31

According to SS records he was transferred to Sachsenhausen on August 1, 1938.

32

SS-Standartenführer Hermann Baranowski. From 1936 to early 1938 he had been commander of the protective custody camp at Dachau, under Loritz, where he got to know Hoess, whose transfer to Sachsenhausen he requested.

33

The reference is presumably to the strike of January 1918.

34

See Appendix 4.

35

Equivalent army ranks: lieutenant or captain.

36

For further information about Jehovah’s Witnesses in the concentration camps, see Eugen Kogan, The Theory and Practice of Hell, New York, Farrar, Straus, 1950, and also Nuremberg Doct. NG-190.

37

Weltanschauung: literally, “attitude toward the world.”

38

There follows a brief description of an incident in Pastor Nieniol-ler’s family life, concerning his daughter’s engagement. Since this is of no interest to the public and in no way concerns the subject matter of this book, it is omitted.

39

The following note is taken from the German edition of this book. Pastor Wilhelm Niemöller, brother of Martin Niemöller and author of the book Kampf und Zeugnis der Bekennenden Kirche (Bielefeld, 1948), after a conversation with his brother, submitted the following comments on the above passage in a letter to the Institut für Zeitgeschichte dated March 8, 1958.

1. The statement that “the whole of the reactionary opposition” joined his Dahlem congregation is, of course, incorrect. Owing to prevailing circumstances the number of educated persons attending divine services at Dahlem was greater than in most Berlin parishes. The fact that the Dahlem congregation was very much alive cannot be minimized by the use of such words as “reactionary” and “dissatisfied.” For the life of that congregation has lasted far longer than did National Socialism. See my book, page 197.

2. Niemöller never preached “resistance.” The National Socialists failed to understand what his preaching was really about. The Confessional Church attempted to preach that men are men, even if their name is Hitler, but that God is God. That a Jew is also human, Niemöller clearly stated.

3. Niemöller was not permitted to write letters as often as he wished. Usually he might send his wife two letters per month. But at various periods he was not permitted to write at all, and this frequently for months on end. It is doubtful whether Hoess ever read a letter of Niemöller’s, since censorship was done by the “political department.” Frau Niemöller was not allowed to bring her husband any books whatsoever in Sachsenhausen. He was permitted books, within limits, after his move to Dachau, though a very strict censorship was of course imposed. The time during which he was allowed out of his cell—initially twenty minutes, later one hour—was very strictly enforced. Only in Dachau was this somewhat relaxed.

4. Hoess implies that regular inquiries concerning the prisoner’s wishes were the most characteristic aspect of Niemöller’s imprisonment. I myself was allowed on one occasion to visit my brother in Sachsenhausen (September 29, 1938), and came away with a very different impression. The commandant had never then inquired concerning the “wishes” of the prisoner. The prisoner can, indeed, not recall ever having seen the commandant. The statement that his cell was made “comfortable” is pure invention on the part of Hoess.

5. Hitler had no interest in persuading Niemöller one way or the other. The visitor referred to was Admiral von Lanz. He came on his own initiative, and attempted to persuade Niemoller that he state his intention to avoid touching on “political questions” in future. The admiral did not belong to the Confessional Church.

6. Martin Niemöller’s request for reinstatement in the navy was dated September 7, 1939. In it there is no reference to his possible employment as a U-boat commander. The sentence concerning Hitler’s refusal, and particularly the alleged grounds for this, are pure invention. The truth is that on September 29, 1939, Keitel wrote a letter, addressed to: “The Rev. Senior Lieut, (retd.) Niemöller, Oranienburg, near Berlin, Concentration Camp Sachsenhausen.” This letter, written in his own hand, ran as follows: “In reply to your request of September 7, 1938, I regret that I must inform you that your recall to active service with the armed forces is not envisaged. Heil Hitler! Keitel, Col.-Gen.” To the best of my recollection it was only after this that he renounced the right to wear uniform.

7. That Niemöller hoped to obtain his freedom by conversion to Catholicism is nonsense. It is well known that many devout Catholics were in Dachau. From 1941 on he was with three of these (Neuhäusler and others). He studied the doctrines of the Catholic Church in great detail, and for years on end. But this was purely in connection with matters of the faith, of which Hoess can have no comprehension.

