Was it not obvious, they felt, that the Jews had been responsible? Had not somehow the Jews, with their alleged Communist sympathies, stabbed Germany in the back? Nor that thousands of German Jews were neither left wing nor Communist.
Today, certainly in Britain and America, there exists confusion about the function of a place like Dachau. Concentration camps like Dachau established on 22 March , less than two months after Adolf Hitler became German Chancellor were different from death camps like Treblinka which were not in existence until the middle of the war. Adding further to the confusion is the complex history of Auschwitz, the most infamous camp of all, which was to evolve into both a concentration and a death camp.
Unlike these later camps, Dachau in the s was not a place of mass murder — the majority sent there were released after a year to 18 months. I need only hard, totally committed SS men. In September he was promoted to lieutenant and in transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he remained until his elevation to commandant of the new concentration camp at Auschwitz. This then was the man who arrived at Auschwitz in May , with six years service behind him as a concentration camp guard.
He felt ready to take on his biggest challenge: creating a new concentration camp from a few vermin-infested barracks. He knew what was expected of him and his experience at Dachau and Sachsenhausen offered a blueprint for him to follow. Originally a poorly resourced but brutal concentration camp for Poles, it expanded with the need to provide slave labour to build a giant synthetic oil and rubber factory at nearby Monowitz.
It changed again with the arrival of Soviet prisoners of war in July It was to murder these Soviet prisoners considered sub-human by committed Nazis , as well as to kill those thought unfit to work, that Zyklon B was first used at Auschwitz. There were next to no medical supplies; epidemics raged everywhere. Internees who were capable of work were used over and over again. As a result every bit of space in the concentration.
The red dots represent concentration camps. I will first ask you how many concentration camps as such existed at the end of the war? All the other points which are marked here on the map mean so-called labor camps attached to the armament industry situated there. The concentration camps, of which there are 13 as I have already said, were the, center and the central point of some district, such as the camp at Dachau in Bavaria, or the camp of Mauthausen in Austria; and all the labor camps in that district were under the control of the concentration camp.
That camp had then to supply these outside camps, that is to say, they had to supply them with workers, exchange the sick inmates and furnish clothing; the guards, too, were supplied by the concentration camp.
From on, the supplying of food was almost exclusively a matter of the individual armament industries in order to give the prisoners the benefit of the wartime supplementary rations. For instance, in Auschwitz there were experiments on sterilization carried out by Professor Klaubert and Dr. Schumann; also experiments on twins by SS medical officer Dr.
HOESS: In Dachau he was a medical officer of the Luftwaffe who carried out experiments, on internees who had been sentenced to death, about the resistance of the human body to cold and in high pressure chambers. I cannot say, however, to what extent the outside world learned about these experiments. KAUFFMANN: You explained to me that orders for executions were received in the camp at Auschwitz, and you told me that until the outbreak of war such orders were few, but that later on they became more numerous.
There were hardly any executions until the beginning of the war--only in particularly serious cases. I remember one case in Buchenwald where an SS man had been attacked and beaten to death by internees, and the internees were later hanged. Orders for the executions carried out in the camps came from the RSHA. Is it correct that occasionally you received orders for executions which bore the signature "Kaltenbrunner," and that these were not the originals but were teleprints; which therefore had the signature in typewritten letters?
The originals of execution orders never came to the camps. The original of these orders either arrived at the Inspectorate of the Concentration Camps, from where they were transmitted by teletype to the camps concerned, or, in urgent cases, the RSHA sent the orders directly to the camps concerned, and the Inspectorate was then only informed, so that the signatures in the camps were always only in teletype.
He had to negotiate with the Inspectorate about all matters connected with concentration camps. He was informed on all these matters, and in most cases he would make an immediate decision.
And, if so, who gave the orders? Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen were evacuated. Only prominent inmates and inmates who were not to fall into Allied hands under any circumstances were to be taken away to other camps. This also happened in the case of Buchenwald. This was shortly before the end of the war, and shortly before northern and southern Germany were cut. I shall speak about the Sachsenhausen camp.
Sachsenhausen could no longer fall back on any other camp except perhaps on a few labor camps attached to the armament works that were almost filled up anyway.
Most of the internees would have to be sheltered in the woods somewhere. This would mean countless thousands of deaths and, above all it would be impossible to feed these masses of people. I do not know to what extent camps in southern Germany were cleared, since we, the Inspectorate, no longer had any connections with southern Germany.
I ask you, did you hear anything about this; if not, would you consider such an order possible? HOESS: I have never heard anything about this, and I do not know anything either about an order to evacuate any camps in southern Germany, as I have already mentioned.
Apart from that, I consider it quite impossible that a camp could be destroyed by this method. MERKEL: Please, will you emphasize, therefore, that the Gestapo as such had nothing to do with the administration of the camps or the accommodation, feeding, and treatment of the internees, but that this was exclusively a matter for the Main Economic and Administrative Office?
