Antique Judaica lise schlanger hanau cup saved rescued jews wwii amazing scarce


Antique Judaica lise schlanger hanau cup saved rescued jews wwii amazing scarce

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Antique Judaica lise schlanger hanau cup saved rescued jews wwii amazing scarce:
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Antique Judaica silver plate cup Given to Lise Hanau (née Schlanger)
RareHeight: 20.5 cm ( about 8.2")Diameter: 15 cm (about 6") upDiameter base: 9.5 cm (about 4")Condition: very good (worn – minor)
Lise Schlanger was born in Strasbourg on January 21, 1925. Raised in this city, she was a scout until the war.Refugee from Alsace, studied nursing in Limoges with exemption from age due to her refugee status. Then she worked at the Rivesaltes camp (see article opposite).She then worked in a home for non-Jewish children under false documents.Immediately after the war, in 1945, she left for Israel, and worked as a nurse at the Assuta Hospital in Tel Aviv, then as an independent.Lise returns to France in 1947 for her sister's wedding, and she meets the man who will be her husband a few months later. A year after the birth of their son, all three returned to Israel, but they had to return to France to replace Lise's father, who was ill in his business.She then became involved in community life in Strasbourg, in particular at the KKL , and assisted the mohel (circumciser) Isi Wertheimer .In 1962, she led the women's team which took care of the care to be given to children and mothers repatriated from North Africa , spending whole days at the community center.She is always available to her friends and so until 1977, when she returns to Israel, when her husband retires. Lise remains active today.Lise Hanau died in Jerusalem on Friday December 28, 2013. She was buried the following Sunday in the Petah Tiqwah cemetery.
Lise Hanau, nee SchlangerLise Hanau, née Schlanger, was born on January 21, 1925 in Strasbourg. She was a member of the Boy Scouts until the war. When the war started, she fled to Limoges. Due to her refugee status, the age limit was not applied to her, so she was allowed to start nursing training there early. After completing her training, she worked for three months at Haus l'Isére.In this non-Jewish facility, unmarried mothers and sick children were cared for. She was relatively protected by false papers. But in 1942 she received an urgent call from Andrée Salomon of the OSE (short for Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, i.e. the Jewish children's charity), which she already knew from Strasbourg.Andrée Salomon, née Sulzer, was a paralegal in Strasbourg. She and her husband Tobie had visas and could have emigrated to America or Palestine. In the face of the misery of the persecution of the Jews and the internment camps, they stayed in France. With remarkable energy she organized legal and illegal rescue operations for Jewish children. And she frequented all available forces for this task by telephone or telegram. So she asked Lise to take a train to Rivesaltes (see also Friedel Bohny-Reiter) that same day to take care of the children in the internment camp. When she objected that she was not available at such short notice, she received the answer: Il te faut longtemps pour prendre quelques slips et une brosse à dents? (Translated: Do you need a lot of time to pack a pair of panties and a toothbrush?) Lise immediately traveled to Rivesaltes in her nurse's clothes with the wide nurse's cape, equipped with a permit from Andrée Salomon.In the internment camp, she took over the children's barracks. The children should be collected here in a targeted manner in order to be able to help them better and more specifically. Lise, not even eighteen years old, almost a child herself, worked non-stop. It suited her that she could address the children in French, German, Yiddish or English given the mixture of peoples. For many children she obtained forged papers from a counterfeiting workshop in Marseille when they were released. These identity papers were particularly important for young people over the age of 16, because from this age they were treated the same as adults. So they were made a few months younger in their identity papers.Things got really dicey in September 1942. The deportations of the Jewish internees to the extermination camps began. Again and again she mingled with the people who were waiting to be taken away. She looked for children in the crowd who had not been entrusted to the children's barracks. In a flash, she had the child disappear under her nurse's cloak, often enough under the noses of the guards, sometimes just before boarding the train. As inconspicuously as possible she then went back to her barracks with the child under her cloak to hand them over to the young helpers of her barracks. She immediately marched back to the crowd, again scouting for children to save them from deportation.More and more relatives gave her the children in the hope of finding them safe and sound when they returned. The children's barracks were quickly overcrowded. The OSE, which could rely on the support of the Perpignan prefecture, officially or secretly smuggled the children out of the camp with forged French papers. Lise even brazenly hid two children under the bench of a car that was leaving the camp. All the children in the OSE children's barracks were saved and were later taken into children's homes or foster families.In December 1942 she also left Rivesaltes and moved to the Grenoble region, where she worked in a non-Jewish children's home. In 1945 she moved to Israel, first worked in a hospital in Tel Aviv and then became self-employed. When she traveled to France to marry her sister in 1947, she met her husband. After returning to Israel, she soon had to return to France to take care of her ailing father.In 1962 she accepted a new challenge in France. After tens of thousands of Algerians were massacred by the French army after unrest in Setif and Guelma in 1945, the independence movement in Algeria took off. Algeria gained independence in 1962 after eight years of bloody war. Many Algiers French moved to France. Thousands of Jews were also among the refugees. Rabbi Max Warschawski organized comprehensive integration assistance for Jews from North Africa in Alsace. And Lise Hanau took over the management of the team responsible for the care and health issues of the children and mothers from North Africa
In 1942, Félicie Lise Schlanger Hanau arrived in Grenoble where she was recruitedby Andrée Salomon . She works at the Fort-Paillet camp in Vénissieux in the Lyon region.She arrives at the Rivesaltes camp where she works voluntarily in the children's barracks. She organizes illegalcrossings of children from inside to outside the camp, and accompanies them to Lyon. She brings false papers into thecamp to allow escapes of adults.Arrested for a few hours, she was released thanks to the testimony of an officer; that night, November 11, 1942, theGerman army invaded the southern zone.Lise Hanau continued her activities until the Liberation.Medal of the Fighter against Nazism (IsraeLise Hanau (née Schlanger)The wonderful nurse from Rivesaltes1925-2013by Marianne Picardexcerpt from Mémoire vive , journal of the Aloumim Association (IsraeliAssociation of Children Hidden in France during the Shoa), No. 22-23 June2001 with the kind permission of the author.The text was annotated by Lise HanauShe is so discreet, so modest, that we had difficultyfinding her. Then we had to beg her for permission totalk about the admirable role she played during theHolocaust in France.Lise Hanau, originally from Strasbourg whosecharming intonation she has kept, has lived for manyyears in Israel where, well integrated, she is known forher availability, her generosity, her love for others.We are in 1942. Lise Hanau has just finished hernursing studies and has been working for threemonths in a non-Jewish house in Isère whichwelcomes single mothers and sick children, when shereceives an imperative phone call from AndreeSalomon she knew from Strasbourg and who asks herbluntly: " Take the train this evening and meet me at the Rivesaltes camp, you willbe the nurse for the children of the camp. "Lise hesitates: " It is difficult for me to leave so fast, ”she replies.At the other end of the line, André Salomon's well-timed voice retorts: " Do youneed a long time to take a few briefs and a toothbrush? "When Andrée Salomon gives an order, we can only comply. And Lise leaveswithout her parents objecting, which is remarkable. She receives a pass fromAndrée Salomon who is waiting for her in Perpignan and enters the Rivesaltescamp, in her nurse's uniform, with her large cape and blue veil.Located in the Pyrénées Orientales, a department in southwestern France,Rivesaltes was a concentration camp surrounded by barbed wire and guarded byFrench soldiers. It was soon to become a transit camp to the extermination sites.In this camp, not a blade of grass, remembers Lise, nothing but stones, barrackswhere Jews of foreign nationality arrested during a raid, a check, crossing thedemarcation line or an attempt to cross the Spanish or Swiss border illegally.Whole families live in a total lack of hygiene, the latrines are simple boards withoutdoors; we sleep on straw with, for all bedding, a bad blanket. In the barracks, notable, no chairs, no toiletries. Separated from the women, the men, totally idle, livein perpetual anguish.Andrée Salomon has taken up residence in theRivesaltes camp and Lise becomes the nurse atthe children's hut. It is a building located at theend of the camp where Andrée Salomon and histeam want to bring in as many children aspossible.Lise, who is not yet eighteen, works tirelessly.11/21/21, 4:43 PM Lise 2/5Refugee from Alsace, studiednursing in Limoges withexemption from age due to herrefugee status. Then sheworked at the Rivesaltes camp(see article opposite).She then worked in a home fornon-Jewish children under falsedocuments.Immediately after the war, in1945, she left for Israel, andworked as a nurse at theAssuta Hospital in Tel Aviv,then as an independent.Lise returns to France in 1947for her sister's wedding, andshe meets the man who will beher husband a few monthslater. A year after the birth oftheir son, all three returned toIsrael, but they had to return toFrance to replace Lise's father,who was ill in his business.She then became involved incommunity life in Strasbourg, inparticular at the KKL , andassisted the mohel(circumciser) Isi Wertheimer .In 1962, she led the women'steam which took care of thecare to be given to children andmothers repatriated fromNorth Africa , spending wholedays at the community center.She is always available to herfriends and so until 1977, whenshe returns to Israel, when herhusband retires. Lise remainsactive today.Lise Hanau died in Jerusalemon Friday December 28, 2013.She was buried the followingSunday in the Petah Tiqwahcemetery.She is almost alone to take care of about fortyresidents. With the help of three or four youngBelgians, she must distribute the lunch soup tothem, wash them, delous them, blackmail them;Drive them in a row at 4 p.m. to the Swiss rescuehut, which offers them sweetened rice pudding.In addition, she walks around the camp and offersparents to entrust their children to her.who will bebetter off in his hut (1) . Some mothers agree, inthe interest of their offspring, but others, tooanxious, refuse to separate from their young.When she can leave the camp, she takes theopportunity, according to Andrée Salomon'sinstructions, to obtain false identity papersintended for the children (2) . The objective of thisaction is simple: to avoid at all costs thedeportation of these young people.Then comes September 1942: it is during theTishri celebrations that the first departures areorganized, the first deportations. Lise attends thecall of the Jews who leave for Drancy thenAuschwitz. She sees in the group a little boy thathis parents had not wanted to entrust to thechildren's barracks. In a few seconds, sheapproaches him, stuffs him into his large cloakand leads him as quickly andas discreetly aspossible towards his hut (3) .Lise very often undertakes such rescueoperations, under the noses of the police,sometimes just before boarding the train. Barelysaved, terrified, shocked by the separation, thechildren who have just left their parents arrive inthe barracks in tears. Lise immediately organizesa round or a game, she gives each of them a littlesomething and surrounds them with her affection.She speaks to them in French, but also inGerman, Yiddish, English, she finds the words foreveryone.11/21/21, 4:43 PM Lise 3/5Lise Schlanger (Hanau) in nurse's uniform atRivesaltes in 1942The children of Rivesaltes with Lise Schlanger (left)Comprenant que la situation va en empirant, que les déportations se déroulent àun rythme accéléré, Lise Hanau va de baraque en baraque proposer aux parentsencore réticents de prendre en charge leurs enfants jusqu'à leur retour... Beaucoupacceptent cette séparation que tous espèrent provisoire. Officiellement limité à 35,le nombre des pensionnaires de la baraque est maintenant beaucoup plus élevé.Andrée Salomon et son équipe font sortir les enfants, soit par une filière officielle(4), dotés de faux papiers ou de familles fictives de nationalité française, soit pardes filières clandestines. Lise fait par exemple passer deux enfants cachés sous labanquette d'une voiture.Tous les jeunes qui sont passés par la baraque des enfants ont été sauvés : enquittant Rivesaltes, ils ont rejoint des maisons d'enfants, des familles d'accueil.Lise Hanau quitte Rivesaltes début décembre 1942, les derniers Juifs de ce campayant été conduits à Gurs. Elle rejoint la région de Grenoble.Admirable Lise Hanau ! Mais elle ne tire aucune gloire de ce qu'elle a fait."J'étais jeune, dit-elle, j'aimais l'aventure. En tant que juive, j'étais contente de fairequelque chose de concret pour aider mon peuple, et si j'ai pu contribuer à sauverdes enfants, c'est parce que j'avais sous les yeux l'exemple contagieux d'AndréeSalomon dont la force nous galvanisait. Elle m'a appris à mépriser le danger et àgarder toujours espoir dans l'amour des enfants."11/21/21, 4:43 PM Lise 4/5Les deux faces d'une carte postale adressée à Lise Schlanger (Hanau)Notes ajoutées par Lise Hanau au texte de Marianne PicardNous voulions regrouper les enfants dans la baraque d'enfants pour plusieursraisons :- les éloigner de la proximité des adultes- les réunir et les occuper entre eux- et surtout tâcher de les faire libérer au plus vite du campLa préfecture de Perpignan nous était favorable. Andrée Salomon, qui dirigeaitnos équipes a usé de toute son influence, de toute sa ténacité pour faire libérer lesenfants en groupe. Chacun d'eux recevait un certificat de libération de laPréfecture. Ceux des enfants qui n'ont pu être libérés officiellement, ont étéévacués illégalement par nous. Il était impératif que tous les enfants quittentrapidement le camp - à tout moment les ordres de Vichy pouvaient annuler unstatut. Retour au texteLe laboratoire de faux papiers se trouvait à Marseille. Les papiers étaient pour lesjeunes de plus de 16 ans et les adultes. Les jeunes étaient déportables à partir de16 ans, nous les avons rajeunis de quelques mois. Les adultes avaient d'autresproblèmes qui ont été résolus. Retour au texteRoch Hashana 13-9-1942 :Dès le matin tous les internés sont dehors devant chaque baraque. Un bloc depersonnes, hommes, femmes et quelques enfants.... Sur la place devant eux uneestrade pour les autorités du camp.L'appel des partants se fait par haut-parleurs. Les noms de ces malheureuxs'égrènent, lentement. Tous sont à l'écoute le coeur battant. Les personnesappelées commencent à bouger. Elles doivent traverser la place et se rendent del'autre côté, là où se rassemblent les déportés de demain. Ils sont déjà dans unmonde à part. L'appel continue. Lorsque que je vois que des enfants se trouventavec un couple appelé, je suis rapidement a leurs côtés. Je ne dis rien. Ils meconnaissent, nous avons souvent parlé. J'ouvre mes bras et les parents poussentles enfants vers moi. Une courte étreinte entre eux et j'emmène ces enfants à labaraque 67, la baraque d'enfants. Là, ma petite équipe belge les reçoit. Jeretourne à l'appel et continue jusqu'à la fin de la journée à recevoir au derniermoment les enfants qui étaient restés avec leurs parents. Minutes tragiques, mais11/21/21, 4:43 PM Lise 5/5l'action donne des forces. Le but est présent pour eux, pour moi : sauver lesenfants. Bien entendu la baraque était pleine d'enfants qui s'étaient ajoutés dans lajournée, 30-40 et plus, mais l'espoir était en nous. Il fallait seulement agirrapidement.The next day, Andrée Salomon will work for their release. The OSE will take care ofthem, they will be guarded and if D. wants it, it is through the OSE that they willmeet again one day. Back to textThanks to the interventions of Andrée Salomon, the prefecture of the EasternPyrenees allows a large number of children to leave the campThe Camp de Rivesaltes, also known as Camp Joffre, was an internment and transit camp in the commune of Rivesaltes in the department of Pyrénées-Orientales of the French Southern Zone during World War Two. Between August 11 and October 20, 1942, 2,313 foreign Jews, including 209 children were transferred from Rivesaltes via the Drancy internment camp to the Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz, where they were murdered. Serge Klarsfeld described the camp as the Drancy of the Southern Zone.
Since 2015, the site has been the Mémorial du Camp de Rivesaltes, a museum and memorial documenting the history of the site.Contents1 History1.1 Creation (1938–1940)1.2 Accommodation center (1941–1942)1.3 Transit camp (1942)1.4 Guarded residence center (1944–1946)1.5 Prisoner-of-war depot (1944–1948)2 Post Second World War2.1 Algerian war (1962)2.2 Transit and rehabilitation camp (1962–1977)2.2.1 Harkis2.2.2 Colonial auxiliaries3 Immigration detention center (1986–2007)4 The Rivesaltes memorial museum4.1 History4.1.1 Early memorials4.1.2 Establishment of a museum5 See also6 References7 Sources8 Further reading9 External linksHistoryIn 1935, the commune of Rivesaltes, situated on a rail route 40 km from the Spanish border, was considered a strategic position for the French army, which took over 612 hectares between Rivesaltes and Salses, 5 km from the city of Rivesaltes, to construct a camp. It was originally intended to be used as a military base. At the same time, southern France became a major haven for Jewish refugees attempting to flee to neutral countries, whether legally or illegally.
Creation (1938–1940)
Commemorative stele for survivors of the Spanish Civil WarThe military camp was built in 1938, a few miles from Perpignan. Four-fifths of the camp was situated within the commune of Rivesaltes and one-fifth within the commune of Salses. The camp was named "Camp Joffre" after General Joseph Joffre, the commander-in-chief of the French army during World War I.[2]
Following the Retirada (the exodus of about half a million refugees from Spain to France in early 1939 during the Spanish Civil War),[3][4] the French government decided to use Camp Joffre to intern more than 15,000 Catalan refugees. This decision was never fully put into action, although a small influx of Catalan refugees was held there in 1939.
On December 10, 1940, the Ministry of Defense set aside 600 acres (2.4 km2) south of the camp to house people expelled from Germany. The military camp was then run in parallel with the civilian camps.
In 1939, at the start of World War II, the camp became a military transit base, and in 1940 a refuge for Spanish refugees fleeing from Francoist Spain. After the signing of the armistice, France was split into two. The zone libre ("free zone"), in which the Pyrénées-Orientales was included, came under the administration of the Vichy government.
Gradually, the Joffre camp became a place of internment for families of gypsies, Jews and Spanish refugees. With a capacity of 8000, before long the camp became overcrowded, families were separated, and conditions deteriorated greatly.
Accommodation center (1941–1942)
French Police checking new inmates in the camp PithiviersWhen the first internees arrived on January 14, 1941, the status of the camp was not yet settled. It was decided to make it an "accommodation center" for families. Initially planned for a maximum of 17,000 "guests", it included 150 large barracks with a capacity of 10,000 individuals. Families were divided between barracks: there were barracks for men, others for women and children. By May 31, 1941, the camp had 6,475 internees from 16 nationalities; Spaniards constituted more than half of them, and Jewish refugees from other countries more than a third.
Transit camp (1942)
France under German occupation (Nazis occupied the southern zone starting in November 1942 — Operation Case Anton). The green zone was under Italian administration.
French milice and resistantsAt five o'clock in the morning on August 26, 1942, the foreign Jews in the southern zone were rounded up and taken to the Centre national de rassemblement des Israélites at Rivesaltes. This "center" was newly established in the camp, in blocks J (for women and children), F (for men; this block had previously been reserved for workers) and K (reception, screening and sorting). It was planned as a transit camp for a total of 10,000 internees who would be housed there for 15 days before being deported. The 1,176 Jews already in the camp prior to the round-up were included in this count.
Convoys left Rivesaltes for Drancy internment camp on August 11 (400 people), August 23 (175 people), September 1 (173 people), September 4 (621 people), September 14 (594 people), September 21 (72 people), September 28 (70 people), October (101 people) and October 20 (107 people).
