Well despite missing part 3 due to work I did sit through part 4 tonight without interruption A short summary for those who missed it, just a guide of the main points so it may be a bit back to front but Angie will be along soon to correct my mistakes :p . The Program concentrated mostly on the corruption aspect of Auschwitz but covered quite a few topics generally. It started around 1943 with the creation of new Gas chambers and Crematoriums. There was much wealth flowing through the camp by this time and the SS were basically on the rob in the camp, lining their own pockets before the money and other goods were sent to Berlin. The program suggested (if I remember correctly) about 60m Marks was taken from the dead, a figure of about £120m. By 1943 there were some 45 sub camps at Auschwitz serving up mass slave labour to the industry Hoss built up around the main camp. A haunting quote: You lived, worked and died at Birkenau Generally the fit and able that arrived by train to auschwitz were used until their death in some form of labour, the rest including children were sent to the chambers. There was some focus on Canada or Kanada depending onthe way some tended to spell it, this was the part of the camp where all the by this time dead's belongings were brought to be filtered out to the various Nazi causes, the biggest being the cash and Jewels to Berlin. It was so called kanada as there was a belief that it was a country of great riches. Life was good for the prisoners in kanada, they were allowed to grow their hair and behae more like ordinary people than prisoners. The drawback being that there were often Sexual assaults by SS guards because they did not look like your ordinary Auschwirz prisoner if there is such a thing. There was an interesting story by Helena Citriona who worked in Kanada, she was the subject of one Guards attention and received a note from him to say he was in love with her, she resisted his approachs until one day when a train brought her sister, Daughter and her daughters baby son to the camp, they were heading straight for the camp chambers when the Guard went to rescue them. He managed to rescue her sister but there was no way he could keep the two children and they sent to the chamber while her sister worked got a job in Kanada. Helena was later to give evidence at the war crimes trial of the Guard who saved her sister. Generally all goods the story continued were placed in a locked box in the center of kanda, cash, diamonds and other valuables headed for Berlin, here the corruption becam more clear, SS guards were intercepting much of the goods for themselves. Oskar Groning was responsible for manging and delivering valuables to Berlin but he openly admitted helping himself also, towards the end of the program he was asked the question: Did you not feel guilty about what you were doing while som many were dying around you? He replied "Absolutely not!" (Tosser! Sorry not usually me but he really got on my nerves) Part of the program was deciated to (mis-spelt I am sure) Erma Grazer, I have come across her before but need to get more about her, I missed her age while in the camp but when she was tried and convicted at the war crimes trial she was hanged and was only 23. Not very old but she was the supervisor of the womens camp and the most brutal, she was irresponsible for 30,000 women in just 60 barracks with little running water and disease rampant. She thought nothing of killing and used her whip to its maximum effect. I was waiting for the next part at some point in series and her it came, what I consider to be one of the most hideous and ruthless nazi of the holocaust, Josef Mengele! He carried out many experiments on prisoners in the camp, however his crimes ran much deeper than just auschwitz and I think what he done overall was quite understated. His biggest experiment in auschwitz was on twin children where he carried out tst on Genetic Research Inheritence, something the Nazis had spent muchtime on trying to understand. The Children knew him as "good Uncle" but of course it was a sham to get the to co-operate more effectively. Eva Mozes Kor explained how she would have her hands tied together and blood taken from her until she would faint, whilst also getting up to 5 injections a day from Mengele. She explained how he looked at her charts one day and openly said "Too bad, she is so young but will be dead in 2 weeks" Eva survived of course saying "I had to overcome or perish". It was common that when one twin died he would instantly summon up the other twin and inject a lethal cocktail to the heart so that he could carry out an autopsy on both at the same time. He also expermented on steralization in the camp as well. A short time was also spent on the Sobibor outbreak as well, but I dont intend to cover much of that here at this stage. There was also the story of block 24a that was converted to a brothel in Auschwitz, I never knew that! In 1943 Himler agreed this for the hardest working prisoners but not the jews. Vouchers were given out to have sex with the women in the brothel. It was mostly those with special value to the SS that would get these vouchers. In general it was women from the camp that were used in the brothel but not Jews. Hoss was removed from his charge of the camp due to the corruption discovered by Conrad Mogen. Hoss was not disciplined but promoted to camp administration in Berlin, his family chose to remain at the camp while he was away. The program remarked that the store that contained most of the evidence of corruption in the camp was destroyed by fire 2 months after Hoss left, not quite sure if it was suggesting Hoss was involved but I ask the question "why wait 2 months". And at that the program ended at a point where Hoss was being brought back to carry out the bigest killing spree ever seen at a camp. There you go a *cough* quick review of program 4, ignore the spelling, correct me anyhwhere I am wrong and I will post my own comments in a while. regards
Part of the program was deciated to (mis-spelt I am sure) Erma Grazer, I have come across her before but need to get more about her, I missed her age while in the camp but when she was tried and convicted at the war crimes trial she was hanged and was only 23. I will post something more detailed on the episode soon, having missed it earlier in the week and only watched it on tape today. But in reply to this point, I agree that this is how it sounded, but I am sure the spelling is wrong. I think she was Irma Greiss or Griess, or similar, but I cannot locate her via the index in the book version or find this story via a quick flick through the text. At any rate, no loss and she thouroughly deserved her fate, young as she was.