Executions, the accommodation, of special internees, and all question which might ensue therefrom were also taken care of by the RSHA or Amt IV.
The Inspectorate of Concentration Camps was, however, subordinated only to this Main Economic and Administrative Office since the year Rascher a while ago. Do you know this doctor personally? Rascher before beginning his work at Dachau had become a member of the SS? I only know that later he--I still saw him in the uniform of an Air Force medical officer. Later he was supposed to have been taken over into the SS, but I did not see him again.
Thank you very much. What is to be understood under this general title SS? According to the nature of the order only concentration camp crews and not the Waffen?
SS could be concerned with the carrying out of this task. HOESS: Toward the end of the war there were approximately 35, SS men and in my estimation approximately 10, men from the Army, Air Force, and the Navy detailed to the labor camps for guard duties.
As far as I know, the duties varied. First, there was the actual guarding and then there was a certain amount of administrative work within the camp. According to my observations about 10 percent of the total number of guarding personnel were used for internal duties, that is to say, administration and supervision of internees within the camp, including the medical personnel of the camp.
HERR BABEL: So that 90 percent were therefore used far the exterior guarding, that is to say, for watching the camp from watch towers and for escorting the internees on work assignments.
HERR BABEL: Did you make any observations as to whether there was any ill-treatment of prisoners to a greater or lesser degree on the part of those guards, or whether the ill-treatment was mainly to be traced back to the so-called Kapos?
HOESS: If any ill-treatment of prisoners by guards occurred-I myself have never observed any--then this was possible only to a very small degree since all offices in charge of the camps took care that as few SS men as possible had direct contact with the inmates, because in the course of the years the guard personnel had deteriorated to such an extent that the standards formerly demanded could no longer be maintained.
We had thousands of guards who could hardly speak German, who came from all lands as volunteers and joined these, units, or we had older men, between 50 and 60, who lacked all interest in their work, so that a camp commander had to watch constantly that these men fulfilled even the lowest requirements of their duties. It is obvious that there were elements among them who would ill-treat internees, but this ill-treatment was never tolerated.
Besides, it was impossible to have these masses of people directed at work or when in the camp by SS men only; therefore, inmates had to be assigned everywhere to direct the other prisoners and set them to work. The internal administration of the camp was almost completely in their hands. Of course a great deal of ill-treatment occurred which could not be avoided because at night there were hardly any members of the SS in the camps. Only in specific cases were SS men allowed to enter the camp, so that the internees were more or less exposed to these Kapos.
In this camp order certainly punishment was provided for internees who violated the camp rules. What punishment was provided? HOESS: First of all, transfer to a penal company Strafkompanie , that is to say, harder work and restricted accommodations; next, detention in the cell block, detention in a dark cell; and in very serious cases, chaining or strapping. Then there was the punishment of standing at the camp gate over a rather long period, and finally corporal punishment. However, no commander could decree this corporal punishment on his own authority.
He could only apply for it. I myself have neither inspected nor seen these two camps. A second defense counsel has been requested for the SS. Is it permitted that several questions be put for the second defense counsel? A part of these men-I do not recall the figures--was taken over into the SS. A part was returned to the original unit, or exchanged. Exchanges were continually taking place. It is merely statistical information with respect to the number of Waffen-SS guards used at the concentration camps.
I ask that the witness be shown Documents D a-b , D a-b ,' D, D, D b , and D, one of them being a statement of this witness. Witness, you made the statement, D b , which has been handed to you?
AMEN: And you are familiar with the content of the others? AMEN: And you testify that those figures are true and correct? AMEN: Very good. Witness, from time to time did any high Nazi officials or functionaries visit the camp at Mauthausen or Dachau while you were there? I do not remember them individually. AMEN: Do you recall any of the ministers having visited either of those camps while you were there?
AMEN: At any time while you were at either of those concentration camps. AMEN: Do you recall any other ministers who were there at any time? AMEN: All right. AMEN: Is it not a fact that all of those execution orders to which you testified were signed by.
President, documents have been submitted and the witness is being questioned about the contents. The Defense is not in a position to follow the Prosecution because we do not know the contents of these documents. I request that we receive copies of them. Himmler had selected Auschwitz for this purpose, due to its location being a major railway hub but isolated sufficiently from the outside world. After visiting the Treblinka extermination camp, to study its methods of human extermination Hoess, beginning September , tested and perfected techniques of mass murder that made Auschwitz the most efficient and notorious instrument of the Final Solution.
He left Auschwitz at the end of but returned to supervise — Aktion Hoess , the extermination of , Hungarian Jews, transported to the camp and murdered in 56 days between May and July He was responsible for the murder of over two and a half million people.
After the war, Hoess escaped and assumed a false identity.
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