Serge Klarsfeld called the Rivesaltes camp "the Drancy of the free zone", noting that from September 4 to October 22 it played the same role as the Drancy camp in the occupied zone: a transit camp for deportees whose ultimate destination was the Nazi extermination camps. Rivesaltes was, during that time, the camp where the Jews arrested in the so-called "free zone" were gathered, and from which many of them (about 1,700) were sent to Drancy itself.[5]
In November 1942, as Germany invaded the previously unoccupied southern zone of France, German troops moved into Camp Joffre, and it was closed as an internment camp on November 25. There were 277 staff members when it closed.
During those two years, the camp of Rivesaltes housed about 21,000 internees; about 5,714 of them were interned in the "special camp" or transit camp, of whom 2,313 were sent to Drancy and 2,251 were excluded from deportation by the screening committee. A further 215 internees died in the camp, including 51 children one year old or younger.
Guarded residence center (1944–1946)The German army left Rivesaltes on August 19, 1944. While the military part of Rivesaltes camp resumed its original purpose, a new "guarded residence center" was established there on September 12, 1944. Located chiefly in block Q, this center housed people interned under the Vichy regime's épuration ("purification") policy. It had a maximum capacity of 1,080 internees.
The center continued to receive people from other European countries: Spaniards interned for crossing the border illegally were put to work to secure the center, and in January and March 1945 several hundreds of Soviet prisoners of war arrived.
The closing of the center was decided upon on December 10, 1945, and completed early in October 1946.
Prisoner-of-war depot (1944–1948)The military authority transformed the camp into Depot No. 162 for prisoners of war. Housing mostly German and Italian soldiers, this camp held less than 10,000 prisoners in October 1944, and between 6,000 and 7,000 men in May 1945. It closed on May 1, 1948. The prisoners worked extensively on the reconstruction of the Roussillon region. Between May 1945 and 1946, 412 German prisoners of war died in the camp.
Post Second World WarThis facility continued to be used after the events of the Second World War. The Algerian war was the next opportunity to use the facility to detain people.
Algerian war (1962)Under the stiffening[clarification needed] of the French state caused by the Algerian War, the French government planned in 1957 to create an internment camp on the site. The Prefect[clarification needed (of what?)] tried to dissuade them because, in addition to a training center populated mainly by North Africans, the site contained a Professional Military Training Center particularly for North Africans and young soldiers mobilized for war. The plan was not carried out in its entirety, but a prison was set up discreetly for people convicted of supporting Algerian independence, and 527 prisoners were held there between March 9 and April 18, 1962.
Transit and rehabilitation camp (1962–1977)HarkisHarkis is the generic term for Muslim Algerians serving as auxiliaries with the French Army during the Algerian War (1954–1962).
In June 1962, the 1st regiment of Algerian riflemen was repatriated to Camp Joffre. They brought with them hundreds of civilians, women and children running away from the new independent Algeria. In October 1962, about 8000 Harkis were staying at the transit and rehabilitation camp of Rivesaltes (including those from the camp of Larzac and Bourg-Lastic). In all, according to the calculations of Abderahmen Moumen, about 20,000 people passed through and accumulated in the camp from 1962 to 1964. The stay varied from a few days for some families to years for others.
Families considered "irretrievable"—a term used by administrators at the time—were sent at the end of 1964 to the Saint-Maurice-l'Ardoise military camp in the Gard until 1975. Several hundred more families who had employment but no housing were accommodated in a "civil village" in the Rivesaltes camp during the 1960s. In 1963, a forestry village was also created in Rivesaltes for about 25 families of former auxiliaries (about a hundred people). The next decade saw the bulk of this population moved to the HLM (rent-controlled housing) of Rearte, built in the city of Rivesaltes to finalize the situation of these families. The last residents left the camp in February 1977.
Colonial auxiliariesOther French Colonial Forces and auxiliaries from Africa and French Indochina came, accompanied by civilians, with the decolonization of the French colonial empire: from 1964 to 1966 about 600 Guineans arrived, and other former soldiers and their families came from French Indochina.
Immigration detention center (1986–2007)In 1986 an administrative detention center was created, initially to detain Spanish nationals who had entered French territory illegally.[6][7] With Spain's admission to the EEC it transitioned to holding undocumented migrants from other countries. It was closed in 2007 with the opening of a new site nearer Perpignan.[8][9]
The Rivesaltes memorial museum
Serge and Beate Klarsfeld
A Commemorative stele for the Jewish victims of the Rivesaltes camp erected by the "sons and daughters of Jews deported from France". Unveiled on January 16, 1994.In the 1990s, a series of publications and memorials ultimately lead to the 2015 opening of a museum and memorial, known in French as the Mémorial du Camp de Rivesaltes.[10][11]
HistoryEarly memorialsTwo 1993 publications brought attention to the experience of Jews at Rivesaltes. Serge Klarsfeld published The transfer of Jews from the camp of Rivesaltes and the Montpellier area towards the center of Drancy for deportation on August 10, 1942, a list of deported Jews and Jews who had died in the camp of Rivesaltes.[12] Friedel Bohny-Reiter's Journal de Rivesaltes, 1941-1942 described life as a nurse during deporations.[13][14]
On 16 January 1994, Klarsfeld's association, Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France, erected a monument to the memory of 2,313 Jews deported from the Rivesaltes camp to Auschwitz,[15] On 2 December the following year a monument to the Harkis was installed.[10][16] In 1999 a monument to Spanish Republicans was erected.[17] These were followed by commemorations of gypsies and illegal immigrants in 2008 and 2009.[18]
Establishment of a museumIn 1997, following the discovery of part of the camp's archives in a rubbish dump,[19] a collective petition "To the living memory of the camp of Rivesaltes" (Pour la mémoire vivante du camp de Rivesaltes) was signed by Simone Veil, Claude Simon, Edgar Morin and over a thousand other citizens, to protest against the camp's threatened destruction.[14][20][21] This gave backing to Christian Bourquin, the new president of the General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales, and his opposition to the destruction of the site. A public consultation on the project was started in 1998.[22]
In 2000, the French Ministry of Culture included the site in its supplementary list of monuments historiques,[23] and part of the land was purchased from the French government by the General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales.[21]
In 2005, on the French Heritage Day, part of the camp was opened to the public for the first time.[10] In November of the same year, the General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales acquired F block on the site, covering about 42 hectares.[24]
In January 2006, Rudy Ricciotti won an architecture competition for the memorial project, which Robert Badinter agreed to sponsor.[14][25] On January 21, 2009, the construction permit was filed. Work was expected to start in 2010 and take two years.[26][27] On 16 October 2015, the site was inaugurated by French Prime Minister Manuel Valls.[28][29]
In 2020, 270 works by the Catalan artist Josep Bartolí, who was interned at the camp, were donated to the museum by his family.[30]
HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR IN REUNION WITH HER SAVIOR HUGS & TEARS FOR BRAVE ANGEL AFTER 55 YEARSBy Uri DanMarch 28, 1999 5:00amIT took more than 55 years, but Sylvia Gutmann has finally mended her broken heart.
The 59-year-old Holocaust survivor journeyed from New York to Paris last week to meet the woman who rescued her and two sisters from the horrors of Nazi-occupied France in 1942.
For years, she had heard stories about the incredible bravery of ‘Mademoiselle,” a 19-year-old who risked her life to save children whose parents had been shipped off to the death camps.
Last week, with the help of The Post, Sylvia journeyed into the past to thank the remarkable and courageous woman who gave her a future.
‘She gave me a way of life that let me know that one person can make a difference, that you need to speak up for what you believe in, that you need to take risks,” Sylvia said.
The trip back in time began with trepidation.
Mademoiselle, now a 76-year-old widow running a prominent travel agency, was reluctant to relive the old terrors that haunted her nights for so long.
‘It belongs to the past,” she said, insisting that her name not be published. ‘I’ve turned the page . . . I want to forget all the horrible things.”
A day later, the reunion ended with an embrace.
‘It was like I was a 3-year-old little girl in the arms of a wonderful 19-year-old,” Sylvia said.
‘I had the opportunity to say, ‘Look at my soul. Thank you for saving my life. It was a life worth saving. I will live it not only for me, but for you and for my mother, my father and my dead sister.”’
SYLVIA’S STORY
SYLVIA Gutmann was born into a family of German Jewish refugees.
Her father, Nathan, was a traveling salesman who peddled fine fabrics in the countryside. Her mother, Malcha, was a pretty redhead with freckles and green eyes.
Despite the rise of Hitler and anti-Jewish sentiment, the couple led a comfortable existence in Berlin with their two daughters, Rita and Suzi, through the mid-1930s.
But Kristallnacht changed everything. The massive attack on Jews across the German Reich on Nov. 9, 1938, prompted the Gutmanns to flee their homeland – never to return.
The family relocated in Antwerp, Belgium, where Sylvia was born on May 5, 1939. She and her family would spend only a year there.
The German invasion of Belgium in May 1940 put the Gutmanns and thousands of other Jews on the run again. This time, they ended up in Paris.
For a few short weeks, they stayed with a well-to-do Jewish family, but it soon became obvious that the Gutmanns could not stay in the French capital.
‘There was a massive roundup,” Sylvia said, recounting one of the stories she heard from her two older sisters.
‘We were sitting in the park and I was in the baby carriage. The gendarmes came, the whistle blew and my mother suspected they were now going to look for Jews.
‘And she needed to get out of there . . . so she smacked me very hard and I began to cry and one of the gendarmes, who must have been a father himself, sympathized and we left.”
By the time the German army marched into Paris a few days later, the Gutmanns were gone.
‘We got on a trolley and fled again – this time to the Pyrenees. My father planned to go over the Pyrenees. We had some money. He hired a guide, but the guide wouldn’t take the children – and my parents would not leave without their children.
‘That, of course, was their death sentence.”
Settling first in Pau, the family later moved to Nay, a small town to the east. They lived with the Bouhots – a woman with a 13-year-old daughter named Madeleine.
The small degree of stability they found there was fleeting.
In August 1942, Malcha and her three daughters were arrested with other Jewish refugees in Nay. At the time, Nathan Gutmann was in a sanatorium in Eaux Bonnes, recuperating from a respiratory ailment.
Malcha, Rita, Suzi and 3-year-old Sylvia were sent to the Gurs internment camp and then to Rivesaltes, another camp. Those were the last days Sylvia would spend with her mother.
On Sept. 13, Malcha Gutmann was deported from Rivesaltes to Drancy for transport to Auschwitz, where it is believed she was murdered.
‘She was asked if she wanted to take her children with her to the ‘work camp.’ But I think she knew where she was going. In fact, I’m quite sure she did, because she chose not to take us,” Sylvia said.
Two years before, the young mother gave up the chance to save her life by refusing to leave her children. Now she saved them by leaving them behind.
The three sisters spent two weeks in the barracks alone, 10-year-old Rita in charge of her two younger siblings.
”That was a horrible place,” Sylvia said. ‘Lice, vermin, hunger. I remember being hungry all the time. People were dying left and right. We were sick, sick.
”And then one day, Mademoiselle came.”
MADEMOISELLE’S STORY
THE young woman who came to get the Gutmann girls was also a German-Jewish refugee. Her wealthy father moved his wife and children from Cologne to Paris in 1933, just months after Hitler came to power.
Six years later, Mademoiselle was sent to an internment camp for German aliens and then to Gurs in the Pyrenees, where her mother later joined her.
They lived for several months ‘in the most atrocious conditions” but were freed after France’s Vichy regime began collaborating with Germany.
Mademoiselle’s family went to work on a farm in Nay. There, she began working for the Red Cross after befriending the ailing daughter of one of the organization’s officials.
She also became friendly with the deputy prefect of the region, advising him to send his Jewish in-laws into hiding at a convent in Lourdes.
In return, he gave her false identification for herself and fake papers for Jewish children who were being rounded up and sent to internment camps.
”I remembered the terrible months I spent in the internment camp and now it was even worse,” she said.
‘So I decided that in the name of the Red Cross, I will start to save the children.
”There were at least two transports a week [to the death camps]. The parents were asked if they wanted to leave their children or take them.
”I took the ones left behind and brought them to farmers in the area.”
In September 1942, she rescued the Gutmann girls from Rivesaltes, and took them to the Eaux Bonnes sanatorium to spend a week with their father.
Nathan Gutmann – who would be sent to his death at Auschwitz a few months later – wanted his daughters smuggled to Switzerland.
Mademoiselle managed to get them to Annecy, where the girls spent three or four months at a Catholic convent and orphanage – until one night there was a knock at the door.
”The Germans came and wanted to inspect the convent. The Mother Superior said, ‘My children are sleeping, go away, come back tomorrow.’ And they left,” Sylvia said.
‘She called Mademoiselle and said, ‘They must leave tonight.’ Mademoiselle came in the middle of the night for us and took us on another train.”
She brought Sylvia and her sisters to a small town near the Swiss border called Annemasse and a safe house run by the Resistance – then she disappeared.
At nightfall, three masked men disguised as farmers put Sylvia into a straw-covered basket, piled her and her sisters onto bicycles and pedaled them furiously to the Swiss border.
There, they explained the girls were Jews who had relatives in Switzerland. A border guard agreed to let Sylvia, who had diphtheria, and her sisters into the country.
Sylvia Gutmann was about to begin a new life. More than half a century would pass before she would come face to face with the woman who gave her that precious opportunity.
INTO THE PAST
‘FOR a long time I lived my life kind of in secret. I was in hiding,” Sylvia said. ”It was almost demanded of us refugees to forget and get on with things.”
When she finally began her research into the past in the mid-1980s, the terrible truths arrived in ordinary envelopes – the dates of her parents’ transport to Auschwitz, details of the internment at Rivesaltes.
But it wasn’t until her sister, Rita – the keeper of the family memories – died in 1993 that Sylvia decided to visit the past in person.
For years, she had heard about Mademoiselle and her acts of courage. Now she wanted to thank her.
Her first step was to find the Bouhots, the family the Gutmanns lived with in Nay. With the help of a friend and the Internet, she tracked down two addresses and sent off a letter.
”I got a letter from Madeleine almost immediately and she wrote, ‘I had no idea you were alive.’ ”
Last September, Sylvia flew to Nay and met her old friend.
”I cried through the whole trip. My eyes were swollen by the time I came home,” she said.
The trip only whetted her desire to find Mademoiselle, and Madeleine and her husband, Raymond, agreed to do some detective work.
They went to Nay’s city hall, but found nothing because the mayor’s secretary, who had helped many Jews with false papers, had destroyed virtually all the documentation.
Madeleine kept digging and, in January, she wrote to Sylvia with good news – with the help of a neighbor of her grandmother, she had found an old address for Mademoiselle and her married name.
It seemed like a longshot to Sylvia, but she sent a letter and a picture of herself as a child to the old address.
”I know that it would be a miracle if you were the woman who saved my sisters and me so many years ago,” she wrote. ‘If you are, I hope that you will let me know this so that I may write to you of my profound gratitude.”
A month later, a short note arrived in Sylvia’s mailbox.
”Yes, I am Mademoiselle with whom you were left so long ago. I only did my duty and am content to know that you have been in good health,” it said.
”If you come to Europe, let me know. I will be so very happy to meet you.”
Sylvia was blown away.
”Any woman who would write ‘I was only doing my duty’ – that’s a remarkable human being,” she said.
‘Imagine what would have happened if more people were only doing their duty. A million-and-a-half children may not have perished.”
Sylvia knew she had to go to Paris.
She wanted to tell Mademoiselle about the new life she had built in the United States, her 30-year-old son, her work with Russian Jewish emigres.
She wanted to hear Mademoiselle’s story – how she spirited three little girls to safety as their parents were shipped off to the gas chamber at Auschwitz.
Most of all, she wanted to thank her.
There was a flurry of short phone calls to make travel arrangements. Then, last Tuesday night, Sylvia left for Paris.
THE REUNION
THEY met Wednesday after noon at Mademoiselle’s travel agency in an upscale section of Paris.
Tears welled up in Sylvia’s eyes even before the elegantly dressed elderly woman with brown hair and piercing blue eyes emerged from her office.
”Don’t cry. Why are you crying?” Mademoiselle said to the sobbing younger woman, who could barely breathe or talk. ‘Look out the window. The sun is shining. It is a beautiful day.”
It was clear from the start that some of Sylvia’s questions would remain unanswered.
Mademoiselle, who had rescued many children, simply did not remember much about the Gutmanns. Other details she didn’t want to remember.
”For so long, I had nightmares. I would wake up crying because of what I lived through. I don’t want to live it again,” she said. ‘I live today in another world.”
She didn’t want to relive her time in the internment camp, the frightening days spent smuggling children to safety, or her flight to Spain after the Germans and Vichy police caught onto her in 1944.
Nevertheless, over dinner in an exclusive Latin Quarter restaurant on Thursday night, her story slowly emerged.
She told it quietly and stoically, a faint look of pain etched on her face.
But when the conversation turned to the women – Malcha Gutmann and the other mothers who went off to the death camps without their children – her emotions boiled over.
”Your mother was a brave woman to leave you there,” she told Sylvia, then stood up to hold the younger woman in her arms.
It was the memory of that embrace that Sylvia Gutmann carried back to New York the next night.
”I got more than what I came for,” she said. ‘I got my past, and I have my future.
”And she healed my broken heart.”