8. The statement that the Provincial Bishop D. Wurm was in Dachau is a strange invention. This Bishop of Württemberg was never either in Dachau or in Posen. He was once under house arrest, in Stuttgart in 1934. In the Dachau cell block Martin Niemöller was the only evangelical cleric. The other pastors were in Barrack 26 of the “Priests’ Block.” The confusion can doubtless be traced to the fact that General Superintendent D. Bursche, head of the Polish Evangelical Church, was in Sachsenhausen, where indeed he died during Martin Niemöller’s time there. The commander of the Sachsenhausen protective custody camp should surely have been aware of this.

40

The concentration camp prisoners wore triangles of cloth upon their pajama-like camp uniform, the color of the triangle indicating the category to which they belonged, viz.: red—political, green—professional criminal, black—asocial, yellow—Jew, mauve—homosexual, etc.

41

Reichssicherheitshauptamt: Reich Security Head Office, the supreme police and SS headquarters.

42

Owing to the size of Auschwitz there were always a first and a second prison camp commander. The first two at Auschwitz were Karl Fritzsch and Hans Aumeier.

43

Both these places are on the Polish-Slovak border, some sixty miles from Auschwitz.

44

The local regional representative of the RSHA (Reich Security Head Office) was the Inspector of the Security Police and the Security Service in Breslau. The Commander of the Security Police at Cracow, SS-Brigadeführer Bruno Streckenbach, was also responsible for the dispatch of prisoners to Auschwitz from all the former Polish territories which, during the German occupation, constituted the Government-General.

45

An area of 40 sq. kilometers, containing three Polish villages, including Brzezinka (Birkenau).

46

See Appendix 2.

47

See Appendix 2.

48

On one occasion Hoess himself ordered the arrest of the parents of a man who had escaped from Auschwitz. Around their necks were hung placards announcing that they would remain in the camp until their son was brought back. Other and crueler reprisals for escape were also ordered, as for example by the protective custody camp commander Karl Fritzsch, who made- indiscriminate arrests among the camp inmates and locked these people into the punishment cells, where they were left to starve.

49

Approximately 10,000 Russian prisoners of war were moved from Lamsdorf (Stalag VIII B) to Auschwitz early in the October of 1941. They were originally put into nine blocks, stone buildings and barracks, of Auschwitz I, which were separated by wire from the remainder of the base camp. By February 1942 most of the Russian prisoners of war had died of typhus, undernourishment, and various ailments. Approximately 1,500 then remained alive, and these were moved to the new camp being built at Birkenau (Auschwitz II).

50

On August 18, 1942—that is to say after the mass escape referred to below—only 163 Soviet prisoners of war were registered in Auschwitz. Of these, 96 survived until the end.

51

Of the 10,000 Russian prisoners of war who came to Auschwitz, a Special Commission from the Gestapo Office, Kattowitz, in November 1941, pronounced some 300 to be commissars or fanatical Communists. These were separated from the others and executed.

52

The feminine equivalent of the Hitler Youth, a Nazi organization for young girls.

53

Lucie Adelsberger, in Auschwitz Ein Tatsachenbericht, Berlin, 1956, reckons that in the spring of 1943 there were some 16,000 gypsies in Birkenau camp. She also states that their huts were desperately overcrowded. “Eight hundred, 1,000, or more people per block was normal.” These huts, it will be recalled, were supposed to house 300.

54

A cancerous growth, usually fatal, which appears mostly on the face, as the result of starvation and physical debility.

55

Schwarzhuber was 1st Commander of the Protective Camp Birkenau (Auschwitz II) in 1944.

56

This mass extermination took place during the night of July 31-August 1, between 3,500 and 4,000 gypsies being murdered.

57

By this Hoess means having sexual relations with a non-Jewish person, a crime in Nazi Germany.

58

The Nazis referred to the Weimar Republic as the “system”.

59

A pornographic anti-Semitic weekly publication produced by Julius Streicher.

60

It is not known on what grounds Hoess makes this assertion, for which no evidence can be found.

61

The actual word is Judenrein, or “Jew-pure,” a term which the Nazis used when describing areas or cities in which all Jews had been exterminated.

62

In November 1943 Hoess was transferred from his post of commandant of Auschwitz to the Economic Administration Head Office (WVHA) of the SS in Berlin. The Inspectorate of Concentration Camps had been subordinated to this quasi-ministry since April 1942, of which it formed Department D. From November 10, 1943, Hoess was in charge of the political section (Amt D1) in this department.

63

From mid-May 1942 the newly built Women’s Camp at Birkenau was designated as the principal detention camp for German and non-German female prisoners. In July 1942 the Reich Security Head Office informed all senior police and security offices that henceforth all arrested females were to be sent to Auschwitz. In September of that year Himmler ordered that all the Jewish women in Ravensbruck Women’s Concentration Camp were to be transferred to Auschwitz, and that Ravensbruck was to be made “Jew-pure.” A number of non-Jewish inmates from Ravensbruck had already been moved to Auschwitz to act as female Capos in the new Women’s Camp there; these were principally criminals and asocials (see below).

