Pogroms And Other Atrocities by Bassam Imam - HTML preview

CHAPTER THREE

The Nazis set up concentration camps (Konzentrationslager; abbreviated as KL or KZ) and extermination camps across Europe before and in the course of the Second World War. The camps played a big part in the Jewish Holocaust, however, many Jews were brutalized, murdered, and otherwise harmed outside of the camps, 40 percent by some estimates. How many camps did the Nazis set up? Sources vary from over 1,000 to 15,000, the latter being the estimate of the Jewish Virtual Library. Whatever the actual number is, one thing is absolutely certain, there were too many of them, and they were hell-holes where no sane person would willingly want to live in. Overwhelmingly, victims were snatched from their homes and familiar surroundings, then shipped off in freight cars, cattle cars, or passenger trains to a horrible place/s where they had to worked for their occupiers (often times slave-labour. The passengers were crammed into the carts like sardines in a can, it was common for passengers not to have enough space to lie down or sit. A small hole in each cart was usually the only light and ventilation therein. One bucket for urinating and defecating was ‘the toilet’. The stench of excrement, sweat and body odour, illness and death were unbearable. The dead were be tossed out of the train. Food and water was either absolute minimum or non-existent. The journey could last hours to days. Upon arrival to a camp, selection and brutality occurred with little or no delay. Passengers were greeted by armed, shouting German soldiers, collaborators, and Kapos. A Kapo was a Nazi concentration camp inmate who helped the occupiers do their dirty work. They received extra privileges in return. Some were extraordinarily brutal. Jews or non-Jews could be Kapos; most were Jews. Some Kapos chose the job for the extra privileges, others enjoyed the power rush.

Inmates were stripped of their belongings, given an identification number, many were tattooed (Auschwitz) on their forearms. They were deprived of their former identities, their inherent GOD-given right to be treated as full-fledged human beings; they were now sub-human inmates and were treated as such. The workday usually began at the crack of dawn, daily roll call could last for hours, irrespective of weather conditions. Anyone who was late would receive a brutal punishment. Captured escapees were either shot or punished severely. Successful escapes called for collective punishment which could include one or more killings. Meals, if that’s what we want to call them consisted of a very measly quantity of bread, watered down soup; regardless of what was served, it was a starvation ration. Many inmates ate grass, beets, stole food, and took food from individuals who had just died, even relatives.

Even tiny bread crumbs were snatched from the floor or ground. A quote by Holocaust survivor Jack Oran explains much:

“Everyone worked so hard, got beaten up … and came back to the camp the exhaustion alone pushed him to the bunk to lie down and sleep throughout the night and get enough strength so that he or she might be able to do that again tomorrow. In the morning, sixty percent of the six people in the bunk did not wake up. The other forty percent went over the pockets of the dead people to find a piece of bread. The hygienic condition was very, very poor in that period. I remember that I searched a dead body in the bunk ,and I found a piece of bread. That piece of bread was crawling with lice and you shook them off the bread and put it in your mouth and ate it. We all were crawling with lice. Taking a shower was not an option. To get out in the morning, to walk toward the barrack where there is water, running water & endash; you didn’t want to walk through mud. If you walked through the mud you probably lost a shoe and then you had to go barefoot. So, it would be damned if I do and damned if I don’t. Those were the conditions.” (The Humiliating and Inhumane Conditions in Nazi Concentration Camps; historplex.com).

Many prisoners were worked to death, working in a munitions factory was very insulting, many families were literally torn apart, constant hunger or starvation, diseases (the most common of which were typhus and dysentery; scurvy occurs from a lack of Vitamin C), death by execution (gunshot, gas chamber), loss of property, beatings, humiliation, and the 3 things that could drive anyone insane (lice, fleas, rats). Rats, some were humongous, helped themselves to the inmates who were too weak to move or defend themselves; rats being carnivores knew which targets to choose. Sleeping quarters were bunkers with straw beds. Even without the gas chambers, all the other suffering would still add up to a Holocaust.