Lise Hanau (née Schlanger)The wonderful nurse from Rivesaltes1925-2013by Marianne Picardexcerpt from Mémoire vive , journal of the Aloumim Association (IsraeliAssociation of Children Hidden in France during the Shoa), No. 22-23 June2001 with the kind permission of the author.The text was annotated by Lise HanauShe is so discreet, so modest, that we had difficultyfinding her. Then we had to beg her for permission totalk about the admirable role she played during theHolocaust in France.Lise Hanau, originally from Strasbourg whosecharming intonation she has kept, has lived for manyyears in Israel where, well integrated, she is known forher availability, her generosity, her love for others.We are in 1942. Lise Hanau has just finished hernursing studies and has been working for threemonths in a non-Jewish house in Isère whichwelcomes single mothers and sick children, when shereceives an imperative phone call from AndreeSalomon she knew from Strasbourg and who asks herbluntly: " Take the train this evening and meet me at the Rivesaltes camp, you willbe the nurse for the children of the camp. "Lise hesitates: " It is difficult for me to leave so fast, ”she replies.At the other end of the line, André Salomon's well-timed voice retorts: " Do youneed a long time to take a few briefs and a toothbrush? "When Andrée Salomon gives an order, we can only comply. And Lise leaveswithout her parents objecting, which is remarkable. She receives a pass fromAndrée Salomon who is waiting for her in Perpignan and enters the Rivesaltescamp, in her nurse's uniform, with her large cape and blue veil.Located in the Pyrénées Orientales, a department in southwestern France,Rivesaltes was a concentration camp surrounded by barbed wire and guarded byFrench soldiers. It was soon to become a transit camp to the extermination sites.In this camp, not a blade of grass, remembers Lise, nothing but stones, barrackswhere Jews of foreign nationality arrested during a raid, a check, crossing thedemarcation line or an attempt to cross the Spanish or Swiss border illegally.Whole families live in a total lack of hygiene, the latrines are simple boards withoutdoors; we sleep on straw with, for all bedding, a bad blanket. In the barracks, notable, no chairs, no toiletries. Separated from the women, the men, totally idle, livein perpetual anguish.Andrée Salomon has taken up residence in theRivesaltes camp and Lise becomes the nurse atthe children's hut. It is a building located at theend of the camp where Andrée Salomon and histeam want to bring in as many children aspossible.Lise, who is not yet eighteen, works tirelessly.11/21/21, 4:43 PM Lise 2/5Refugee from Alsace, studiednursing in Limoges withexemption from age due to herrefugee status. Then sheworked at the Rivesaltes camp(see article opposite).She then worked in a home fornon-Jewish children under falsedocuments.Immediately after the war, in1945, she left for Israel, andworked as a nurse at theAssuta Hospital in Tel Aviv,then as an independent.Lise returns to France in 1947for her sister's wedding, andshe meets the man who will beher husband a few monthslater. A year after the birth oftheir son, all three returned toIsrael, but they had to return toFrance to replace Lise's father,who was ill in his business.She then became involved incommunity life in Strasbourg, inparticular at the KKL , andassisted the mohel(circumciser) Isi Wertheimer .In 1962, she led the women'steam which took care of thecare to be given to children andmothers repatriated fromNorth Africa , spending wholedays at the community center.She is always available to herfriends and so until 1977, whenshe returns to Israel, when herhusband retires. Lise remainsactive today.Lise Hanau died in Jerusalemon Friday December 28, 2013.She was buried the followingSunday in the Petah Tiqwahcemetery.She is almost alone to take care of about fortyresidents. With the help of three or four youngBelgians, she must distribute the lunch soup tothem, wash them, delous them, blackmail them;Drive them in a row at 4 p.m. to the Swiss rescuehut, which offers them sweetened rice pudding.In addition, she walks around the camp and offersparents to entrust their children to her.who will bebetter off in his hut (1) . Some mothers agree, inthe interest of their offspring, but others, tooanxious, refuse to separate from their young.When she can leave the camp, she takes theopportunity, according to Andrée Salomon'sinstructions, to obtain false identity papersintended for the children (2) . The objective of thisaction is simple: to avoid at all costs thedeportation of these young people.Then comes September 1942: it is during theTishri celebrations that the first departures areorganized, the first deportations. Lise attends thecall of the Jews who leave for Drancy thenAuschwitz. She sees in the group a little boy thathis parents had not wanted to entrust to thechildren's barracks. In a few seconds, sheapproaches him, stuffs him into his large cloakand leads him as quickly andas discreetly aspossible towards his hut (3) .Lise very often undertakes such rescueoperations, under the noses of the police,sometimes just before boarding the train. Barelysaved, terrified, shocked by the separation, thechildren who have just left their parents arrive inthe barracks in tears. Lise immediately organizesa round or a game, she gives each of them a littlesomething and surrounds them with her affection.She speaks to them in French, but also inGerman, Yiddish, English, she finds the words foreveryone.11/21/21, 4:43 PM Lise 3/5Lise Schlanger (Hanau) in nurse's uniform atRivesaltes in 1942The children of Rivesaltes with Lise Schlanger (left)Comprenant que la situation va en empirant, que les déportations se déroulent àun rythme accéléré, Lise Hanau va de baraque en baraque proposer aux parentsencore réticents de prendre en charge leurs enfants jusqu'à leur retour... Beaucoupacceptent cette séparation que tous espèrent provisoire. Officiellement limité à 35,le nombre des pensionnaires de la baraque est maintenant beaucoup plus élevé.Andrée Salomon et son équipe font sortir les enfants, soit par une filière officielle(4), dotés de faux papiers ou de familles fictives de nationalité française, soit pardes filières clandestines. Lise fait par exemple passer deux enfants cachés sous labanquette d'une voiture.Tous les jeunes qui sont passés par la baraque des enfants ont été sauvés : enquittant Rivesaltes, ils ont rejoint des maisons d'enfants, des familles d'accueil.Lise Hanau quitte Rivesaltes début décembre 1942, les derniers Juifs de ce campayant été conduits à Gurs. Elle rejoint la région de Grenoble.Admirable Lise Hanau ! Mais elle ne tire aucune gloire de ce qu'elle a fait."J'étais jeune, dit-elle, j'aimais l'aventure. En tant que juive, j'étais contente de fairequelque chose de concret pour aider mon peuple, et si j'ai pu contribuer à sauverdes enfants, c'est parce que j'avais sous les yeux l'exemple contagieux d'AndréeSalomon dont la force nous galvanisait. Elle m'a appris à mépriser le danger et àgarder toujours espoir dans l'amour des enfants."11/21/21, 4:43 PM Lise 4/5Les deux faces d'une carte postale adressée à Lise Schlanger (Hanau)Notes ajoutées par Lise Hanau au texte de Marianne PicardNous voulions regrouper les enfants dans la baraque d'enfants pour plusieursraisons :- les éloigner de la proximité des adultes- les réunir et les occuper entre eux- et surtout tâcher de les faire libérer au plus vite du campLa préfecture de Perpignan nous était favorable. Andrée Salomon, qui dirigeaitnos équipes a usé de toute son influence, de toute sa ténacité pour faire libérer lesenfants en groupe. Chacun d'eux recevait un certificat de libération de laPréfecture. Ceux des enfants qui n'ont pu être libérés officiellement, ont étéévacués illégalement par nous. Il était impératif que tous les enfants quittentrapidement le camp - à tout moment les ordres de Vichy pouvaient annuler unstatut. Retour au texteLe laboratoire de faux papiers se trouvait à Marseille. Les papiers étaient pour lesjeunes de plus de 16 ans et les adultes. Les jeunes étaient déportables à partir de16 ans, nous les avons rajeunis de quelques mois. Les adultes avaient d'autresproblèmes qui ont été résolus. Retour au texteRoch Hashana 13-9-1942 :Dès le matin tous les internés sont dehors devant chaque baraque. Un bloc depersonnes, hommes, femmes et quelques enfants.... Sur la place devant eux uneestrade pour les autorités du camp.L'appel des partants se fait par haut-parleurs. Les noms de ces malheureuxs'égrènent, lentement. Tous sont à l'écoute le coeur battant. Les personnesappelées commencent à bouger. Elles doivent traverser la place et se rendent del'autre côté, là où se rassemblent les déportés de demain. Ils sont déjà dans unmonde à part. L'appel continue. Lorsque que je vois que des enfants se trouventavec un couple appelé, je suis rapidement a leurs côtés. Je ne dis rien. Ils meconnaissent, nous avons souvent parlé. J'ouvre mes bras et les parents poussentles enfants vers moi. Une courte étreinte entre eux et j'emmène ces enfants à labaraque 67, la baraque d'enfants. Là, ma petite équipe belge les reçoit. Jeretourne à l'appel et continue jusqu'à la fin de la journée à recevoir au derniermoment les enfants qui étaient restés avec leurs parents. Minutes tragiques, mais11/21/21, 4:43 PM Lise 5/5l'action donne des forces. Le but est présent pour eux, pour moi : sauver lesenfants. Bien entendu la baraque était pleine d'enfants qui s'étaient ajoutés dans lajournée, 30-40 et plus, mais l'espoir était en nous. Il fallait seulement agirrapidement.The next day, Andrée Salomon will work for their release. The OSE will take care ofthem, they will be guarded and if D. wants it, it is through the OSE that they willmeet again one day. Back to textThanks to the interventions of Andrée Salomon, the prefecture of the EasternPyrenees allows a large number of children to leave the campIn 1942, Félicie Lise Schlanger Hanau arrived in Grenoble where she was recruitedby Andrée Salomon . She works at the Fort-Paillet camp in Vénissieux in the Lyon region.She arrives at the Rivesaltes camp where she works voluntarily in the children's barracks. She organizes illegalcrossings of children from inside to outside the camp, and accompanies them to Lyon. She brings false papers into thecamp to allow escapes of adults.Arrested for a few hours, she was released thanks to the testimony of an officer; that night, November 11, 1942, theGerman army invaded the southern zone.Lise Hanau continued her activities until the Liberation.Medal of the Fighter against Nazism (Israe
Lise Hanau, geborene SchlangerLise Hanau, geborene Schlanger, wurde am 21.1.1925 in Straßburg geboren. Bis zum Krieg gehörte sie den Pfadfindern an. Mit dem Kriegsbeginn flüchtete sie nach Limoges. Durch ihren Flüchtlingsstatus wurde auf sie nicht die Altersgrenze angewendet, sodass sie dort verfrüht die Krankenschwesternausbildung beginnen durfte. Nach der Ausbildung arbeitete sie drei Monate im Haus l´Isére.In dieser nichtjüdischen Einrichtung wurden ledige Mütter und kranke Kinder versorgt. Durch falsche Papiere war sie relativ geschützt. Doch 1942 erhielt sie einen dringenden Anruf von Andrée Salomon von der OSE (Abkürzung für Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, also das jüdische Kinderhilfswerk), die sie bereits aus Straßburg kannte.Andrée Salomon, geborene Sulzer, war in Straßburg Rechtsanwaltsgehilfin. Sie und ihr Mann Tobie besaßen Visa und hätten nach Amerika oder Palästina auswandern können. Angesichts des Elends der Judenverfolgung und Internierungslager blieben sie in Frankreich. Mit einer bemerkenswerten Energie organisierte sie legale und illegale Rettungsaktionen für jüdische Kinder. Und sie frequentierte per Telefon oder Telegramm alle verfügbaren Kräfte für diese Aufgabe. So forderte sie Lise auf, noch am selben Tag einen Zug nach Rivesaltes (siehe auch Friedel Bohny-Reiter) zu nehmen, um in dem Internierungslager die Kinder zu versorgen. Auf deren Einwände, dass sie nicht derart kurzfristig abkömmlich sei, bekam sie zur Antwort: Il te faut longtemps pour prendre quelques slips et une brosse à dents ? (Sinngemäß übersetzt: Um ein paar Slips und eine Zahnbürste einzupacken benötigst du viel Zeit?) Lise reiste in ihrer Schwesternkleidung mit dem weiten Schwesternumhang unverzüglich nach Rivesaltes, ausgestattet mit einem Passierschein von Andrée Salomon.Im Internierungslager übernahm sie die Kinderbaracke. Hier sollten gezielt die Kinder gesammelt werden, um ihnen besser und gezielter helfen zu können. Lise, nicht einmal achtzehn Jahre alt, fast selber noch ein Kind, arbeitete ohne Unterbrechung. Es kam ihr entgegen, dass sie die Kinder auf französisch, deutsch, jiddisch oder englisch ansprechen konnte angesichts des Völkergemisches. Für viele Kinder besorgte sie bei ihren Freigängen gefälschte Papiere aus einer Fälscherwerkstatt in Marseille. Besonders für die Jugendlichen über 16 Jahre waren diese Identitätspapiere wichtig, weil sie ab diesem Alter den Erwachsenen in der Behandlung gleichstanden. Also wurden sie in ihren Ausweispapieren um einige Monate jünger gemacht.Im September 1942 wurde es richtig brenzlig, Die Deportationen der jüdischen Internierten in die Vernichtungslager begann. Immer wieder mischte sie sich unter die Menschen, die auf ihren Abtransport warteten. Sie suchte nach Kindern in der Menge, die nicht der Kinderbaracke anvertraut worden waren. Blitzschnell ließ sie das Kind unter ihrem Schwesternumhang verschwinden, oft genug unter der Nase der Bewacher, manchmal knapp vor dem Besteigen des Zuges. So unauffällig wie möglich ging sie dann mit dem Kind unterm Umhang zu ihrer Baracke zurück, um sie den jugendlichen Helfern ihrer Baracke zu übergeben. Unverzüglich marschierte sie zur Menschenmenge zurück, wieder nach Kindern ausspähend, um sie vor der Deportation zu retten.Immer mehr Angehörige übergaben ihr die Kinder, in der Hoffnung, sie wohlbehalten bei ihrer Rückkehr wieder vorzufinden. Schnell war die Kinderbaracke überfüllt. Die OSE, die auf die Unterstützung der Präfektur von Perpignan bauen konnte, schleuste die Kinder mit gefälschten französischen Papieren offiziell oder heimlich aus dem Lager. Dreist versteckte Lise sogar einmal zwei Kinder unter die Bank eines Autos, das das Lager verließ. Alle Kinder der Kinderbaracke der OSE konnten gerettet werden, fanden später in Kinderheimen oder Pflegefamilien Aufnahme.Im Dezember 1942 verließ auch sie Rivesaltes und wechselte in die Region von Grenoble, wo sie in einem nichtjüdischen Kinderheim arbeitete. 1945 siedelte sie nach Israel über, arbeitete zunächst in einem Krankenhaus in Tel-Aviv und machte sich dann selbstständig. Als sie 1947 zur Heirat ihrer Schwester nach Frankreich reiste, lernte sie ihren Mann kennen. Nach der Rückkehr nach Israel musste sie bald wieder nach Frankreich, um sich um ihren kranken Vater zu kümmern.1962 nahm sie in Frankreich eine neue Herausforderung an. Nachdem 1945 nach Unruhen in Setif und Guelma zehntausende Algerier von der französischen Armee massakriert wurden, kam es in Algerien zum Aufschwung der Unabhängigkeitsbewegung. 1962 erreichte Algerien nach einem achtjährigen blutigen Krieg seine Unabhängigkeit. Viele Algierfranzosen zogen nach Frankreich. Unter den Flüchtlingen befanden sich auch Tausende von Juden. Der Rabbiner Max Warschawski organisierte im Elsaß eine umfassende Eingliederungshilfe für die Juden aus Nordafrika. Und Lise Hanau übernahm die Leitung des Teams, das für Pflege und Gesundheitsfragen der Kinder und Mütter aus Nordafrika zuständig war. Es gelang dadurch eine schnelle Integration der algerischen Juden.In 1977 she finally returned to Israel. She never showed her merits. All she said about her time in Rivesaltes was that she was young and adventurous. As a Jew, it would have given her a feeling of satisfaction to be able to do something for her people and to save children. In addition, the energetic Andrée Salomon would have been a role model for her, who taught her to despise danger.
Lise Hanau, nee SchlangerLise Hanau, née Schlanger, was born on January 21, 1925 in Strasbourg. She was a member of the Boy Scouts until the war. When the war started, she fled to Limoges. Due to her refugee status, the age limit was not applied to her, so she was allowed to start nursing training there early. After completing her training, she worked for three months at Haus l'Isére.In this non-Jewish facility, unmarried mothers and sick children were cared for. She was relatively protected by false papers. But in 1942 she received an urgent call from Andrée Salomon of the OSE (short for Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, i.e. the Jewish children's charity), which she already knew from Strasbourg.Andrée Salomon, née Sulzer, was a paralegal in Strasbourg. She and her husband Tobie had visas and could have emigrated to America or Palestine. In the face of the misery of the persecution of the Jews and the internment camps, they stayed in France. With remarkable energy she organized legal and illegal rescue operations for Jewish children. And she frequented all available forces for this task by telephone or telegram. So she asked Lise to take a train to Rivesaltes (see also Friedel Bohny-Reiter) that same day to take care of the children in the internment camp. When she objected that she was not available at such short notice, she received the answer: Il te faut longtemps pour prendre quelques slips et une brosse à dents? (Translated: Do you need a lot of time to pack a pair of panties and a toothbrush?) Lise immediately traveled to Rivesaltes in her nurse's clothes with the wide nurse's cape, equipped with a permit from Andrée Salomon.In the internment camp, she took over the children's barracks. The children should be collected here in a targeted manner in order to be able to help them better and more specifically. Lise, not even eighteen years old, almost a child herself, worked non-stop. It suited her that she could address the children in French, German, Yiddish or English given the mixture of peoples. For many children she obtained forged papers from a counterfeiting workshop in Marseille when they were released. These identity papers were particularly important for young people over the age of 16, because from this age they were treated the same as adults. So they were made a few months younger in their identity papers.Things got really dicey in September 1942. The deportations of the Jewish internees to the extermination camps began. Again and again she mingled with the people who were waiting to be taken away. She looked for children in the crowd who had not been entrusted to the children's barracks. In a flash, she had the child disappear under her nurse's cloak, often enough under the noses of the guards, sometimes just before boarding the train. As inconspicuously as possible she then went back to her barracks with the child under her cloak to hand them over to the young helpers of her barracks. She immediately marched back to the crowd, again scouting for children to save them from deportation.More and more relatives gave her the children in the hope of finding them safe and sound when they returned. The children's barracks were quickly overcrowded. The OSE, which could rely on the support of the Perpignan prefecture, officially or secretly smuggled the children out of the camp with forged French papers. Lise even brazenly hid two children under the bench of a car that was leaving the camp. All the children in the OSE children's barracks were saved and were later taken into children's homes or foster families.In December 1942 she also left Rivesaltes and moved to the Grenoble region, where she worked in a non-Jewish children's home. In 1945 she moved to Israel, first worked in a hospital in Tel Aviv and then became self-employed. When she traveled to France to marry her sister in 1947, she met her husband. After returning to Israel, she soon had to return to France to take care of her ailing father.In 1962 she accepted a new challenge in France. After tens of thousands of Algerians were massacred by the French army after unrest in Setif and Guelma in 1945, the independence movement in Algeria took off. Algeria gained independence in 1962 after eight years of bloody war. Many Algiers French moved to France. Thousands of Jews were also among the refugees. Rabbi Max Warschawski organized comprehensive integration assistance for Jews from North Africa in Alsace. And Lise Hanau took over the management of the team responsible for the care and health issues of the children and mothers from North Africa
Lise Schlanger was born in Strasbourg on January 21, 1925. Raised in this city, she was a scout until the war.Refugee from Alsace, studied nursing in Limoges with exemption from age due to her refugee status. Then she worked at the Rivesaltes camp (see article opposite).She then worked in a home for non-Jewish children under false documents.Immediately after the war, in 1945, she left for Israel, and worked as a nurse at the Assuta Hospital in Tel Aviv, then as an independent.Lise returns to France in 1947 for her sister's wedding, and she meets the man who will be her husband a few months later. A year after the birth of their son, all three returned to Israel, but they had to return to France to replace Lise's father, who was ill in his business.She then became involved in community life in Strasbourg, in particular at the KKL , and assisted the mohel (circumciser) Isi Wertheimer .In 1962, she led the women's team which took care of the care to be given to children and mothers repatriated from North Africa , spending whole days at the community center.She is always available to her friends and so until 1977, when she returns to Israel, when her husband retires. Lise remains active today.Lise Hanau died in Jerusalem on Friday December 28, 2013. She was buried the following Sunday in the Petah Tiqwah cemetery.