64

Budy was a village some five miles from the Auschwitz base camp, where a punishment company of prisoners was stationed and employed on drainage work connected with the Vistula. This punishment unit was completely cut off from the rest of the camp and the Capos of both sexes, who were recruited from among the criminals, conducted a reign of terror over their prisoners.

65

The female equivalent of the SS guards.

66

One of the agricultural undertakings run from Auschwitz. There was also a fish-processing plant at Harmense.

67

The Raisko estate belonged to Auschwitz and was farmed to the SS. It had a plant-breeding establishment run by Dr. Caesar, who in February 1942 was made responsible for all the agricultural work carried out by the Auschwitz prisoners.

68

See Appendix 5.

69

Aktion Reinhardt was the code name given to the operation of collection and marketing the clothing, valuables, and other belongings, including gold fillings from teeth, and women’s hair, taken from the slaughtered Jews.

70

Dog squad.

71

The commander of the SS guard regiment at Auschwitz from 1942 on was Friedrich Hartjenstein.

72

See Appendix 7.

73

The reference is doubtless to Hitler’s notorious instructions, dated March 30, 1941, and June 6, 1941, “On the Treatment of Political Commissars.”

74

A crystalline powder.

75

See Appendix 3.

76

The Einsatzkommandos which moved into Russia behind the advancing German armies and massacred the Russian Jews. See Poliakov and Reitlinger, op.-cit.

77

See Appendix 7.

78

Hans Höfle was Globocnik’s chief of staff at Lublin. He was later transferred to Oranienburg, where he and Hoess became friends.

79

One of the first, if not the very first, of these was a transport of Jews from Beuthen on February 15, 1942.

80

See Appendix 1.

81

This, the Sonderkommando, consisted of prisoners.

82

It may be mentioned in this connection that in the summer of 1944 a determined, armed attempt to break out of Birkenau was made by the Jewish Special Detachment with the help of other prisoners from the women’s camp, the stores camp called “Canada,” etc. It proved abortive, however. Four hundred and fifty-five prisoners and four SS noncommissioned officers were killed during this armed uprising.

83

Head of the Gestapo office for the Kattowitz district, in which Auschwitz was located.

84

The river Sola, which flows into the Vistula a few miles north of Auschwitz, formed the eastern boundary of the Auschwitz camp area.

85

Hoess’s predecessor as head of Department DI in the Economic Administration Head Office was Arthur Liebehenschel. He became commandant of Auschwitz I. He proved, incidentally, a considerably less cruel and brutal commandant than Hoess had been.

86

See Appendix 6.

87

See Appendices 2 to 9.

88

Heinrich Müller, the head of the Gestapo. See Appendix 4

89

Hoess is, inexplicably enough, confused about the organization in which he worked. According to an organization plan of the Reich Security Head Office dated October 1, 1943, there was no Subsection (Referat) IVb. There was a Department (Aintsgruppe) VIb of the Reich Security Head Office, which had four subsections, the first three of which dealt with Catholicism, Protestantism, the sects and Freemasonry, while the fourth (Eichmann) was responsible for Jewish matters. A special administrative subsection for protective custody matters formed part of Department IVc, under Dr. Berndorff, and was referred to as Subsection IVc2.

90

Joseph Kramer, a member of the SS-Totenkopf organization, had been employed in concentration camp duties since 1934. In 1940 he was, for five months, Hocss’s adjutant at Auschwitz. Transferred to Natzweiler, he returned in May 1944 to Auschwitz, where he succeeded Hartjenstein, who then became commandant of Natzweiler, as commandant of Auschwitz II or Auschwitz-Birkenau. In December 1944 he was made commandant of Bergen-Belsen, where he remained until the end.

91

Bergen-Belsen was created in the spring of 1943 as a concentration camp for privileged Jews, by which was meant the so-called “exchange” Jews, persons with British or American nationality or with papers of a neutral power, as well as Jews who were believed to have some sort of bargaining value. Until late in 1944 the number of jews in Bergen-Belsen did not exceed 15,000 and at that time conditions in the camp were relatively good, certainly far better than in the other camps. But in the winter of 1944-45 Bergen-Belsen was made into a reception camp for sick prisoners. During the evacuation of the camps located in the East and West, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Natzweiler, etc., a steady stream of prisoners, most of whom were sick, began to pour into Bergen-Belsen, until its population reached some 50,000, living in the most appalling conditions and with a daily death roll of 250 or 300. The camp was liberated by the British on April 15, 1945.