Before the Second World War, prisoners in Nazi camps were considered social or political deviants, including German communists, union organizers, and socialists, Roma or Sinti (considered inherently deviant; using hindsight bias this was raciallybased hatred. Unlike the other groups, overall the Roma and Sinti were racially distinct). Also targetted were members of the clergy, religious outcasts (primarily the Jehovah’s Witnesses), homosexuals (initially, the Nazis had a more relaxed attitude towards lesbians and lesbianism), Soviet POWs, Poles and other Slavs, ‘subversives’, and any person/s whose behaviour (public behaviour and writings) went against the Aryan German identity. Note that the Nazi regime was always a police state with little or no due process of law, torture was commonly used as punishment and to extract confessions.

Adolph Hitler did not wait long to start building concentration camps. On January 30, 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934) named Adolph Hitler chancellor of Germany, and the Nazi Party was granted additional powers. In March, 1933, Nazi camps were built, the first of which was Dachau concentration camp (Northwest of Munich), officially opened by Heinrich Himmler. Soon, other camps were built in Oranienburg, Esterwegen,  and Lichtenburg. Columbia Haus complex in Berlin was in operation until 1936. Initially, there was an estimated 45,000 inmates in the camps but the number grew, later additional camps were established throughout Nazi-occupied Europe.

The SS obtained its independence from the SA following the Rohm purge (The Night of the Long Knives, the murder of the leadership of the SA, June 30 July 2, 1934). Hitler then commissioned SS leader Heinrich Himmler to centralize the concentration camp authority and command in order to formalize the system. Himmler assigned SS Lieutenant General Theodor Eicke for this assignment. The command system for the round-up, deportation and shipping, labour, and extermination of large numbers of people was to be organized; orders could be given from afar.

Before proceeding any further, a description of the basic characteristics of concentration camps is needed. They are internment centres usually holding a large number of people for a multitude of reasons including political, national, religious, ethnic, linguistic, racial, security, exploitation, during times of war, civil war, or internal strife. These camps have inadequate facilities, due process of law and international laws and treaties pertaining to human rights are not abided by. Concentration camps are not prisons housing criminals lawfully convicted of crimes, or POW camps abiding by international laws. They are not refugee camps even though some or many of the interned persons may be refugees. Mass starvation, slave labour, torture, and individual, group, or large-scale executions may occur. Camp brutality and suffering may vary significantly; the internment of over 100,000 Japanese Americans in internment camps, the Nazi camps, the GULAGS, the Serbian Concentration Camps, British camps during the South African War (1899-1902), Chinese Re-Education Camps for Uighyr Muslims, the Reconcentrados established by the Spanish military in Cuba during the Ten Years’ War (1868-78), British camps in Kenya during the Mau Mau Uprising (1952-60), and Native American reservations, especially those of the past.

Historians place the Nazi camps into categories based on aim, administrative framework, and types of inmates (Note that many inmates spend time in more than one camp; in addition, none of the camp-types were totally independent):

1. Early camps, commonly without an organized infrastructure, surfaced in numerous locations following Hitler’s becoming Chancellor of Germany. These camps were also referred to as ‘Wild Camps’ because a number of which were established with little supervision from higher authorities, were monitored and managed by Nazi paramilitaries, and by segments of law enforcement.

2. State camps (e.g. Dachau), guarded by the Sturmabteilung or Storm Detachment (SA), was the Nazi Party’s first paramilitary wing. These camps were the prototype for the soon to be SS concentration camps.

3. Hostage camps, also referred to as police prison camps incarcerated hostages that were used for retaliatory killings.

4. Labour camps, prisoners were forced to perform stressful physical labour under extraordinarily brutal conditions and savage treatment.

5. POW camps, where prisoners of war were detained after capture. Many POWs were forced to work in nearby labour camps. There were special camps for POW officers, and for each branch of the military.

6. Rehabilitation and re-education of Poles camps. Polish intellectuals and academics were held therein. The purpose was to remould the prisoners’ mentality for the benefit of Nazi values.