Pyrénées-Orientales (French pronunciation: ​[piʁene ɔʁjɑ̃tal]; Catalan: Pirineus Orientals [piɾiˈnɛwz uɾiənˈtals]; Occitan: Pirenèus Orientals [piɾeˈnɛwz uɾjenˈtals]; lit. 'Eastern Pyrenees'), also known as Northern Catalonia,[3][4][5] is a department of the region of Occitania, Southern France, adjacent to the northern Spanish frontier and the Mediterranean Sea. It also surrounds the tiny Spanish exclave of Llívia, and thus has two distinct borders with Spain. In 2019, it had a population of 479,979.[6] Some parts of the Pyrénées-Orientales (like the Cerdagne) are part of the Iberian Peninsula. It is named after the Pyrenees mountain range.
HistoryFurther information: County of Cerdagne, County of Conflent, County of Roussillon, and Northern CataloniaPrior to the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, most of the present department was part of the former Principality of Catalonia, within the Crown of Aragon, therefore part of the Kingdom of Spain, so the majority of it has historically been Catalan-speaking, and it is still referred to as Northern Catalonia.
The modern department was created early during the French Revolution on 9 February 1790 under the name of Roussillon, also the name of the pre-Revolutionary province of Roussillon to which it almost exactly corresponds, although the department also includes Fenouillèdes, a small piece of territory which had formerly been on the southern edge of Languedoc. The name therefore changed on February 26, 1790, to Pyrénées-Orientales.[7]
Invaded by Spain in April 1793, the area was recaptured thirteen months later during the War of the Roussillon.
During the nineteenth century, Pyrénées-Orientales proved one of the most consistently republican departments in France. The intellectual and republican politician François Arago, who, during the early months of the short-lived Second Republic in 1848, was briefly de facto Head of state, came from Estagel in the east of the department.
Geography
The Themis Solar Power towerPyrénées-Orientales has an area of 4,115 km2. It consists of three river valleys in the Pyrenees mountain range –from north to south, those of the Agly, Têt and Tech – and the Eastern Plain of Roussillon into which they converge. Most of the population and agricultural production are concentrated in the plain, with only 30% of the area. There is one water reservoir at Lac de Matemale. There is also a lake, Casteilla.
The upper Têt valley comprises the departments westernmost third, with just over a tenth of the total population. To the south-east, the Tech valley and the Côte Vermeille contain nearly 100,000 inhabitants. The Agly basin in the north-east has much in common with neighboring areas of Aude. Llívia is a town of Cerdanya, province of Girona, Catalonia, Spain, that forms a Spanish exclave surrounded by French territory.
Principal townsThe most populous commune is Perpignan, the prefecture, home to about a quarter of the inhabitants of Pyrénées-Orientales. As of 2019, there are 7 communes with more than 10,000 inhabitants:[6]
Commune Population (2019)Perpignan 119,344Canet-en-Roussillon 12,284Saint-Estève 11,719Saint-Cyprien 11,040Cabestany 10,301Argelès-sur-Mer 10,260Saint-Laurent-de-la-Salanque 10,071They are followed in decreasing order by Pia, Elne, Rivesaltes, Thuir, Céret, Le Soler, Bompas, Toulouges, Canohès and Prades, each of 6–10,000 is a wine-growing area and a tourist destination.
DemographicsPopulation development since 1793:
Historical populationYear Pop. ±% p.a.1793 105,171 — 1801 110,732 +0.65%1806 126,692 +2.73%1821 143,054 +0.81%1831 157,052 +0.94%1841 173,592 +1.01%1851 181,955 +0.47%1861 181,763 −0.01%1872 191,856 +0.49%1881 208,855 +0.95%1891 210,125 +0.06%1901 212,121 +0.09%1911 212,986 +0.04%1921 217,503 +0.21%Year Pop. ±% p.a.1931 238,647 +0.93%1936 233,347 −0.45%1946 228,776 −0.20%1954 230,285 +0.08%1962 251,231 +1.09%1968 281,976 +1.94%1975 299,506 +0.87%1982 334,557 +1.59%1990 363,796 +1.05%1999 392,803 +0.86%2006 432,116 +1.37%2011 457,000 +1.13%2016 474,369 +0.75%
Graphs are temporarily unavailable due to technical issues.Sources:[8][9]French is spoken by almost the entire population. Minority languages in the region are Catalan and Occitan, which between them are estimated to be spoken by 34% of the population and understood by an additional 21%.
On 10 December 2007, the Departmental Council of Pyrénées-Orientales recognized Catalan as a regional language of the department, though French is still the only official language in France, according to the Constitution.[10]
The area is traditionally divided into comarques, of which five (French Cerdagne, Capcir, Conflent, Roussillon and Vallespir) are historically Catalan-speaking and one (Fenouillèdes) is historically Occitan-speaking. The five Catalan-speaking comarques were historically part of the Kingdom of Majorca.
AdministrationPolitics of Pyrénées-Orientales
Local GovernmentPresident: Hermeline Malherbe-LaurentLocal partiesDepartments of FrancePolitics of FrancePolitics of the European UnionOther countriesvteThe département is managed by the Departmental Council of Pyrénées-Orientales in Perpignan. The Pyrénées-Orientales is part of the region of Occitanie. The Departmental Council of Pyrénées-Orientales is more and more involved with the European Union to create, together with the Generalitat of Catalonia and Andorra, a Eurodistrict.
PoliticsDepartmental Council of Pyrénées-OrientalesThe Departmental Council of Pyrénées-Orientales has 34 seats. In the 2015 departmental elections, the Socialist Party (PS) won 17 seats, The Republicans (LR) won 12 seats and the French Communist Party (PCF) won 5 seats. Hermeline Malherbe-Laurent (PS) has been President of the Departmental Council since 2010.
Members of the National AssemblyPyrénées-Orientales elected the following members of the National Assembly during the 2022 legislative election:
Constituency Member[11] PartyPyrénées-Orientales's 1st constituency Sophie Blanc National RallyPyrénées-Orientales's 2nd constituency Anaïs Sabatini National RallyPyrénées-Orientales's 3rd constituency Sandrine Dogor-Such National RallyPyrénées-Orientales's 4th constituency Michèle Martinez National RallyCuisineThe cuisine of Pyrénées-Orientales draws naturally from the historical Catalan presence in the area,[12] so dishes like paella,[13] caragols a la llauna and calçots are prevalent in the restaurants, especially at important dates such as the various saints' feast days and cultural festivals.[14]
The area is famous for its wine with the predominantly red grape varieties grown all over the department, regional specialities such as muscat de Rivesaltes and Banyuls are sold everywhere in the department.
The geography of the area leads to a distinct divide in the cuisine of P-O. The mountainous area to the south has dishes using ingredients that grow naturally there, products such as olives and goat's cheese.
Fish are also very popular in the region with Collioure being famous for its anchovies, although fishing has declined due to the overall reduction of the fish stock in the Mediterranean sea.
CulturePlaces of interest include:
Banyuls-sur-Mer, famous for its Grenache-based Banyuls wine, birthplace of Aristide Maillol.Céret, considered to be one of the birthplaces of cubism, hosts several museums among which the Musée d'Art Moderne.Collioure, considered to be one of the famous places of fauvism.Força Réal, ruined mountaintop fortress.Prades, site of the Catalan Summer University (Universitat Catalana d'Estiu).Prats de Mollo, important defensive castle of the 17th century facing south to the Pyrenees.Salses, important defensive castle of the 16th century, on the ancient frontier with Spain.Pyrénées-Orientales has two notable sports teams: USA Perpignan (rugby union) and Catalans Dragons (rugby league).
Drancy internment camp (French: Camp d'internement de Drancy) was an assembly and detention camp for confining Jews who were later deported to the extermination camps during the German occupation of France during World War II. Originally conceived and built as a modernist urban community under the name La Cité de la Muette, it was located in Drancy, a northEastern suburb of Paris, France.
Between 22 June 1942 and 31 July 1944, during its use as an internment camp, 67,400 French, Polish, and German Jews were deported from the camp in 64 rail operations,[1] which included 6,000 children. Only 1,542 prisoners remained alive at the camp when the German authorities in Drancy fled as Allied forces advanced and the Swedish Consul-General Raoul Nordling took control of the camp on 17 August 1944, before handing it over to the French Red Cross to care for the survivors.[2]
Drancy was under the control of the French police until 1943 when administration was taken over by the SS, which placed officer Alois Brunner in charge of the camp. In 2001, Brunner's case was brought before a French court by Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, which sentenced Brunner in absentia to a life sentence for crimes against humanity.[3]
Operational historyFurther information: Timeline of deportations of French Jews to death campsAfter the 1940 defeat by Germany and 10 July 1940 vote of full powers to Marshal Philippe Pétain, the Republic was abolished and Vichy France was proclaimed. The Vichy government cooperated with Nazi Germany, hunting down foreign and French Jews and turning them over to the Gestapo for transport to the Third Reich's extermination camps.
The Drancy internment camp became identified by the northEastern suburb of Paris in which it was located. It was originally conceived by the noted architects Marcel Lods [fr] and Eugène Beaudouin [fr] as a striking, modernist urban community. The design was especially noteworthy for its integration of high-rise residential apartment towers, among the first of their kind in France. Poetically named La Cité de la Muette ("The Silent City") at its creation for its perceived peaceful ideals,[4] the name became twisted with bitterly ironic meaning. The entire complex was confiscated by Nazi authorities not long after the German occupation of France in 1940. It was used first as police barracks, then converted into the primary detention center in the Paris region for holding Jews and other people labeled as "undesirable" before deportation.Map of Holocaust sites, with the Drancy camp and routes by ParisOn 20 August 1941, French police conducted raids throughout the 11th arrondissement of Paris and arrested more than 4,000 Jews, mainly foreign or stateless Jews. French authorities interned these Jews in Drancy, marking its official opening. French police enclosed the barracks and courtyard with barbed-wire fencing and provided guards for the camp. Drancy fell under the command of the Gestapo Office of Jewish Affairs in France and German SS Captain Theodor Dannecker. Five subcamps of Drancy were located throughout Paris (three of which were the Austerlitz, Lévitan and Bassano camps).[5] Following the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup on 16 and 17 July 1942, more than 4,900 of the 13,152 victims of the mass arrest were sent directly to the camp at Drancy before their deportation to Auschwitz.
Drancy was under the control of the French police until 3 July 1943 when Germany took direct control of the Drancy camp. SS officer Alois Brunner became camp commandant as part of the major stepping up at all facilities needed for mass extermination. The French police carried out additional roundups of Jews throughout the war. Some Drancy inmates died as hostage pawns. In December 1941, 40 prisoners from Drancy were executed in retaliation for a French attack on German police officers.[5]
In November 1943 around 350 inmates of the Borgo San Dalmazzo concentration camp in Italy were deported by train to Drancy and, soon after, on to Auschwitz. The inmates from Borgo, Jewish refugees from a number of European countries, had been arrested after the Italian surrender in September 1943, having mostly come to Italy from France in search for safety from Nazi prosecution.[6]
Prisoners
Jews at Drancy in 1941The Drancy camp was designed to hold 700 people, but at its peak held more than 7,000. There is documented evidence and testimony recounting the brutality of the French guards in Drancy and the harsh conditions imposed on the inmates. For example, upon their arrival, small children were immediately separated from their parents for deportation to the death camps.[5]
On 6 April 1944, SS First Lieutenant Klaus Barbie raided a children's home in Izieu, France, where Jewish children had been hidden. Barbie arrested everyone present, all 44 children and 7 adult staff members. The next day, the Gestapo transported the arrestees to Drancy. From there, all the children and staff were deported to Auschwitz. None of them survived.[5]Weill, Théodore Valensi [fr], Azoulay, Albert Ulmo, Cremieux, Eduard Bloch and Pierre Massé held at Drancy in 1941Many French Jewish intellectuals and artists were held in Drancy, including Max Jacob (who died there),[7] Tristan Bernard, and the choreographer René Blum. Of the 75,000 Jews whom French and German authorities deported from France, more than 67,000 were sent directly from Drancy to Auschwitz.[5] Dutch painter Max van Dam, captured in France en route to Switzerland, was briefly incarcerated in Drancy where he was able to paint and create print work. He was among the 1008 deportees on Transport 53 which left Drancy, on 25 March 1943, with the final destination of Sobibor. Van Dam was spared upon arrival and survived for six months painting for the SS but was murdered in September 1943.[8] Jewish Austrian footballer Max Scheuer was sent to Drancy, and then on to Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was murdered in the early 1940s.[9][10]
There were also many non-French Jews captured in France and deported to Drancy to await final deportation to Auschwitz and other death camps. They included the noted German artist Charlotte Salomon, who had lived in the south of France after fleeing from the Nazis in Germany. By September 1943, Charlotte Salomon had married another German Jewish refugee, Alexander Nagler. The two of them were dragged from their house and transported by rail from Nice to Drancy. By now, Charlotte Salomon was five months pregnant. She was transported to Auschwitz on 7 October 1943 and was probably murdered by gas on the same day that she arrived there (10 October).
The prisoners dug a tunnel to escape, but it was discovered before completion.[11] A TV documentary was made about the attempt.[12]
As the Allies were approaching Paris in August 1944, the German officers fled, and the camp was liberated on 17 August when control of the camp was given over to the French Resistance and Swedish diplomat Raoul Nordling.[2]
Present-day
A railway wagon used to carry internees to Auschwitz and now displayed at DrancyThe camp was used after the war for the internment of collaborationists, then went back in 1946 to its original designation as low-income housing.[13] In 1977, the Memorial to the Deportation at Drancy was created by sculptor Shelomo Selinger to commemorate the French Jews imprisoned in the camp.
Until recently,[when?] the official point of view of the French government was that the Vichy regime was an illegal government distinct from the French Republic. While the criminal behaviour of Vichy France and the collaboration of French officials were acknowledged, and some former Vichy officials prosecuted, this point of view denied any responsibility of the French Republic. This perspective, held by Charles de Gaulle among others, underlined in particular the circumstances of the July 1940 vote of the full powers to Marshal Pétain, who installed the "French State" and repudiated the Republic. With only the Vichy 80 refusing this vote, historians have argued it was anti-Constitutional, most notably because of pressure on parliamentarians from Pierre Laval.
Drancy Internment Camp ReceiptReceipt for French francs taken from Jewish inmate at Drancy, stating that "the Aeltestenrat [Council of Elders] at the new place of settlement is under obligation to (re)pay its countervalue in [Polish] zloty"However, on 16 July 1995, president Jacques Chirac, in a speech, recognized the responsibility of the French State, and in particular of the French police which organized the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup (Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv) of July 1942, for seconding the "criminal folly of the occupying country".[14]
On 20 January 2005, arsonists set fire to some railroad freight cars in the former camp; a tract signed "Bin Laden" with an inverted swastika was found.[citation needed]
On 11 April 2009, a swastika was painted on a train car used for the deportation of Jews, a permanent exhibit. This was condemned by the French Minister for the Interior, Michèle Alliot-Marie.[15][16]
New museumA new Shoah memorial museum designed by Swiss architect Roger Diener was opened in September 2012[17] just opposite the sculpture memorial and railway wagon by the President of France, François Hollande. It provides details of the persecution of the Jews in France and many personal mementos of inmates before their deportation to Auschwitz and their death. They include messages written on the walls, many graffiti, aluminium drinking mugs and other personal belongings left by the prisoners, some of which are inscribed with the names of the owners.
The archive also includes the cards and letters written by the prisoners to their relatives before deportation, and they are a moving contribution to the memory of the camp, and the crime of their detention. The ground floor shows a changing exhibit of prisoners' faces and names, as a memorial to their imprisonment and murder by the Nazis, assisted by the gendarmerie of Occupied France.
Documentary filmsDrancy: A Concentration Camp in Paris 1941–1944, Worldview Pictures, 1994.Drancy Avenir, 1997.LiteratureNicolas Grenier, Cité de la Muette (poem), in honor of Max Jacob, who died in the Drancy camp, 2011.
The concentration camp also featured in a part of Sebastian Faulks' 1999 novel Charlotte Gray. The character of Levade was an inmate here, as well as young brothers André and Jacob Duguay. Charlotte was staying at a small hotel nearby to try and pass on a message to Levade.
Journal d'Helene Berr, Editions Tallandier, 2008, (English translation Journal Helene Berr, MacLehose Press, 2008 and 2009). Berr was a young French Jewish graduate who kept a diary between April 1942 and February 1944. She was beaten to death, suffering typhus, five days before the camp was liberated. She worked in Paris to save Jewish children by escorting them to the Free Zone.
Andre Schwarz-Bart's The Last of the Just uses as reference De Drancy a Auschwitz, by Georges Wellers.
Auschwitz concentration camp (German: Konzentrationslager Auschwitz (pronounced [kɔntsɛntʁaˈtsi̯oːnsˌlaːɡɐ ˈʔaʊʃvɪts] (listeni)); also KL Auschwitz or KZ Auschwitz) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939)[3] during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labour camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps.[4] The camps became a major site of the Nazis' Final Solution to the Jewish question.
After Germany initiated World War II by invading Poland in September 1939, the Schutzstaffel (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp.[5] The initial transport of political detainees to Auschwitz consisted almost solely of Poles (for whom the camp was initially established). For the first two years, the majority of inmates were Polish.[6] In May 1940, German criminals brought to the camp as functionaries established the camp's reputation for sadism. Prisoners were beaten, tortured, and executed for the most trivial of reasons. The first gassings—of Soviet and Polish prisoners—took place in block 11 of Auschwitz I around August 1941.
Construction of Auschwitz II began the following month, and from 1942 until late 1944 freight trains delivered Jews from all over German-occupied Europe to its gas chambers. Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million were murdered. The number of victims includes 960,000 Jews (865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival), 74,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Romani, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 15,000 others.[7] Those not gassed were murdered via starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions, or beatings. Others were killed during medical experiments.
At least 802 prisoners tried to escape, 144 successfully, and on 7 October 1944, two Sonderkommando units, consisting of prisoners who operated the gas chambers, launched an unsuccessful uprising. 789 Schutzstaffel personnel (no more than 15 percent) ever stood trial after the Holocaust ended;[8] several were executed, including camp commandant Rudolf Höss. The Allies' failure to act on early reports of mass murder by bombing the camp or its railways remains controversial.