Found more on her. http://www.auschwitz.dk/Women/Grese.htm Correct spelling = Irma Grese She became a camp guard at the age of 19, and in March 1943 she was transferred to Auschwitz. She rose to the rank of Senior SS-Supervisor in the autumn of 1943, in charge of around 30,000 women prisoners, mainly Polish and Hungarian Jews. This was the second highest rank that SS female concentration camp pesonnel could attain.
I will post something more detailed on the episode soon, having missed it earlier in the week and only watched it on tape today. But in reply to this point, I agree that this is how it sounded, but I am sure the spelling is wrong. I think she was Irma Greiss or Griess, or similar, but I cannot locate her via the index in the book version or find this story via a quick flick through the text. At any rate, no loss and she thouroughly deserved her fate, young as she was. Here is something about her from Albert Pierrepoint At last we finished noting the details of the ten men, and R.S.M. O'Neil ordered 'Bring out Irma Grese'. She walked out of her cell and came towftrds us laughing. She seemed as bonny a girl as one could ever wish to meet. She answered O'Neil's questions, but when he asked her age she paused and smiled. I found that we were both smiling with her, as if we realised the conventional embarrassment of a woman revealing her age. Eventually she said, 'Twenty-one,' which we knew to be cor­rect. This blonde girl of twenty-one, who habitually carried a riding whip to lash prisoners to death, had, it was stated by one of her fellow-guards in the camp, been responsible for at least thirty deaths a day. O'Neil asked her to step on to the scales. 'Schnell!' she said - 'Quick, get it over.' Executioner: Pierrepoint P145
Found more on her. http://www.auschwitz.dk/Women/Grese.htm Correct spelling = Irma Grese She became a camp guard at the age of 19, and in March 1943 she was transferred to Auschwitz. She rose to the rank of Senior SS-Supervisor in the autumn of 1943, in charge of around 30,000 women prisoners, mainly Polish and Hungarian Jews. This was the second highest rank that SS female concentration camp pesonnel could attain. Annoyingly, although she was featured in the episode, she is not indexed in the book, even under the right spelling!
I find that, possibly by concentrating on many excellent points of detail, the story is moving on without much of an overview. I think this is important, because Auschwitz had the reputation as the very centre of the Holocaust. To summarise what had happened so far: The main Auschwitz concentration camp opened shortly after the German invasion of Poland and, although conditions there were harsh and brutal, it was not really at the centre of the concentration camp network, or particularly associated with the Nazi policy towards the Jews. Throughout its history, Auschwitz 1 remained mainly a concentration camp for political prisoners, people classed as criminals and antisocials and, increasingly afrer the summer of 1941, Russians, although some Jews were imprisoned there. Meanwhile, Nazi policy towards the Jews, particularly in Poland, was based around creating Ghettos and forced labour. However - and the series didn't really cover this - many of the smaller rural ghettos in Poland never were of the closed type and remained open until overtaken by the start of the mass killings in late 1941 and into 1942 (in many respects, the extermination of the more rural Ghettos preceeded the major cities). By 1941 when the extermination of the Polish Jews began, mass shootings were underway in the occupied areas of the Soviet Union. By late 1941 when the decision to carry out the "final solution" had been taken (not well covered in the series - better in the book), the shooting method was seen as unsatisfactory and a search was on for new methods. Intitially, the carbon monoxide van method, as used in the Nazi T4 programme was tried at Chelmno (and also at the Riga Ghetto), but not without problems, particularly disposal of the bodies and small capacity. At the same time, deportation of the German Jews to the Ghettos had commenced, leading to mass overcrowding and epidemics (no doubt made worse by malnoutishment and progressively actual starvation). In Poland, a series of extermination camps were constructed to clear the Ghettos, which were at their peak of operation in 1942. Jews from other contries were also sent there. Overall, these centres, which were not labour camps (with the exception of Majdanek (Lublin)), accounted for more Jewish vicims than Auschwitz, but none did so individually. By 1943, their task was nearing its end and they were run down and then closed long before the liberation by the Red