92

The visit in question took place in March 1945. “Mittelbau” was the name given, in the summer of 1943, to the complex of work camps, underground factories, etc., controlled by the Mittelwerke Company and located in the Harz mountains, principally near Salza. The major part of the work was the production of V-weapons, and very large numbers of prisoners were employed in this, being drawn in the main from Buchenwald concentration camp. This complex of camps was also known as Dora, and the Jiving and working conditions that prevailed there, even as early as 1943, were catastrophic. On October 28, 1944, the majority of the prisoners engaged in work in this area were concentrated into one camp, which was called Dora, and which then contained some 24,000 persons, while a further 8,000 prisoners who continued to live in work camps were now controlled from Dora. By the spring of 1945 Dora, or Mittelbau, contained some 50,000 prisoners, despite an exceptionally high mortality rate. When in April of 1945 American troops approached the southern Harz mountains, Himmler ordered that all the inmates of Dora be gassed in the subterranean installations. A series of accidents prevented the implementation of this order, and finally in mid-April the inmates were evacuated to Bergen-Belsen.

93

The Federal German Statistical Office has estimated (1956) the total number of civilian dead in all Germany throughout the war, killed by air action, at 410,000.

94

See Appendices 8 and 9.

95

Gross-Rosen, near Schweidnitz in Lower Silesia, had been a concentration camp since May 1941. In 1944 it contained some 12,000 inmates. Gross-Rosen with its numerous subsidiary camps scattered throughout Lower Silesia, East Saxony, and the Sudetenland was to receive the inmates from Auschwitz according to the evacuation plan. However, as early as March 21, 1945, Gross-Rosen had itself to be evacuated, and was moved to Reichenau in Bohemia, where the camp was finally liberated on April 5, 1945.

96

The “People’s Levy” called out at the very end of the war, roughly equivalent to the British Home Guard of 1940.

97

Heinrich Schmauser, an SS general, was Leader of the Southeast District (Silesia) and simultaneously senior SS and Police Leader in this province. As such he was responsible for the carrying out of Himmler’s orders for the evacuation of Auschwitz and of the Silesian Camps.

98

A peninsula in the Baltic, west of Rügen.

99

Professor Dr. Karl Gebhardt was a childhood friend of Himmler’s. He was in the Oberland Bund and took part in the abortive Munich Putsch of 1923. In 1933 Himmler took him into the SS. As head of the Hohenlychen Medical Institute in Brandenburg, which later became an SS hospital, he was one of the senior SS medical men in Germany. He was also Himmler’s principal adviser in medical matters. Shortly before the end of the war he was appointed President of the German Red Cross. During the so-called “Doctors’ Trial” at Nuremberg he was condemned to death for the part he had played in medical experiments carried out on concentration camp inmates.

100

A typewritten document of eight pages, which Hoess signed at 2:30 a.m. on March 14, 1946. It does not differ substantially from what he later said or wrote in Nuremberg or Cracow.

101

See page 16 of Lord Russell’s Introduction for details of this interview.

102

Hans Fritsche, a radio commentator and a close colleague of Goebbels, was one of the principal accused before the Nuremberg Tribunal.

103

Dr. Curt von Burgsdorff had served as Undersecretary of State for Administration in the Protectorate Bohemia-Moravia from 1939 to 1942. From December 1943 until January 1945 he was Governor of the Cracow District in the Government-General. Found guilty merely of participation in the “criminal fascist government,” he was given the minimum sentence by the Polish People’s Court, and, since he had already been in prison for three years awaiting trial, was immediately discharged and sent back to Germany.

The reference is apparently to Secretary of State, Dr. Josef Bühler, formerly deputy for the Government-General in Cracow. He was condemned to death in Warsaw on July 20, 1948.

104

Göth, an SS officer, had been dierctly responsible for the liquidation of the Cracow ghetto in March 1943. Later he was in command of the Jewish camp at Plaszow, near Cracow. In the autumn of 1944 proceedings for embezzlement were instigated against him in an SS court. On September 5, 1946, he was condemned to death by the Polish People’s Court in Cracow.

105

See Appendices 3 to 9.

106

Buildings in the base camp, where articles of clothing and equipment for the SS rank and file were stored.

107

After Auschwitz had been built, the German Armaments Works (DAW) built a branch factory inside the camp, where a labor force of up to 2,500 prisoners was employed.