As the Soviet Red Army approached Auschwitz in January 1945, toward the end of the war, the SS sent most of the camp's population west on a death march to camps inside Germany and Austria. Soviet troops entered the camp on 27 January 1945, a day commemorated since 2005 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the decades after the war, survivors such as Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel wrote memoirs of their experiences, and the camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. In 1947, Poland founded the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on the site of Auschwitz I and II, and in 1979 it was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Background
Camps and ghettos in German-occupied Europe, 1944
Auschwitz I, II, and IIIThe ideology of Nazism combined elements of "racial hygiene", eugenics, antisemitism, pan-Germanism, and territorial expansionism, Richard J. Evans writes.[9] Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party became obsessed by the "Jewish question".[10] Both during and immediately after the Nazi seizure of power in Germany in 1933, acts of violence against German Jews became ubiquitous,[11] and legislation was passed excluding them from certain professions, including the civil service and the law.[a]
Harassment and economic pressure encouraged Jews to leave Germany; their businesses were denied access to markets, forofferden from advertising in newspapers, and deprived of government contracts.[13] On 15 September 1935, the Reichstag passed the Nuremberg Laws. One, the Reich Citizenship Law, defined as citizens those of "German or related blood who demonstrate by their behaviour that they are willing and suitable to serve the German People and Reich faithfully", and the Law for the Protection of German blood and German Honor prohibited marriage and extramarital relations between those with "German or related blood" and Jews.[14]
When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, triggering World War II, Hitler ordered that the Polish leadership and intelligentsia be destroyed.[15] The area around Auschwitz was annexed to the German Reich, as part of first Gau Silesia and from 1941 Gau Upper Silesia.[16] The camp at Auschwitz was established in April 1940, at first as a quarantine camp for Polish political prisoners. On 22 June 1941, in an attempt to obtain new territory, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.[17] The first gassing at Auschwitz—of a group of Soviet prisoners of war—took place around August 1941.[18] By the end of that year, during what most historians regard as the first phase of the Holocaust, 500,000–800,000 Soviet Jews had been murdered in mass shootings by a combination of German Einsatzgruppen, ordinary German soldiers, and local collaborators.[19] At the Wannsee Conference in Berlin on 20 January 1942, Reinhard Heydrich outlined the Final Solution to the Jewish Question to senior Nazis,[20] and from early 1942 freight trains delivered Jews from all over occupied Europe to German extermination camps in Poland: Auschwitz, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka. Most prisoners were gassed on arrival.[21]
CampsAuschwitz IGrowth
Auschwitz I, 2013 (50.0275°N 19.2050°E)
Auschwitz I, 2009; the prisoner reception center of Auschwitz I became the visitor reception center of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.[22]
Former prisoner reception center; the building on the far left with the row of chimneys was the camp kitchen.
An aerial reconnaissance photograph of the Auschwitz concentration camp showing the Auschwitz I camp, 4 April 1944A former World War I camp for transient workers and later a Polish army barracks, Auschwitz I was the main camp (Stammlager) and administrative headquarters of the camp complex. Fifty km southwest of Kraków, the site was first suggested in February 1940 as a quarantine camp for Polish prisoners by Arpad Wigand, the inspector of the Sicherheitspolizei (security police) and deputy of Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, the Higher SS and Police Leader for Silesia. Richard Glücks, head of the Concentration Camps Inspectorate, sent Walter Eisfeld, former commandant of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, to inspect it.[23] Around 1,000 m long and 400 m wide,[24] Auschwitz consisted at the time of 22 brick buildings, eight of them two-story. A second story was added to the others in 1943 and eight new blocks were built.[25]
Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, approved the site in April 1940 on the recommendation of SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss of the camps inspectorate. Höss oversaw the development of the camp and served as its first commandant. The first 30 prisoners arrived on 20 May 1940 from the Sachsenhausen camp. German "career criminals" (Berufsverbrecher), the men were known as "greens" (Grünen) after the green triangles on their prison clothing. Brought to the camp as functionaries, this group did much to establish the sadism of early camp life, which was directed particularly at Polish inmates, until the political prisoners took over their roles.[26] Bruno Brodniewicz, the first prisoner (who was given serial number 1), became Lagerälteste (camp elder). The others were given positions such as kapo and block supervisor.[27]
First mass transportFurther information: First mass transport to Auschwitz concentration campThe first mass transport—of 728 Polish male political prisoners, including Catholic priests and Jews—arrived on 14 June 1940 from Tarnów, Poland. They were given serial numbers 31 to 758.[b] In a letter on 12 July 1940, Höss told Glücks that the local population was "fanatically Polish, ready to undertake any sort of operation against the hated SS men".[29] By the end of 1940, the SS had confiscated land around the camp to create a 40-square-kilometer (15 sq mi) "zone of interest" (Interessengebiet) patrolled by the SS, Gestapo and local police.[30] By March 1941, 10,900 were imprisoned in the camp, most of them Poles.[24]
An inmate's first encounter with Auschwitz, if they were registered and not sent straight to the gas chamber, was at the prisoner reception centre near the gate with the Arbeit macht frei sign, where they were tattooed, shaved, disinfected, and given a striped prison uniform. Built between 1942 and 1944, the center contained a bathhouse, laundry, and 19 gas chambers for delousing clothing. The prisoner reception center of Auschwitz I became the visitor reception center of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.[22]
Crematorium I, first gassingsFurther information: § Gas chambers
Crematorium I, photographed in 2016, reconstructed after the war[31]Construction of crematorium I began at Auschwitz I at the end of June or beginning of July 1940.[32] Initially intended not for mass murder but for prisoners who had been executed or had otherwise died in the camp, the crematorium was in operation from August 1940 until July 1943, by which time the crematoria at Auschwitz II had taken over.[33] By May 1942 three ovens had been installed in crematorium I, which together could burn 340 bodies in 24 hours.[34]
The first experimental gassing took place around August 1941, when Lagerführer Karl Fritzsch, at the instruction of Rudolf Höss, murdered a group of Soviet prisoners of war by throwing Zyklon B crystals into their basement cell in block 11 of Auschwitz I. A second group of 600 Soviet prisoners of war and around 250 sick Polish prisoners were gassed on 3–5 September.[35] The morgue was later converted to a gas chamber able to hold at least 700–800 people.[34][c] Zyklon B was dropped into the room through slits in the ceiling.[34]
First mass transport of JewsFurther information: Bytom Synagogue and Beuthen Jewish CommunityHistorians have disagreed about the date the all-Jewish transports began arriving in Auschwitz. At the Wannsee Conference in Berlin on 20 January 1942, the Nazi leadership outlined, in euphemistic language, its plans for the Final Solution.[36] According to Franciszek Piper, the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss offered inconsistent accounts after the war, suggesting the extermination began in December 1941, January 1942, or before the establishment of the women's camp in March 1942.[37] In Kommandant in Auschwitz, he wrote: "In the spring of 1942 the first transports of Jews, all earmarked for extermination, arrived from Upper Silesia."[38] On 15 February 1942, according to Danuta Czech, a transport of Jews from Beuthen, Upper Silesia (Bytom, Poland), arrived at Auschwitz I and was sent straight to the gas chamber.[d][40] In 1998 an eyewitness said the train contained "the women of Beuthen".[e] Saul Friedländer wrote that the Beuthen Jews were from the Organization Schmelt labor camps and had been deemed unfit for work.[42] According to Christopher Browning, transports of Jews unfit for work were sent to the gas chamber at Auschwitz from autumn 1941.[43] The evidence for this and the February 1942 transport was contested in 2015 by Nikolaus Wachsmann.[44]
Around 20 March 1942, according to Danuta Czech, a transport of Polish Jews from Silesia and Zagłębie Dąbrowskie was taken straight from the station to the Auschwitz II gas chamber, which had just come into operation.[45] On 26 and 28 March, two transports of Slovakian Jews were registered as prisoners in the women's camp, where they were kept for slave labour; these were the first transports organized by Adolf Eichmann's department IV B4 (the Jewish office) in the Reich Security Head Office (RSHA).[f] On 30 March the first RHSA transport arrived from France.[46] "Selection", where new arrivals were chosen for work or the gas chamber, began in April 1942 and was conducted regularly from July. Piper writes that this reflected Germany's increasing need for labour. Those selected as unfit for work were gassed without being registered as prisoners.[47]
There is also disagreement about how many were gassed in Auschwitz I. Perry Broad, an SS-Unterscharführer, wrote that "transport after transport vanished in the Auschwitz [I] crematorium."[48] In the view of Filip Müller, one of the Auschwitz I Sonderkommando, tens of thousands of Jews were murdered there from France, Holland, Slovakia, Upper Silesia, and Yugoslavia, and from the Theresienstadt, Ciechanow, and Grodno ghettos.[49] Against this, Jean-Claude Pressac estimated that up to 10,000 people had been murdered in Auschwitz I.[48] The last inmates gassed there, in December 1942, were around 400 members of the Auschwitz II Sonderkommando, who had been forced to dig up and burn the remains of that camp's mass graves, thought to hold over 100,000 corpses.[50]
Auschwitz II–Birkenau"Birkenau" redirects here. For other uses, see Birkenau II-Birkenau gate from inside the camp, 2007
Same scene, May/June 1944, with the gate in the background. "Selection" of Hungarian Jews for work or the gas chamber. From the Auschwitz Album, taken by the camp's Erkennungsdienst.
Gate with the camp remains in the background, 2009After visiting Auschwitz I in March 1941, it appears that Himmler ordered that the camp be expanded,[51] although Peter Hayes notes that, on 10 January 1941, the Polish underground told the Polish government-in-exile in London: "the Auschwitz concentration camp ...can accommodate approximately 7,000 prisoners at present, and is to be rebuilt to hold approximately 30,000."[52] Construction of Auschwitz II-Birkenau—called a Kriegsgefangenenlager (prisoner-of-war camp) on blueprints—began in October 1941 in Brzezinka, about three kilometers from Auschwitz I.[53] The initial plan was that Auschwitz II would consist of four sectors (Bauabschnitte I–IV), each consisting of six subcamps (BIIa–BIIf) with their own gates and fences. The first two sectors were completed (sector BI was initially a quarantine camp), but the construction of BIII began in 1943 and stopped in April 1944, and the plan for BIV was abandoned.[54]
SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Bischoff, an architect, was the chief of construction.[51] Based on an initial budget of RM 8.9 million, his plans called for each barracks to hold 550 prisoners, but he later changed this to 744 per barracks, which meant the camp could hold 125,000, rather than 97,000.[55] There were 174 barracks, each measuring 35.4 by 11.0 m (116 by 36 ft), divided into 62 bays of 4 m2 (43 sq ft). The bays were divided into "roosts", initially for three inmates and later for four. With personal space of 1 m2 (11 sq ft) to sleep and place whatever belongings they had, inmates were deprived, Robert-Jan van Pelt wrote, "of the minimum space needed to exist".[56]
The prisoners were forced to live in the barracks as they were building them; in addition to working, they faced long roll calls at night. As a result, most prisoners in BIb (the men's camp) in the early months died of hypothermia, starvation or exhaustion within a few weeks.[57] Some 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war arrived at Auschwitz I between 7 and 25 October 1941,[58] but by 1 March 1942 only 945 were still registered; they were transferred to Auschwitz II,[39] where most of them had died by May.[59]
Crematoria II–VFurther information: § Gas chambersThe first gas chamber at Auschwitz II was operational by March 1942. On or around 20 March, a transport of Polish Jews sent by the Gestapo from Silesia and Zagłębie Dąbrowskie was taken straight from the Oświęcim freight station to the Auschwitz II gas chamber, then buried in a nearby meadow.[45] The gas chamber was located in what prisoners called the "little red house" (known as bunker 1 by the SS), a brick cottage that had been turned into a gassing facility; the windows had been bricked up and its four rooms converted into two insulated rooms, the doors of which said "Zur Desinfektion" ("to disinfection"). A second brick cottage, the "little white house" or bunker 2, was converted and operational by June 1942.[60] When Himmler visited the camp on 17 and 18 July 1942, he was given a demonstration of a selection of Dutch Jews, a mass-murder in a gas chamber in bunker 2, and a tour of the building site of Auschwitz III, the new IG Farben plant being constructed at Monowitz.[61] Use of bunkers I and 2 stopped in spring 1943 when the new crematoria were built, although bunker 2 became operational again in May 1944 for the murder of the Hungarian Jews. Bunker I was demolished in 1943 and bunker 2 in November 1944.[62]
Plans for crematoria II and III show that both had an oven room 30 by 11.24 m (98.4 by 36.9 ft) on the ground floor, and an underground dressing room 49.43 by 7.93 m (162.2 by 26.0 ft) and gas chamber 30 by 7 m (98 by 23 ft). The dressing rooms had wooden benches along the walls and numbered pegs for clothing. Victims would be led from these rooms to a five-yard-long narrow corridor, which in turn led to a space from which the gas chamber door opened. The chambers were white inside, and nozzles were fixed to the ceiling to resemble showerheads.[63] The daily capacity of the crematoria (how many bodies could be burned in a 24-hour period) was 340 corpses in crematorium I; 1,440 each in crematoria II and III; and 768 each in IV and V.[64] By June 1943 all four crematoria were operational, but crematorium I was not used after July 1943. This made the total daily capacity 4,416, although by loading three to five corpses at a time, the Sonderkommando were able to burn some 8,000 bodies a day. This maximum capacity was rarely needed; the average between 1942 and 1944 was 1,000 bodies burned every day.[65]
Auschwitz III–MonowitzMain article: Monowitz concentration camp
Detailed map of Buna Werke, Monowitz, and nearby subcampsAfter examining several sites for a new plant to manufacture Buna-N, a type of synthetic rubber essential to the war effort, the German chemical conglomerate IG Farben chose a site near the towns of Dwory and Monowice (Monowitz in German), about 7 km (4.3 mi) east of Auschwitz I.[66] Tax exemptions were available to corporations prepared to develop industries in the frontier regions under the Eastern Fiscal Assistance Law, passed in December 1940. In addition to its proximity to the concentration camp, a source of cheap labour, the site had good railway connections and access to raw materials.[67] In February 1941, Himmler ordered that the Jewish population of Oświęcim be expelled to make way for skilled laborers; that all Poles able to work remain in the town and work on building the factory; and that Auschwitz prisoners be used in the construction work.[68]
Auschwitz inmates began working at the plant, known as Buna Werke and IG-Auschwitz, in April 1941, demolishing houses in Monowitz to make way for it.[69] By May, because of a shortage of trucks, several hundred of them were rising at 3 am to walk there twice a day from Auschwitz I.[70] Because a long line of exhausted inmates walking through the town of Oświęcim might harm German-Polish relations, the inmates were told to shave daily, make sure they were clean, and sing as they walked. From late July they were taken to the factory by train on freight wagons.[71] Given the difficulty of moving them, including during the winter, IG Farben decided to build a camp at the plant. The first inmates moved there on 30 October 1942.[72] Known as KL Auschwitz III–Aussenlager (Auschwitz III subcamp), and later as the Monowitz concentration camp,[73] it was the first concentration camp to be financed and built by private industry.[74]Heinrich Himmler (second left) visits the IG Farben plant in Auschwitz III, July 1942.Measuring 270 m × 490 m (890 ft × 1,610 ft), the camp was larger than Auschwitz I. By the end of 1944, it housed 60 barracks measuring 17.5 m × 8 m (57 ft × 26 ft), each with a day room and a sleeping room containing 56 three-tiered wooden bunks.[75] IG Farben paid the SS three or four Reichsmark for nine- to eleven-hour shifts from each worker.[76] In 1943–1944, about 35,000 inmates worked at the plant; 23,000 (32 a day on average) were killed through malnutrition, disease, and the workload. Within three to four months at the camp, Peter Hayes writes, the inmates were "reduced to walking skeletons".[77] Deaths and transfers to the gas chambers at Auschwitz II reduced the population by nearly a fifth each month.[78] Site managers constantly threatened inmates with the gas chambers, and the smell from the crematoria at Auschwitz I and II hung heavy over the camp.[79]
Although the factory had been expected to begin production in 1943, shortages of labour and raw materials meant start-up was postponed repeatedly.[80] The Allies bombed the plant in 1944 on 20 August, 13 September, 18 December, and 26 December. On 19 January 1945, the SS ordered that the site be evacuated, sending 9,000 inmates, most of them Jews, on a death march to another Auschwitz subcamp at Gliwice.[81] From Gliwice, prisoners were taken by rail in open freight wagons to the Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps. The 800 inmates who had been left behind in the Monowitz hospital were liberated along with the rest of the camp on 27 January 1945 by the 1st Ukrainian Front of the Red Army.[82]
SubcampsFurther information: List of subcamps of AuschwitzSeveral other German industrial enterprises, such as Krupp and Siemens-Schuckert, built factories with their own subcamps.[83] There were around 28 camps near industrial plants, each camp holding hundreds or thousands of prisoners.[84] Designated as Aussenlager (external camp), Nebenlager (extension camp), Arbeitslager (labor camp), or Aussenkommando (external work detail),[85] camps were built at Blechhammer, Jawiszowice, Jaworzno, Lagisze, Mysłowice, Trzebinia, and as far afield as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in Czechoslovakia.[86] Industries with satellite camps included coal mines, foundries and other metal works, and chemical plants. Prisoners were also made to work in forestry and farming.[87] For example, Wirtschaftshof Budy, in the Polish village of Budy near Brzeszcze, was a farming subcamp where prisoners worked 12-hour days in the fields, tending animals, and making compost by mixing human ashes from the crematoria with sod and manure.[88] Incidents of sabotage to decrease production took place in several subcamps, including Charlottengrube, Gleiwitz II, and Rajsko.[89] Living conditions in some of the camps were so poor that they were regarded as punishment subcamps.[90]
Life in the campsSS garrisonMain articles: SS command of Auschwitz concentration camp and SS-Totenkopfverbände
From the Höcker Album (left to right): Richard Baer (Auschwitz commandant from May 1944), Josef Mengele (camp physician), and Rudolf Höss (first commandant) in Solahütte, an SS resort near Auschwitz, summer 1944.[91]
The commandant's and administration building, Auschwitz IRudolf Höss, born in Baden-Baden in 1900,[92] was named the first commandant of Auschwitz when Heinrich Himmler ordered on 27 April 1940 that the camp be established.[93] Living with his wife and children in a two-story stucco house near the commandant's and administration building,[94] he served as commandant until 11 November 1943,[93] with Josef Kramer as his deputy.[24] Succeeded as commandant by Arthur Liebehenschel,[93] Höss joined the SS Business and Administration Head Office in Oranienburg as director of Amt DI,[93] a post that made him deputy of the camps inspectorate.[95]
Richard Baer became commandant of Auschwitz I on 11 May 1944 and Fritz Hartjenstein of Auschwitz II from 22 November 1943, followed by Josef Kramer from 15 May 1944 until the camp's liquidation in January 1945. Heinrich Schwarz was commandant of Auschwitz III from the point at which it became an autonomous camp in November 1943 until its liquidation.[96] Höss returned to Auschwitz between 8 May and 29 July 1944 as the local SS garrison commander (Standortältester) to oversee the arrival of Hungary's Jews, which made him the superior officer of all the commandants of the Auschwitz camps.[93]
According to Aleksander Lasik, about 6,335 people (6,161 of them men) worked for the SS at Auschwitz over the course of the camp's existence;[97] 4.2 percent were officers, 26.1 percent non-commissioned officers, and 69.7 percent rank and file.[98] In March 1941, there were 700 SS guards; in June 1942, 2,000; and in August 1944, 3,342. At its peak in January 1945, 4,480 SS men and 71 SS women worked in Auschwitz; the higher number is probably attributable to the logistics of evacuating the camp.[99] Female guards were known as SS supervisors (SS-Aufseherinnen).[100]
Most of the staff were from Germany or Austria, but as the war progressed, increasing numbers of Volksdeutsche from other countries, including Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and the Baltic states, joined the SS at Auschwitz. Not all were ethnically German. Guards were also recruited from Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia.[101] Camp guards, around three quarters of the SS personnel, were members of the SS-Totenkopfverbände (death's head units).[102] Other SS staff worked in the medical or political departments, or in the economic administration, which was responsible for clothing and other supplies, including the property of dead prisoners.[103] The SS viewed Auschwitz as a comfortable posting; being there meant they had avoided the front and had access to the victims' property.[104]
Functionaries and Sonderkommando
Auschwitz I, 2009Certain prisoners, at first non-Jewish Germans but later Jews and non-Jewish Poles,[105] were assigned positions of authority as Funktionshäftlinge (functionaries), which gave them access to better housing and food. The Lagerprominenz (camp elite) included Blockschreiber (barracks clerk), Kapo (overseer), Stubendienst (barracks orderly), and Kommandierte (trusties).[106] Wielding tremendous power over other prisoners, the functionaries developed a reputation as sadists.[105] Very few were prosecuted after the war, because of the difficulty of determining which atrocities had been performed by order of the SS.[107]
Although the SS oversaw the murders at each gas chamber, the forced labor portion of the work was done by prisoners known from 1942 as the Sonderkommando (special squad).[108] These were mostly Jews but they included groups such as Soviet POWs. In 1940–1941 when there was one gas chamber, there were 20 such prisoners, in late 1943 there were 400, and by 1944 during the Holocaust in Hungary the number had risen to 874.[109] The Sonderkommando removed goods and corpses from the incoming trains, guided victims to the dressing rooms and gas chambers, removed their bodies afterwards, and took their jewelry, hair, dental work, and any precious metals from their teeth, all of which was sent to Germany. Once the bodies were stripped of anything valuable, the Sonderkommando burned them in the crematoria.[110]