Army. Little trace was left of the buildings. Following the revolt at Sobibor in 1943, there was a reversion to mass shooting to clear the remaining centres of Jewish incarceration, such as at Majdanek (17,000 in a day), Trawniki (a transit camp, not a killing centre) and others in an operation called "Harvest Festival". Disposal of bodies had remained problematic, although mass burial had been replaced by improvised methods of cremation. Although in the centres in use in 1942/43, fixed gas chambers had replaced the vans, carbon monoxide was still the method used. I don't think that we are going to see much of it in the series, but in 1942 another new feature was the increasing involvement of Europe's rail network in the international tranport of Jews to be murdered. This is a pity, because the surviving records of this traffic consitute one of the most important primary sources we have (in particular see the work of Raul Hilberg on this). Meanwhile at Auschwitz, a new camp was being constructed at Birkenau (just a few miles away form the original camp and closer to the town) as the centre of a growing indistrial complex, for which the SS supplied mainly Jewish labour (at a profit). And at the same time, experimental gassings were carried out at Auschwitz 1 using Zyclon B or ZB, which was prussic acid (cyanide crystals) developed as insecticide. Also, a proper crematorium was buit there (crematorium 1), which was also used for experimental gassings and later early "routine" gassings. However, to simplify matters, two existing cottages at Birkenau were converted into gas chambers, but without crematoria, so cremations were carried out using the improvised methods developed elsewhere. These gas chembers also used ZB and the maufacturers developed a new strength just for Aushwitz, because the existing formula was found to be too weak to work "ideally" on humans. The reason for creating these gas chembers at Birkenau stemmed from the policy of beginning to ship whole populations there: the old, the sick and families with children. The ramp selections were to identify those considered suitable for work and send the rest direct for killing. The majority were killed right away and were never registed by the camp authorities, or had tattoos with a number, something the deniers unfortunately latch onto in their pathetic attempts to show it didn't happen. Only those selected for work were registered. This is, incidentally, one reason why the railway records are so important. The railways generally charged "excursion rates" for the transport, based on numbers on the trains, so demanded accurate information about how many boarded. The process remained unsatisfactory and by 1943 plans to construct purpose buit gas chambers with attached crematoria came to fruition. I would need to check to exact order of completion, because there were construction problems with one of them, but the first to open was either crematorium 2 or 3 (remember that crematorium 1 was at the main camp), close to where the new ramp was opened in 1944. This opened in March 1943 and by June of that year crematoria, 4 and 5 had opened in a more remote area close to where the original two converted houses were. I am not going to describe constuction methods, design or capacity in any detail, except to say that crematoria 4 and 5 had a smaller capacity, but were better designed. As a complex, however, the Nazis finallt had the machinery to engage in a process of killing and disposal on an industrial scale. It is obvoius to me that this was not done in response to "local difficulties" at Auschwitz, but reflected the accumulated experience of large scale killings elsewhere and was a preparation for true "finality" in the killing process. Meanwhile, as Lee has stated, in 1943 the Auschwitz industrial complex had grown by leaps and bounds, with a resulting increase in the demand for labour and, almost as a by product, vastly increased mass murder. If 1944 was to be the year of the real killing frenzy at Birkenau, then 1943 saw the second highest number. I was disappointed that episode 4 did not seem to make this clear, which is why I have written this summary. Lets see what episode 5 has to say.
Due to some medical treatment, I haven't felt up to writing much on episodes 5 and 6. Anyone else want to have a go?
I will when I get some time just so busy right now with studying and so on.. And there have been some problems with ww2forum which I have been working on as well. I will get something down shortly though.
Due to some medical treatment, I haven't felt up to writing much on episodes 5 and 6. Anyone else want to have a go? the whole series is being repeated on UK History Channel starting from 28 feb