Because they were witnesses to the mass murder, the Sonderkommando lived separately from the other prisoners, although this rule was not applied to the non-Jews among them.[111] Their quality of life was further improved by their access to the property of new arrivals, which they traded within the camp, including with the SS.[112] Nevertheless, their life expectancy was short; they were regularly murdered and replaced.[113] About 100 survived to the camp's liquidation. They were forced on a death march and by train to the camp at Mauthausen, where three days later they were asked to step forward during roll call. No one did, and because the SS did not have their records, several of them survived.[114]
Tattoos and trianglesFurther information: Nazi concentration camp badge
Auschwitz clothingUniquely at Auschwitz, prisoners were tattooed with a serial number, on their left breast for Soviet prisoners of war[115] and on the left arm for civilians.[116][117] Categories of prisoner were distinguishable by triangular pieces of cloth (German: Winkel) sewn onto on their jackets below their prisoner number. Political prisoners (Schutzhäftlinge or Sch), mostly Poles, had a red triangle, while criminals (Berufsverbrecher or BV) were mostly German and wore green. Asocial prisoners (Asoziale or Aso), which included vagrants, prostitutes and the Roma, wore black. Purple was for Jehovah's Witnesses (Internationale Bibelforscher-Vereinigung or IBV)'s and pink for gay men, who were mostly German.[118] An estimated 5,000–15,000 gay men prosecuted under German Penal Code Section 175 (proscribing sexual acts between men) were detained in concentration camps, of whom an unknown number were sent to Auschwitz.[119] Jews wore a yellow badge, the shape of the Star of David, overlaid by a second triangle if they also belonged to a second category. The nationality of the inmate was indicated by a letter stitched onto the cloth. A racial hierarchy existed, with German prisoners at the top. Next were non-Jewish prisoners from other countries. Jewish prisoners were at the bottom.[120]
Transports
Freight car inside Auschwitz II-Birkenau, near the gatehouse, used to transport deportees, 2014[121]Deportees were brought to Auschwitz crammed in wretched conditions into goods or cattle wagons, arriving near a railway station or at one of several dedicated trackside ramps, including one next to Auschwitz I. The Altejudenrampe (old Jewish ramp), part of the Oświęcim freight railway station, was used from 1942 to 1944 for Jewish transports.[121][122] Located between Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II, arriving at this ramp meant a 2.5 km journey to Auschwitz II and the gas chambers. Most deportees were forced to walk, accompanied by SS men and a car with a Red Cross symbol that carried the Zyklon B, as well as an SS doctor in case officers were poisoned by mistake. Inmates arriving at night, or who were too weak to walk, were taken by truck.[123] Work on a new railway line and ramp (right) between sectors BI and BII in Auschwitz II, was completed in May 1944 for the arrival of Hungarian Jews[122] between May and early July 1944.[124] The rails led directly to the area around the gas chambers.[121]
Life for the inmatesThe day began at 4:30 am for the men (an hour later in winter), and earlier for the women, when the block supervisor sounded a gong and started beating inmates with sticks to make them wash and use the latrines quickly.[125] There were few latrines and there was a lack of clean water. Each washhouse had to service thousands of prisoners. In sectors BIa and BIb in Auschwitz II, two buildings containing latrines and washrooms were installed in 1943. These contained troughs for washing and 90 faucets; the toilet facilities were "sewage channels" covered by concrete with 58 holes for seating. There were three barracks with washing facilities or toilets to serve 16 residential barracks in BIIa, and six washrooms/latrines for 32 barracks in BIIb, BIIc, BIId, and BIIe.[126] Primo Levi described a 1944 Auschwitz III washroom:Latrine in the men's quarantine camp, sector BIIa, Auschwitz II, 2003It is badly lighted, full of draughts, with the brick floor covered by a layer of mud. The water is not drinkable; it has a revolting smell and often fails for many hours. The walls are covered by curious didactic frescoes: for example, there is the good Häftling [prisoner], portrayed stripped to the waist, about to diligently soap his sheared and rosy cranium, and the bad Häftling, with a strong Semitic nose and a greenish colour, bundled up in his ostentatiously stained clothes with a beret on his head, who cautiously dips a finger into the water of the washbasin. Under the first is written: "So bist du rein" (like this you are clean), and under the second, "So gehst du ein" (like this you come to a bad end); and lower down, in doubtful French but in Gothic script: "La propreté, c'est la santé" [cleanliness is health].[127]
Prisoners received half a litre of coffee substitute or a herbal tea in the morning, but no food.[128] A second gong heralded roll call, when inmates lined up outside in rows of ten to be counted. No matter the weather, they had to wait for the SS to arrive for the count; how long they stood there depended on the officers' mood, and whether there had been escapes or other events attracting punishment.[129] Guards might force the prisoners to squat for an hour with their hands above their heads or hand out beatings or detention for infractions such as having a missing button or an improperly cleaned food bowl. The inmates were counted and re-counted.[130]Auschwitz II brick barracks, sector BI, 2006; four prisoners slept in each partition, known as a buk.[131]
Auschwitz II wooden barracks, 2008After roll call, to the sound of "Arbeitskommandos formieren" ("form work details"), prisoners walked to their place of work, five abreast, to begin a working day that was normally 11 hours long—longer in summer and shorter in winter.[132] A prison orchestra, such as the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz, was forced to play cheerful music as the workers left the camp. Kapos were responsible for the prisoners' behaviour while they worked, as was an SS escort. Much of the work took place outdoors at construction sites, gravel pits, and lumber yards. No rest periods were allowed. One prisoner was assigned to the latrines to measure the time the workers took to empty their bladders and bowels.[133]
Lunch was three-quarters of a litre of watery soup at midday, reportedly foul-tasting, with meat in the soup four times a week and vegetables (mostly potatoes and rutabaga) three times. The evening meal was 300 grams of bread, often moldy, part of which the inmates were expected to keep for breakfast the next day, with a tablespoon of cheese or marmalade, or 25 grams of margarine or sausage. Prisoners engaged in hard labour were given extra rations.[134]
A second roll call took place at seven in the evening, in the course of which prisoners might be hanged or flogged. If a prisoner was missing, the others had to remain standing until the absentee was found or the reason for the absence discovered, even if it took hours. On 6 July 1940, roll call lasted 19 hours because a Polish prisoner, Tadeusz Wiejowski, had escaped; following an escape in 1941, a group of prisoners was picked out from the escapee's barracks and sent to block 11 to be starved to death.[135] After roll call, prisoners retired to their blocks for the night and received their bread rations. Then they had some free time to use the washrooms and receive their mail, unless they were Jews: Jews were not allowed to receive mail. Curfew ("nighttime quiet") was marked by a gong at nine o'clock.[136] Inmates slept in long rows of brick or wooden bunks, or on the floor, lying in and on their clothes and shoes to prevent them from being stolen.[137] The wooden bunks had blankets and paper mattresses filled with wood shavings; in the brick barracks, inmates lay on straw.[138] According to Miklós Nyiszli:
Eight hundred to a thousand people were crammed into the superimposed compartments of each barracks. Unable to stretch out completely, they slept there both lengthwise and crosswise, with one man's feet on another's head, neck, or chest. Stripped of all human dignity, they pushed and shoved and bit and kicked each other in an effort to get a few more inches' space on which to sleep a little more comfortably. For they did not have long to sleep.[139]
Sunday was not a workday, but prisoners had to clean the barracks and take their weekly shower,[140] and were allowed to write (in German) to their families, although the SS censored the mail. Inmates who did not speak German would trade bread for help.[141] Observant Jews tried to keep track of the Hebrew calendar and Jewish holidays, including Shabbat, and the weekly Torah portion. No watches, calendars, or clocks were permitted in the camp. Only two Jewish calendars made in Auschwitz survived to the end of the war. Prisoners kept track of the days in other ways, such as obtaining information from newcomers.[142]
Women's campSee also: Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz
Women in Auschwitz II, May 1944
Roll call in front of the kitchen building, Auschwitz IIAbout 30 percent of the registered inmates were female.[143] The first mass transport of women, 999 non-Jewish German women from the Ravensbrück concentration camp, arrived on 26 March 1942. Classified as criminal, asocial and political, they were brought to Auschwitz as founder functionaries of the women's camp.[144] Rudolf Höss wrote of them: "It was easy to predict that these beasts would mistreat the women over whom they exercised power ... Spiritual suffering was completely alien to them."[145] They were given serial numbers 1–999.[46][g] The women's guard from Ravensbrück, Johanna Langefeld, became the first Auschwitz women's camp Lagerführerin.[144] A second mass transport of women, 999 Jews from Poprad, Slovakia, arrived on the same day. According to Danuta Czech, this was the first registered transport sent to Auschwitz by the Reich Security Head Office (RSHA) office IV B4, known as the Jewish Office, led by SS Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann.[46] (Office IV was the Gestapo.)[146] A third transport of 798 Jewish women from Bratislava, Slovakia, followed on 28 March.[46]
Women were at first held in blocks 1–10 of Auschwitz I,[147] but from 6 August 1942,[148] 13,000 inmates were transferred to a new women's camp (Frauenkonzentrationslager or FKL) in Auschwitz II. This consisted at first of 15 brick and 15 wooden barracks in sector (Bauabschnitt) BIa; it was later extended into BIb,[149] and by October 1943 it held 32,066 women.[150] In 1943–1944, about 11,000 women were also housed in the Gypsy family camp, as were several thousand in the Theresienstadt family camp.[151]
Conditions in the women's camp were so poor that when a group of male prisoners arrived to set up an infirmary in October 1942, their first task, according to researchers from the Auschwitz Museum, was to distinguish the corpses from the women who were still alive.[150] Gisella Perl, a Romanian-Jewish gynecologist and inmate of the women's camp, wrote in 1948:
There was one latrine for thirty to thirty-two thousand women and we were permitted to use it only at certain hours of the day. We stood in line to get in to this tiny building, knee-deep in human excrement. As we all suffered from dysentry, we could barely wait until our turn came, and soiled our ragged clothes, which never came off our bodies, thus adding to the horror of our existence by the terrible smell that surrounded us like a cloud. The latrine consisted of a deep ditch with planks thrown across it at certain intervals. We squatted on those planks like birds perched on a telegraph wire, so close together that we could not help soiling one another.[152]
Langefeld was succeeded as Lagerführerin in October 1942 by SS Oberaufseherin Maria Mandl, who developed a reputation for cruelty. Höss hired men to oversee the female supervisors, first SS Obersturmführer Paul Müller, then SS Hauptsturmführer Franz Hössler.[153] Mandl and Hössler were executed after the war. Sterilisation experiments were carried out in barracks 30 by a German gynecologist, Carl Clauberg, and another German doctor, Horst Schumann.[150]
Medical experiments, block 10Main articles: Block 10 and Nazi human experimentation
Block 10, Auschwitz I, where medical experiments were performed on womenGerman doctors performed a variety of experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz. SS doctors tested the efficacy of X-rays as a sterilization device by administering large doses to female prisoners. Carl Clauberg injected chemicals into women's uteruses in an effort to glue them shut. Prisoners were infected with spotted fever for vaccination research and exposed to toxic substances to study the effects.[154] In one experiment, Bayer—then part of IG Farben—paid RM 150 each for 150 female inmates from Auschwitz (the camp had asked for RM 200 per woman), who were transferred to a Bayer facility to test an anesthetic. A Bayer employee wrote to Rudolf Höss: "The transport of 150 women arrived in good condition. However, we were unable to obtain conclusive results because they died during the experiments. We would kindly request that you send us another group of women to the same number and at the same price." The Bayer research was led at Auschwitz by Helmuth Vetter of Bayer/IG Farben, who was also an Auschwitz physician and SS captain, and by Auschwitz physicians Friedrich Entress and Eduard Wirths.[155]Defendants during the Doctors' trial, Nuremberg, 1946–1947The most infamous doctor at Auschwitz was Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death", who worked in Auschwitz II from 30 May 1943, at first in the gypsy family camp.[156] Interested in performing research on identical twins, dwarfs, and those with hereditary disease, Mengele set up a kindergarten in barracks 29 and 31 for children he was experimenting on, and for all Romani children under six, where they were given better food rations.[157] From May 1944, he would select twins and dwarfs from among the new arrivals during "selection",[158] reportedly calling for twins with "Zwillinge heraus!" ("twins step forward!").[159] He and other doctors (the latter prisoners) would measure the twins' body parts, photograph them, and subject them to dental, sight and hearing tests, x-rays, blood tests, surgery, and blood transfusions between them.[160] Then he would have them killed and dissected.[158] Kurt Heissmeyer, another German doctor and SS officer, took 20 Polish Jewish children from Auschwitz to use in pseudoscientific experiments at the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg, where he injected them with the tuberculosis bacilli to test a cure for tuberculosis. In April 1945, the children were murdered by hanging to conceal the project.[161]
A Jewish skeleton collection was obtained from among a pool of 115 Jewish inmates, chosen for their perceived stereotypical racial characteristics. Rudolf Brandt and Wolfram Sievers, general manager of the Ahnenerbe (a Nazi research institute), delivered the skeletons to the collection of the Anatomy Institute at the Reichsuniversität Straßburg in Alsace-Lorraine. The collection was sanctioned by Heinrich Himmler and under the direction of August Hirt. Ultimately 87 of the inmates were shipped to Natzweiler-Struthof and murdered in August 1943.[162] Brandt and Sievers were executed in 1948 after being convicted during the Doctors' trial, part of the Subsequent Nuremberg trials.[163]
Punishment, block 11Main article: Block 11
Block 11 and (left) the "death wall", Auschwitz I, 2000Prisoners could be beaten and killed by guards and kapos for the slightest infraction of the rules. Polish historian Irena Strzelecka writes that kapos were given nicknames that reflected their sadism: "bloody", "Iron", "The Strangler", "The Boxer".[164] Based on the 275 extant reports of punishment in the Auschwitz archives, Strzelecka lists common infractions: returning a second time for food at mealtimes, removing one’s gold teeth to buy bread, breaking into the pigsty to steal the pigs' food, putting one’s hands into one’s pockets.[165]
Flogging during rollcall was common. A flogging table called "the goat" immobilised prisoners' feet in a box, while they stretched themselves across the table. Prisoners had to count out the lashes—"25 mit besten Dank habe ich erhalten" ("25 received with many thanks")— and if they got the figure wrong, the flogging resumed from the beginning.[165] Punishment by "the post" involved tying prisoners' hands behind their backs with chains attached to hooks, then raising the chains so the prisoners were left dangling by the wrists. If their shoulders were too damaged afterwards to work, they might be sent to the gas chamber. Prisoners were subjected to the post for helping a prisoner who had been beaten, and for picking up a cigarette butt.[166] To extract information from inmates, guards would force their heads onto the stove, and hold them there, burning their faces and eyes.[167]
Known as block 13 until 1941, block 11 of Auschwitz I was the prison within the prison, reserved for inmates suspected of resistance activities.[168] Cell 22 in block 11 was a windowless standing cell (Stehbunker). Split into four sections, each section measured less than 1.0 m2 (11 sq ft) and held four prisoners, who entered it through a hatch near the floor. There was a 5 cm x 5 cm vent for air, covered by a perforated sheet. Strzelecka writes that prisoners might have to spend several nights in cell 22; Wiesław Kielar spent four weeks in it for breaking a pipe.[169] Several rooms in block 11 were deemed the Polizei-Ersatz-Gefängnis Myslowitz in Auschwitz (Auschwitz branch of the police station at Mysłowice).[170] There were also Sonderbehandlung cases ("special treatment") for Poles and others regarded as dangerous to Nazi Germany.[171]
Death wall
The "death wall" showing the death-camp Flag, the blue-and-white stripes with a red triangle signifying the Auschwitz uniform of political prisoners.The courtyard between blocks 10 and 11, known as the "death wall", served as an execution area, including for Poles in the General Government area who had been sentenced to death by a criminal court.[171] The first executions, by shooting inmates in the back of the head, took place at the death wall on 11 November 1941, Poland's National Independence Day. The 151 accused were led to the wall one at a time, stripped naked and with their hands tied behind their backs. Danuta Czech noted that a "clandestine Catholic mass" was said the following Sunday on the second floor of Block 4 in Auschwitz I, in a narrow space between bunks.[172]
An estimated 4,500 Polish political prisoners were executed at the death wall, including members of the camp resistance. An additional 10,000 Poles were brought to the camp to be executed without being registered. About 1,000 Soviet prisoners of war died by execution, although this is a rough estimate. A Polish government-in-exile report stated that 11,274 prisoners and 6,314 prisoners of war had been executed.[173] Rudolf Höss wrote that "execution orders arrived in an unbroken stream".[170] According to SS officer Perry Broad, "[s]ome of these walking skeletons had spent months in the stinking cells, where not even animals would be kept, and they could barely manage to stand straight. And yet, at that last moment, many of them shouted 'Long live Poland', or 'Long live freedom'."[174] The dead included Colonel Jan Karcz and Major Edward Gött-Getyński, executed on 25 January 1943 with 51 others suspected of resistance activities. Józef Noji, the Polish long-distance runner, was executed on 15 February that year.[175] In October 1944, 200 Sonderkommando were executed for their part in the Sonderkommando revolt.[176]
Family campsGypsy family campMain articles: Gypsy family camp (Auschwitz) and Romani genocide
Romani children, Mulfingen, Germany, 1943; the children were studied by Eva Justin and later sent to Auschwitz.[177]A separate camp for the Roma, the Zigeunerfamilienlager ("Gypsy family camp"), was set up in the BIIe sector of Auschwitz II-Birkenau in February 1943. For unknown reasons, they were not subject to selection and families were allowed to stay together. The first transport of German Roma arrived on 26 February that year. There had been a small number of Romani inmates before that; two Czech Romani prisoners, Ignatz and Frank Denhel, tried to escape in December 1942, the latter successfully, and a Polish Romani woman, Stefania Ciuron, arrived on 12 February 1943 and escaped in April.[178] Josef Mengele, the Holocaust's most infamous physician, worked in the gypsy family camp from 30 May 1943 when he began his work in Auschwitz.[156]
The Auschwitz registry (Hauptbücher) shows that 20,946 Roma were registered prisoners,[179] and another 3,000 are thought to have entered unregistered.[180] On 22 March 1943, one transport of 1,700 Polish Sinti and Roma was gassed on arrival because of illness, as was a second group of 1,035 on 25 May 1943.[179] The SS tried to liquidate the camp on 16 May 1944, but the Roma fought them, armed with knives and iron pipes, and the SS retreated. Shortly after this, the SS removed nearly 2,908 from the family camp to work, and on 2 August 1944 gassed the other 2,897. Ten thousand remain unaccounted for.[181]
Theresienstadt family campMain article: Theresienstadt family campThe SS deported around 18,000 Jews to Auschwitz from the Theresienstadt ghetto in Terezin, Czechoslovakia,[182] beginning on 8 September 1943 with a transport of 2,293 male and 2,713 female prisoners.[183] Placed in sector BIIb as a "family camp", they were allowed to keep their belongings, wear their own clothes, and write letters to family; they did not have their hair shaved and were not subjected to selection.[182] Correspondence between Adolf Eichmann's office and the International Red Cross suggests that the Germans set up the camp to cast doubt on reports, in time for a planned Red Cross visit to Auschwitz, that mass murder was taking place there.[184] The women and girls were placed in odd-numbered barracks and the men and boys in even-numbered. An infirmary was set up in barracks 30 and 32, and barracks 31 became a school and kindergarten.[182] The somewhat better living conditions were nevertheless inadequate; 1,000 members of the family camp were dead within six months.[185] Two other groups of 2,491 and 2,473 Jews arrived from Theresienstadt in the family camp on 16 and 20 December 1943.[186]
On 8 March 1944, 3,791 of the prisoners (men, women and children) were sent to the gas chambers; the men were taken to crematorium III and the women later to crematorium II.[187] Some of the groups were reported to have sung Hatikvah and the Czech national anthem on the way.[188] Before they were murdered, they had been asked to write postcards to relatives, postdated to 25–27 March. Several twins were held back for medical experiments.[189] The Czechoslovak government-in-exile initiated diplomatic manoeuvers to save the remaining Czech Jews after its representative in Bern received the Vrba-Wetzler report, written by two escaped prisoners, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, which warned that the remaining family-camp inmates would be gassed soon.[190] The BBC also became aware of the report; its German service broadcast news of the family-camp murders during its women's programme on 16 June 1944, warning: "All those responsible for such massacres from top downwards will be called to account."[191] The Red Cross visited Theresienstadt in June 1944 and were persuaded by the SS that no one was being deported from there.[184] The following month, about 2,000 women from the family camp were selected to be moved to other camps and 80 boys were moved to the men's camp; the remaining 7,000 were gassed between 10 and 12 July.[192]
Selection and extermination processGas chambers
A reconstruction of crematorium I, Auschwitz I, 2014[193]The first gassings at Auschwitz took place in early September 1941, when around 850 inmates—Soviet prisoners of war and sick Polish inmates—were killed with Zyklon B in the basement of block 11 in Auschwitz I. The building proved unsuitable, so gassings were conducted instead in crematorium I, also in Auschwitz I, which operated until December 1942. There, more than 700 victims could be killed at once.[194] Tens of thousands were killed in crematorium I.[49] To keep the victims calm, they were told they were to undergo disinfection and de-lousing; they were ordered to undress outside, then were locked in the building and gassed. After its decommissioning as a gas chamber, the building was converted to a storage facility and later served as an SS air raid shelter.[195] The gas chamber and crematorium were reconstructed after the war. Dwork and van Pelt write that a chimney was recreated; four openings in the roof were installed to show where the Zyklon B had entered; and two of the three furnaces were rebuilt with the original components.[31]Hungarian Jews arriving at Auschwitz II, May/June 1944
Crematoria II and III and their chimneys are visible in the background, left and right.
Jewish women and children from Hungary walking toward the gas chamber, Auschwitz II, May/June 1944. The gate on the left leads to sector BI, the oldest part of the camp.[196]In early 1942, mass exterminations were moved to two provisional gas chambers (the "red house" and "white house", known as bunkers 1 and 2) in Auschwitz II, while the larger crematoria (II, III, IV, and V) were under construction. Bunker 2 was temporarily reactivated from May to November 1944, when large numbers of Hungarian Jews were gassed.[197] In summer 1944 the combined capacity of the crematoria and outdoor incineration pits was 20,000 bodies per day.[198] A planned sixth facility—crematorium VI—was never built.[199]
From 1942, Jews were being transported to Auschwitz from all over German-occupied Europe by rail, arriving in daily convoys.[200] The gas chambers worked to their fullest capacity from May to July 1944, during the Holocaust in Hungary.[201] A rail spur leading to crematoria II and III in Auschwitz II was completed that May, and a new ramp was built between sectors BI and BII to deliver the victims closer to the gas chambers (images top right). On 29 April the first 1,800 Jews from Hungary arrived at the camp.[202] From 14 May until early July 1944, 437,000 Hungarian Jews, half the pre-war population, were deported to Auschwitz, at a rate of 12,000 a day for a considerable part of that period.[124] The crematoria had to be overhauled. Crematoria II and III were given new elevators leading from the stoves to the gas chambers, new grates were fitted, and several of the dressing rooms and gas chambers were painted. Cremation pits were dug behind crematorium V.[202] The incoming volume was so great that the Sonderkommando resorted to burning corpses in open-air pits as well as in the crematoria.[203]
SelectionAccording to Polish historian Franciszek Piper, of the 1,095,000 Jews deported to Auschwitz, around 205,000 were registered in the camp and given serial numbers; 25,000 were sent to other camps; and 865,000 were murdered soon after arrival.[204] Adding non-Jewish victims gives a figure of 900,000 who were murdered without being registered.[205]
During "selection" on arrival, those deemed able to work were sent to the right and admitted into the camp (registered), and the rest were sent to the left to be gassed. The group selected to die included almost all children, women with small children, the elderly, and others who appeared on brief and superficial inspection by an SS doctor not to be fit for work.[206] Practically any fault—scars, bandages, boils and emaciation—might provide reason enough to be deemed unfit.[207] Children might be made to walk toward a stick held at a certain height; those who could walk under it were selected for the gas.[208] Inmates unable to walk or who arrived at night were taken to the crematoria on trucks; otherwise, the new arrivals were marched there.[209] Their belongings were seized and sorted by inmates in the "Kanada" warehouses, an area of the camp in sector BIIg that housed 30 barracks used as storage facilities for plundered goods; it derived its name from the inmates' view of Canada as a land of plenty.[210]
Inside the crematoria
Entrance to crematorium III, Auschwitz II, 2008[211]The crematoria consisted of a dressing room, gas chamber, and furnace room. In crematoria II and III, the dressing room and gas chamber were underground; in IV and V, they were on the ground floor. The dressing room had numbered hooks on the wall to hang clothes. In crematorium II, there was also a dissection room (Sezierraum).[212] SS officers told the victims they had to take a shower and undergo delousing. The victims undressed in the dressing room and walked into the gas chamber; signs said "Bade" (bath) or "Desinfektionsraum" (disinfection room). A former prisoner testified that the language of the signs changed depending on who was being killed.[213] Some inmates were given soap and a towel.[214] A gas chamber could hold up to 2,000; one former prisoner said it was around 3,000.[215]
The Zyklon B was delivered to the crematoria by a special SS bureau known as the Hygiene Institute.[216] After the doors were shut, SS men dumped in the Zyklon B pellets through vents in the roof or holes in the side of the chamber. The victims were usually dead within 10 minutes; Rudolf Höss testified that it took up to 20 minutes.[217] Leib Langfus, a member of the Sonderkommando, buried his diary (written in Yiddish) near crematorium III in Auschwitz II. It was found in 1952, signed "A.Y.R.A":[218]
It would be difficult to even imagine that so many people would fit in such a small [room]. Anyone who did not want to go inside was shot [...] or torn apart by the dogs. They would have suffocated from the lack of air within several hours. Then all the doors were sealed tight and the gas thrown in by way of a small hole in the ceiling. There was nothing more that the people inside could do. And so they only screamed in bitter, lamentable voices. Others complained in voices full of despair, and others still sobbed spasmodically and sent up a dire, heart-rending weeping. ... And in the meantime, their voices grew weaker and weaker ... Because of the great crowding, people fell one atop another as they died, until a heap arose consisting of five or six layers atop the other, reaching a height of one meter. Mothers froze in a seated position on the ground embracing their children in their arms, and husbands and wives died hugging each other. Some of the people made up a formless mass. Others stood in a leaning position, while the upper parts, from the stomach up, were in a lying position. Some of the people had turned completely blue under the influence of the gas, while others looks entirely fresh, as if they were asleep.[219]
Use of corpses
One of the Sonderkommando photographs: Women on their way to the gas chamber, Auschwitz II, August 1944Sonderkommando wearing gas masks dragged the bodies from the chamber. They removed glasses and artificial limbs and shaved off the women's hair;[217] women's hair was removed before they entered the gas chamber at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka, but at Auschwitz it was done after death.[220] By 6 February 1943, the Reich Economic Ministry had received 3,000 kg of women's hair from Auschwitz and Majdanek.[220] The hair was first cleaned in a solution of sal ammoniac, dried on the brick floor of the crematoria, combed, and placed in paper bags.[221] The hair was shipped to various companies, including one manufacturing plant in Bremen-Bluementhal, where workers found tiny coins with Greek letters on some of the braids, possibly from some of the 50,000 Greek Jews deported to Auschwitz in 1943.[222] When they liberated the camp in January 1945, the Red Army found 7,000 kg of human hair in bags ready to ship.[221]
Just before cremation, jewelry was removed, along with dental work and teeth containing precious metals.[223] Gold was removed from the teeth of dead prisoners from 23 September 1940 onwards by order of Heinrich Himmler.[224] The work was carried out by members of the Sonderkommando who were dentists; anyone overlooking dental work might themselves be cremated alive.[223] The gold was sent to the SS Health Service and used by dentists to treat the SS and their families; 50 kg had been collected by 8 October 1942.[224] By early 1944, 10–12 kg of gold was being extracted monthly from victims' teeth.[225]
The corpses were burned in the nearby incinerators, and the ashes were buried, thrown in the Vistula river, or used as fertilizer. Any bits of bone that had not burned properly were ground down in wooden mortars.[226]
Death toll
New arrivals, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, May/June 1944At least 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945, and at least 1.1 million died.[7] Overall 400,207 prisoners were registered in the camp: 268,657 male and 131,560 female.[143] A study in the late 1980s by Polish historian Franciszek Piper, published by Yad Vashem in 1991,[227] used timetables of train arrivals combined with deportation records to calculate that, of the 1.3 million sent to the camp, 1,082,000 had died there, a figure (rounded up to 1.1 million) that Piper regarded as a minimum.[7] That figure came to be widely accepted.[h]
The Germans tried to conceal how many they had murdered. In July 1942, according to Rudolf Höss's post-war memoir, Höss received an order from Heinrich Himmler, via Adolf Eichmann's office and SS commander Paul Blobel, that "[a]ll 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."[231]
Earlier estimates of the death toll were higher than Piper's. Following the camp's liberation, the Soviet government issued a statement, on 8 May 1945, that four million people had been murdered on the site, a figure based on the capacity of the crematoria.[232] Höss told prosecutors at Nuremberg that at least 2,500,000 people had been gassed there, and that another 500,000 had died of starvation and disease.[233] He testified that the figure of over two million had come from Eichmann.[234] In his memoirs, written in custody, Höss wrote that Eichmann had given the figure of 2.5 million to Höss's superior officer Richard Glücks, based on records that had been destroyed.[235] Höss regarded this figure as "far too high. Even Auschwitz had limits to its destructive possibilities," he Franciszek Piper)[2] Registered deaths(Auschwitz) Unregistered deaths(Auschwitz) TotalJews 95,000 865,000 960,000Ethnic Poles 64,000 10,000 74,000 (70,000–75,000)Roma and Sinti 19,000 2,000 21,000Soviet prisoners of war 12,000 3,000 15,000Other Europeans:Soviet citizens (Byelorussians, Russians, Ukrainians),Czechs, Yugoslavs, French, Germans, Austrians 10,000–15,000 n/a 10,000–15,000Total deaths in Auschwitz, 1940–1945 200,000–205,000 880,000 1,080,000–1,085,000Around one in six Jews murdered in the Holocaust died in Auschwitz.[237] By nation, the greatest number of Auschwitz's Jewish victims originated from Hungary, accounting for 430,000 deaths, followed by Poland (300,000), France (69,000), Netherlands (60,000), Greece (55,000), Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (46,000), Slovakia (27,000), Belgium (25,000), Germany and Austria (23,000), Yugoslavia (10,000), Italy (7,500), Norway (690), and others (34,000).[238] Timothy Snyder writes that fewer than one percent of the million Soviet Jews murdered in the Holocaust were murdered in Auschwitz.[239] Of the at least 387 Jehovah's Witnesses who were imprisoned at Auschwitz, 132 died in the camp.[240]
Resistance, escapes, and liberationCamp resistance, flow of informationSee also: Resistance movement in Auschwitz, Witold Report, Responsibility for the Holocaust § Allied knowledge of the atrocities, and The Holocaust § Flow of information about the mass murderCamp of Death pamphlet (1942) by Natalia Zarembina[241]Camp of Death pamphlet (1942) by Natalia Zarembina[241]
Halina Krahelska report from Auschwitz Oświęcim, pamiętnik więźnia ("Auschwitz: Diary of a prisoner"), 1942.[242]Halina Krahelska report from Auschwitz Oświęcim, pamiętnik więźnia ("Auschwitz: Diary of a prisoner"), 1942.[242]
"The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland", a paper issued by the Polish government-in-exile addressed to the United Nations, 1942"The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland", a paper issued by the Polish government-in-exile addressed to the United Nations, 1942
Information about Auschwitz became available to the Allies as a result of reports by Captain Witold Pilecki of the Polish Home Army[243] who, as "Tomasz Serafiński" (serial number 4859),[244] allowed himself to be arrested in Warsaw and taken to Auschwitz.[243] He was imprisoned there from 22 September 1940[245] until his escape on 27 April 1943.[244] Michael Fleming writes that Pilecki was instructed to sustain morale, organize food, clothing and resistance, prepare to take over the camp if possible, and smuggle information out to the Polish military.[243] Pilecki called his resistance movement Związek Organizacji Wojskowej (ZOW, "Union of Military Organization").[245]Captain Witold PileckiThe resistance sent out the first oral message about Auschwitz with Aleksander Wielkopolski, a Polish engineer who was released in October 1940.[246] The following month the Polish underground in Warsaw prepared a report on the basis of that information, The camp in Auschwitz, part of which was published in London in May 1941 in a booklet, The German Occupation of Poland, by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The report said of the Jews in the camp that "scarcely any of them came out alive". According to Fleming, the booklet was "widely circulated amongst British officials". The Polish Fortnightly Review based a story on it, writing that "three crematorium furnaces were insufficient to cope with the bodies being cremated", as did The Scotsman on 8 January 1942, the only British news organization to do so.[247]
On 24 December 1941, the resistance groups representing the various prisoner factions met in block 45 and agreed to cooperate. Fleming writes that it has not been possible to track Pilecki's early intelligence from the camp. Pilecki compiled two reports after he escaped in April 1943; the second, Raport W, detailed his life in Auschwitz I and estimated that 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, had been murdered.[248] On 1 July 1942, the Polish Fortnightly Review published a report describing Birkenau, writing that "prisoners call this supplementary camp 'Paradisal', presumably because there is only one road, leading to Paradise". Reporting that inmates were being killed "through excessive work, torture and medical means", it noted the gassing of the Soviet prisoners of war and Polish inmates in Auschwitz I in September 1941, the first gassing in the camp. It said: "It is estimated that the Oswiecim camp can accommodate fifteen thousand prisoners, but as they die on a mass scale there is always room for new arrivals."[249]The camp badge for non-Jewish Polish political prisonersThe Polish government-in-exile in London first reported the gassing of prisoners in Auschwitz on 21 July 1942,[250] and reported the gassing of Soviet POWs and Jews on 4 September 1942.[251] In 1943, the Kampfgruppe Auschwitz (Combat Group Auschwitz) was organized within the camp with the aim of sending out information about what was happening.[252] The Sonderkommando buried notes in the ground, hoping they would be found by the camp's liberators.[253] The group also smuggled out photographs; the Sonderkommando photographs, of events around the gas chambers in Auschwitz II, were smuggled out of the camp in September 1944 in a toothpaste tube.[254]
According to Fleming, the British press responded, in 1943 and the first half of 1944, either by not publishing reports about Auschwitz or by burying them on the inside pages. The exception was the Polish Jewish Observer, a City and East London Observer supplement edited by Joel Cang, a former Warsaw correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. The British reticence stemmed from a Foreign Office concern that the public might pressure the government to respond or provide refuge for the Jews, and that British actions on behalf of the Jews might affect its relationships in the Middle East. There was similar reticence in the United States, and indeed within the Polish government-in-exile and the Polish resistance. According to Fleming, the scholarship suggests that the Polish resistance distributed information about the Holocaust in Auschwitz without challenging the Allies' reluctance to highlight it.[255]
Escapes, Auschwitz ProtocolsFurther information: Vrba-Wetzler report and Auschwitz Protocols
Telegram dated 8 April 1944 from KL Auschwitz reporting the escape of Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd WetzlerFrom the first escape on 6 July 1940 of Tadeusz Wiejowski, at least 802 prisoners (757 men and 45 women) tried to escape from the camp, according to Polish historian Henryk Świebocki.[256][i] He writes that most escapes were attempted from work sites outside the camp's perimeter fence.[258] Of the 802 escapes, 144 were successful, 327 were caught, and the fate of 331 is unknown.[257]
Four Polish prisoners—Eugeniusz Bendera [pl] (serial number 8502), Kazimierz Piechowski (no. 918), Stanisław Gustaw Jaster [pl] (no. 6438), and Józef Lempart (no. 3419)—escaped successfully on 20 June 1942. After breaking into a warehouse, three of them dressed as SS officers and stole rifles and an SS staff car, which they drove out of the camp with the fourth handcuffed as a prisoner. They wrote later to Rudolf Höss apologizing for the loss of the vehicle.[259] On 21 July 1944, Polish inmate Jerzy Bielecki dressed in an SS uniform and, using a faked pass, managed to cross the camp's gate with his Jewish girlfriend, Cyla Cybulska, pretending that she was wanted for questioning. Both survived the war. For having saved her, Bielecki was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.[260]
Jerzy Tabeau (no. 27273, registered as Jerzy Wesołowski) and Roman Cieliczko (no. 27089), both Polish prisoners, escaped on 19 November 1943; Tabeau made contact with the Polish underground and, between December 1943 and early 1944, wrote what became known as the Polish Major's report about the situation in the camp.[261] On 27 April 1944, Rudolf Vrba (no. 44070) and Alfréd Wetzler (no. 29162) escaped to Slovakia, carrying detailed information to the Slovak Jewish Council about the gas chambers. The distribution of the Vrba-Wetzler report, and publication of parts of it in June 1944, helped to halt the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. On 27 May 1944, Arnost Rosin (no. 29858) and Czesław Mordowicz (no. 84216) also escaped to Slovakia; the Rosin-Mordowicz report was added to the Vrba-Wetzler and Tabeau reports to become what is known as the Auschwitz Protocols.[262] The reports were first published in their entirety in November 1944 by the United States War Refugee Board as The Extermination Camps of Auschwitz (Oświęcim) and Birkenau in Upper Silesia.[263]
Bombing proposalMain article: Auschwitz bombing debate
Aerial view of Auschwitz II-Birkenau taken by the RAF on 23 August 1944In January 1941, the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army and prime minister-in-exile, Władysław Sikorski, arranged for a report to be forwarded to Air Marshal Richard Pierse, head of RAF Bomber Command.[264] Written by Auschwitz prisoners in or around December 1940, the report described the camp's atrocious living conditions and asked the Polish government-in-exile to bomb it:
The prisoners implore the Polish Government to have the camp bombed. The destruction of the electrified barbed wire, the ensuing panic and darkness prevailing, the chances of escape would be great. The local population will hide them and help them to leave the neighbourhood. The prisoners are confidently awaiting the day when Polish planes from Great Britain will enable their escape. This is the prisoners unanimous demand to the Polish Government in London.[265]
Pierse replied that it was not technically feasible to bomb the camp without harming the prisoners.[264] In May 1944 Slovak rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl suggested that the Allies bomb the rails leading to the camp.[266] Historian David Wyman published an essay in Commentary in 1978 entitled "Why Auschwitz Was Never Bombed", arguing that the United States Army Air Forces could and should have attacked Auschwitz. In his book The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941–1945 (1984), Wyman argued that, since the IG Farben plant at Auschwitz III had been bombed three times between August and December 1944 by the US Fifteenth Air Force in Italy, it would have been feasible for the other camps or railway lines to be bombed too. Bernard Wasserstein's Britain and the Jews of Europe (1979) and Martin Gilbert's Auschwitz and the Allies (1981) raised similar questions about British inaction.[267] Since the 1990s, other historians have argued that Allied bombing accuracy was not sufficient for Wyman's proposed attack, and that counterfactual history is an inherently problematic endeavor.[268]
Sonderkommando revoltFurther information: Sonderkommando § Auschwitz
Sonderkommando member Zalmen Gradowski, pictured with his wife, Sonia, buried his notebooks near crematorium III. Sonia Gradowski was gassed on 8 December 1942.[269]The Sonderkommando who worked in the crematoria were witnesses to the mass murder and were therefore regularly murdered themselves.[270] On 7 October 1944, following an announcement that 300 of them were to be sent to a nearby town to clear away rubble—"transfers" were a common ruse for the murder of prisoners—the group, mostly Jews from Greece and Hungary, staged an uprising.[271] They attacked the SS with stones and hammers, killing three of them, and set crematorium IV on fire with rags soaked in oil that they had hidden.[272] Hearing the commotion, the Sonderkommando at crematorium II believed that a camp uprising had begun and threw their Oberkapo into a furnace. After escaping through a fence using wirecutters, they managed to reach Rajsko, where they hid in the granary of an Auschwitz satellite camp, but the SS pursued and killed them by setting the granary on fire.[273]
By the time the rebellion at crematorium IV had been suppressed, 212 members of the Sonderkommando were still alive and 451 had been killed.[274] The dead included Zalmen Gradowski, who kept notes of his time in Auschwitz and buried them near crematorium III; after the war, another Sonderkommando member showed the prosecutors where to dig.[275] The notes were published in several formats, including in 2017 as From the Heart of Hell.[276]
Evacuation and death marchesFurther information: Death marches during the Holocaust
Ruins of crematorium IV, Auschwitz II, blown up during the revoltThe last mass transports to arrive in Auschwitz were 60,000–70,000 Jews from the Łódź Ghetto, some 2,000 from Theresienstadt, and 8,000 from Slovakia.[277] The last selection took place on 30 October 1944.[198] On 1 or 2 November 1944, Heinrich Himmler ordered the SS to halt the mass murder by gas.[278][why?] On 25 November, he ordered that Auschwitz's gas chambers and crematoria be destroyed. The Sonderkommando and other prisoners began the job of dismantling the buildings and cleaning up the site.[279] On 18 January 1945, Engelbert Marketsch, a German criminal transferred from Mauthausen, became the last prisoner to be assigned a serial number in Auschwitz, number 202499.[280]
According to Polish historian Andrzej Strzelecki, the evacuation of the camp was one of its "most tragic chapters".[281] Himmler ordered the evacuation of all camps in January 1945, telling camp commanders: "The Führer holds you personally responsible for ... making sure that not a single prisoner from the concentration camps falls alive into the hands of the enemy."[282] The plundered goods from the "Kanada" barracks, together with building supplies, were transported to the German interior. Between 1 December 1944 and 15 January 1945, over one million items of clothing were packed to be shipped out of Auschwitz; 95,000 such parcels were sent to concentration camps in Germany.[283]
Beginning on 17 January, some 58,000 Auschwitz detainees (about two-thirds Jews)—over 20,000 from Auschwitz I and II and over 30,000 from the subcamps—were evacuated under guard, at first heading west on foot, then by open-topped freight trains, to concentration camps in Germany and Austria: Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Flossenburg, Gross-Rosen, Mauthausen, Dora-Mittelbau, Ravensbruck, and Sachsenhausen.[284] Fewer than 9,000 remained in the camps, deemed too sick to move.[285] During the marches, the SS shot or otherwise dispatched anyone unable to continue; "execution details" followed the marchers, killing prisoners who lagged behind.[281] Peter Longerich estimated that a quarter of the detainees were thus killed.[286] By December 1944 some 15,000 Jewish prisoners had made it from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen, where they were liberated by the British on 15 April 1945.[287]
On 20 January, crematoria II and III were blown up, and on 23 January the "Kanada" warehouses were set on fire; they apparently burned for five days. Crematorium IV had been partly demolished after the Sonderkommando revolt in October, and the rest of it was destroyed later. On 26 January, one day ahead of the Red Army's arrival, crematorium V was blown up.[288]
LiberationMain article: Liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp
Young survivors at the camp, liberated by the Red Army in January 1945
Eyeglasses of victims, 1945The first in the camp complex to be liberated was Auschwitz III, the IG Farben camp at Monowitz; a soldier from the 100th Infantry Division of the Red Army entered the camp around 9 am on Saturday, 27 January 1945.[289] The 60th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front (also part of the Red Army) arrived in Auschwitz I and II around 3 pm. They found 7,000 prisoners alive in the three main camps, 500 in the other subcamps, and over 600 corpses.[290] Items found included 837,000 women's garments, 370,000 men's suits, 44,000 pairs of shoes,[291] and 7,000 kg of human hair, estimated by the Soviet war crimes commission to have come from 140,000 people.[221] Some of the hair was examined by the Forensic Science Institute in Kraków, where it was found to contain traces of hydrogen cyanide, the main ingredient of Zyklon B.[292] Primo Levi described seeing the first four soldiers on horseback approach Auschwitz III, where he had been in the sick bay. They threw "strangely embarrassed glances at the sprawling bodies, at the battered huts and at us few still alive ...":[293]
They did not greet us, nor did they smile; they seemed oppressed not only by compassion but by a confused restraint, which sealed their lips and bound their eyes to the funereal scene. It was that shame we knew so well, the shame that drowned us after the selections, and every time we had to watch, or submit to, some outrage: the shame the Germans did not know, that the just man experiences at another man's crime; the feeling of guilt that such a crime should exist, that it should have been introduced irrevocably into the world of things that exist, and that his will for good should have proved too weak or null, and should not have availed in defence.[294]
Georgii Elisavetskii, a Soviet soldier who entered one of the barracks, said in 1980 that he could hear other soldiers telling the inmates: "You are free, comrades!" But they did not respond, so he tried in Russian, Polish, German, Ukrainian. Then he used some Yiddish: "They think that I am provoking them. They begin to hide. And only when I said to them: 'Do not be afraid, I am a colonel of Soviet Army and a Jew. We have come to liberate you' ... Finally, as if the barrier collapsed ... they rushed toward us shouting, fell on their knees, kissed the flaps of our overcoats, and threw their arms around our legs."[291]
The Soviet military medical service and Polish Red Cross (PCK) set up field hospitals that looked after 4,500 prisoners suffering from the effects of starvation (mostly diarrhea) and tuberculosis. Local volunteers helped until the Red Cross team arrived from Kraków in early February.[295] In Auschwitz II, the layers of excrement on the barracks floors had to be scraped off with shovels. Water was obtained from snow and from fire-fighting wells. Before more help arrived, 2,200 patients there were looked after by a few doctors and 12 PCK nurses. All the patients were later moved to the brick buildings in Auschwitz I, where several blocks became a hospital, with medical personnel working 18-hour shifts.[296]
The liberation of Auschwitz received little press attention at the time; the Red Army was focusing on its advance toward Germany and liberating the camp had not been one of its key aims. Boris Polevoi reported on the liberation in Pravda on 2 February 1945 but made no mention of Jews;[297] inmates were described collectively as "victims of Fascism".[298] It was when the Western Allies arrived in Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, and Dachau in April 1945 that the liberation of the camps received extensive coverage.[299]
After the warTrials of war criminalsFurther information: End of World War II in Europe, Auschwitz trial, and Frankfurt Auschwitz trials
Gallows in Auschwitz I where Rudolf Höss was executed on 16 April 1947Only 789 Auschwitz staff, up to 15 percent, ever stood trial;[8] most of the cases were pursued in Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany.[300] According to Aleksander Lasik, female SS officers were treated more harshly than male; of the 17 women sentenced, four received the death penalty and the others longer prison terms than the men. He writes that this may have been because there were only 200 women overseers, and therefore they were more visible and memorable to the inmates.[301]
Camp commandant Rudolf Höss was arrested by the British on 11 March 1946 near Flensburg, northern Germany, where he had been working as a farmer under the pseudonym Franz Lang. He was imprisoned in Heide, then transferred to Minden for interrogation, part of the British occupation zone. From there he was taken to Nuremberg to testify for the defense in the trial of SS-Obergruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Höss was straightforward about his own role in the mass murder and said he had followed the orders of Heinrich Himmler.[302][j] Extradited to Poland on 25 May 1946,[303] he wrote his memoirs in custody, first published in Polish in 1951 then in German in 1958 as Kommandant in Auschwitz.[304] His trial before the Supreme National Tribunal in Warsaw opened on 11 March 1947; he was sentenced to death on 2 April and hanged in Auschwitz I on 16 April, near crematorium I.[305]
On 25 November 1947, the Auschwitz trial began in Kraków, when Poland's Supreme National Tribunal brought to court 40 former Auschwitz staff, including commandant Arthur Liebehenschel, women's camp leader Maria Mandel, and camp leader Hans Aumeier. The trials ended on 22 December 1947, with 23 death sentences, seven life sentences, and nine prison sentences ranging from three to 15 years. Hans Münch, an SS doctor who had several former prisoners testify on his behalf, was the only person to be acquitted.[306]
Other former staff were hanged for war crimes in the Dachau Trials and the Belsen Trial, including camp leaders Josef Kramer, Franz Hössler, and Vinzenz Schöttl; doctor Friedrich Entress; and guards Irma Grese and Elisabeth Volkenrath.[307] Bruno Tesch and Karl Weinbacher, the owner and chief executive officer of the firm Tesch & Stabenow, one of the suppliers of Zyklon B, were arrested by the British after the war and executed for knowingly supplying the chemical for use on humans.[308] The 180-day Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, held in West Germany from 20 December 1963 to 20 August 1965, tried 22 defendants, including two dentists, a doctor, two camp adjudants and the camp's pharmacist. The 700-page indictment, presenting the testimony of 254 witnesses, was accompanied by a 300-page report about the camp, Nationalsozialistische Konzentrationslager, written by historians from the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Germany, including Martin Broszat and Helmut Krausnick. The report became the basis of their book, Anatomy of the SS State (1968), the first comprehensive study of the camp and the SS. The court convicted 19 of the defendants, giving six of them life sentences and the others between three and ten years.[309] East Germany also held trials against several former staff members of Auschwitz. One of the defendants they tried was Horst Fischer. Fischer, one of the highest-ranking SS physicians in the camp, had personally selected at least 75,000 men, women, and children to be gassed. He was arrested in 1965. The following year, he was convicted of crimes against humanity, sentenced to death, and executed by guillotine. Fischer was the highest-ranking SS physician from Auschwitz to ever be tried by a German court.[310]
Legacy
Barracks at Auschwitz II
Auschwitz II gate in 1959In the decades since its liberation, Auschwitz has become a primary symbol of the Holocaust. Seweryna Szmaglewska's 1945 autobiograpy Dymy nad Birkenau (Smoke over Birkenau) has been credited with spreading knowledge about the camp to the general public.[311]: 167 [312] Historian Timothy D. Snyder attributes this to the camp's high death toll and "unusual combination of an industrial camp complex and a killing facility", which left behind far more witnesses than single-purpose killing facilities such as Chełmno or Treblinka.[313] In 2005 the United Nations General Assembly designated 27 January, the date of the camp's liberation, as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.[314] Helmut Schmidt visited the site in November 1977, the first West German chancellor to do so, followed by his successor, Helmut Kohl, in November 1989.[315] In a statement on the 50th anniversary of the liberation, Kohl said that "[t]he darkest and most awful chapter in German history was written at Auschwitz."[316] In January 2020, world leaders gathered at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to commemorate the 75th anniversary.[317] It was the city's largest-ever political gathering, with over 45 heads of state and world leaders, including royalty.[318] At Auschwitz itself, Reuven Rivlin and Andrzej Duda, the presidents of Israel and Poland, laid wreaths.[319]
Notable memoirists of the camp include Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Tadeusz Borowski.[237] Levi's If This is a Man, first published in Italy in 1947 as Se questo è un uomo, became a classic of Holocaust literature, an "imperishable masterpiece".[320][k] Wiesel wrote about his imprisonment at Auschwitz in Night (1960) and other works, and became a prominent spokesman against ethnic violence; in 1986, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.[322] Camp survivor Simone Veil was elected President of the European Parliament, serving from 1979 to 1982.[323] Two Auschwitz victims—Maximilian Kolbe, a priest who volunteered to die by starvation in place of a stranger, and Edith Stein, a Jewish convert to Catholicism—were named saints of the Catholic Church.[324]
In 2017, a Körber Foundation survey found that 40 percent of 14-year-olds in Germany did not know what Auschwitz was.[325][326] The following year a survey organized by the Claims Conference, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and others found that 41 percent of 1,350 American adults surveyed, and 66 percent of millennials, did not know what Auschwitz was, while 22 percent said they had never heard of the Holocaust.[327] A CNN-ComRes poll in 2018 found a similar situation in Europe.[328]
Auschwitz-Birkenau State MuseumMain article: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
Czesława Kwoka, photographed in Auschwitz by Wilhelm Brasse of the camp's Erkennungsdienst
Museum exhibit, 2016
Israeli Air Force F-15 Eagles fly over Auschwitz II-Birkenau, 2003
End of the rail track inside Auschwitz II
Italian president Sergio Mattarella standing in front of the "Death Wall"On 2 July 1947, the Polish government passed a law establishing a state memorial to remember "the martyrdom of the Polish nation and other nations in Oswiecim".[329] The museum established its exhibits at Auschwitz I; after the war, the barracks in Auschwitz II-Birkenau had been mostly dismantled and moved to Warsaw to be used on building sites. Dwork and van Pelt write that, in addition, Auschwitz I played a more central role in the persecution of the Polish people, in opposition to the importance of Auschwitz II to the Jews, including Polish Jews.[330] An exhibition opened in Auschwitz I in 1955, displaying prisoner mug shots; hair, suitcases, and shoes taken from murdered prisoners; canisters of Zyklon B pellets; and other objects related to the killings.[331] UNESCO added the camp to its list of World Heritage Sites in 1979.[332] All the museum's directors were, until 1990, former Auschwitz prisoners. Visitors to the site have increased from 492,500 in 2001, to over one million in 2009,[333] to two million in 2016.[334]
There have been protracted disputes over the perceived Christianization of the site. Pope John Paul II celebrated mass over the train tracks leading to Auschwitz II-Birkenau on 7 June 1979[335] and called the camp "the Golgotha of our age", referring to the crucifixion of Jesus.[336] More controversy followed when Carmelite nuns founded a convent in 1984 in a former theater outside the camp's perimeter, near block 11 of Auschwitz I,[337] after which a local priest and some survivors erected a large cross—one that had been used during the pope's mass—behind block 11 to commemorate 152 Polish inmates shot by the Germans in 1941.[338][339] After a long dispute, Pope John Paul II intervened and the nuns moved the convent elsewhere in 1993.[340] The cross remained, triggering the "War of the Crosses", as more crosses were erected to commemorate Christian victims, despite international objections. The Polish government and Catholic Church eventually agreed to remove all but the original.[341]
On 4 September 2003, despite a protest from the museum, three Israeli Air Force F-15 Eagles performed a fly-over of Auschwitz II-Birkenau during a ceremony at the camp below. All three pilots were descendants of Holocaust survivors, including the man who led the flight, Major-General Amir Eshel.[342] On 27 January 2015, some 300 Auschwitz survivors gathered with world leaders under a giant tent at the entrance to Auschwitz II to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the camp's liberation.[343][l]
Museum curators consider visitors who pick up items from the ground to be thieves, and local police will charge them as such; the maximum penalty is a 10-year prison sentence.[345] In 2017 two British youths from the Perse School were fined in Poland after picking up buttons and shards of decorative glass in 2015 from the "Kanada" area of Auschwitz II, where camp victims' personal effects were stored.[346] The 16 ft (4.9 m) Arbeit Macht Frei sign over the main camp's gate was stolen in December 2009 by a Swedish former neo-Nazi and two Polish men. The sign was later recovered.[347]
In 2018 the Polish government passed an amendment to its Act on the Institute of National Remembrance, making it a criminal offence to violate the "good name" of Poland by accusing it of crimes committed by Germany in the Holocaust, which would include referring to Auschwitz and other camps as "Polish death camps".[348] Staff at the museum were accused by nationalist media in Poland of focusing too much on the fate of the Jews in Auschwitz at the expense of ethnic Poles. The brother of the museum's director, Piotr Cywiński, wrote that Cywiński had experienced "50 days of incessant hatred".[349] After discussions with Israel's prime minister, amid international concern that the new law would stifle research, the Polish government adjusted the amendment so that anyone accusing Poland of complicity would be guilty only of a civil offence.[350]
See alsoAuschwitz AlbumAuschwitz-Birkenau FoundationHöcker AlbumList of Nazi concentration campsList of victims and survivors of Auschwitz"Polish death camp" controversy

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