7. Assembly and transit camps. Inmates were assembled or held for a short period of time and then sent to the main camps.

8. Extermination camps, where large-scale murders occurred.

Auschwitz-Birkenau (Auschwitz I,II,III) was built in southern Poland, Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi concentration camps and extermination centres More than 1.1 million men, women, and children perished therein, 90 percent were Jews; total deportations to Auschwitz are estimated at 1.3 million. Non-Jewish victims included Poles, Roma, Soviet POWs, and other nationalities. The frequent transport of Europe’s Jews into Auschwitz occurred from early 1942 to early November 1944.

Auschwitz opened its hell-gates in 1940. This camp was essential for implementing the Nazi plan for the ‘Final Solution’. Auschwitz was unique among the killing centres because it contained a concentration camp, labour camp, and sizeable gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau designed for the murder of European Jews. Auschwitz was notorious for tattooing inmates’ forearms with identification numbers. Inmates assigned to work were tattooed, those who were deemed unfit and useless did not get a tattoo nor were they registered; the only thing they got was a one-way trip to the gas chamber. The personal possessions of newly arrived deportees were seized and sorted in the ‘Kanada’ (Canada) storehouse to be sent back to Germany. Canada was the epitome of wealth to the prisoners.

The men, women, and children targetted for the gas chambers were escorted by SS personnel. Anyone unable to walk was transported by truck. The victims were in the nude when gassed. Sonderkommando prisoners pulled the corpses out of the gas chambers. Gold teeth were extracted and had to be given to the camp authorities, however, theft (pocketing of gold teeth) by Sonderkommandos occurred. Bones that did not burn completely were ground to a powder. A very large quantity of powdered bones and ashes were dumped into the river; it was a good way of disposing bodies and destroying evidence of wrongdoing.

Auschwitz I, the principal camp, was the first camp established near Oswiecim, Poland. It was built in a deserted Polish army barracks on the outskirts of the city. The SS relentlessly and unceasingly used forced labour to enlarge the camp.

Prisoners started arriving in May 1940. The first batch consisted of 30 prisoners designated as ‘professional criminals’. In mid-June another transport of Polish prisoners were deported from a prison in Tarnow to Auschwitz. There were countless more batches of prisoners sent to the camp.

Auschwitz I had a gas chamber and crematorium. To begin with, SS engineers built an impromptu gas chamber located in the basement of the soon to be notorious Block 11. Later, a larger gas chamber was built as part of the first crematorium in another building outside the prisoner complex.

At Auschwitz I and elsewhere, Nazi physicians performed cruel and sadistic experiments on helpless victims; I must stress that every single unwilling patient was INNOCENT, and did not deserve to be experimented on. Physicians must take a Hippocratic oath, in this case it meant nothing. Thousands of prisoners were experimented on, many were maimed for life, others died.

The construction of Auschwitz II (Auschwitz-Birkenau) began at Brzezinka in October 1941; in the final tally, it had more inmates than the other Auschwitz camps. It was partitioned by electified barbed wire fences, into 10 sections. Like Auschwitz I it was guarded by SS guards, later special guard dogs were added.

There were sections for women, men, Roma and Sinti families (Gypsies is an insulting term) who had been deported from elsewhere. Auschwitz-Birkenau was also a killing station. In early September the SS at Auschwitz II began to use Zyklon B as a large-scale killing agent. The first victims were Soviet POWs and weakened Polish POWs.

Because the Zyklon B experiments worked well a special chamber was built in the crematorium of Auschwitz I, subsequent gas chambers used Zyklon B to murder victims. The first shipment of Jewish men, women, and children to Auschwitz as part of the Final Solution were murdered in this gas chamber (crematorium I) in February and March 1942. During this period the Auschwitz SS moved the gassing operations to Auschwitz-Birkenau by converting 2 farmhouses just beyond the perimeter of the fence into gas chambers. By mid-summer both bunkers were fully operational; bunker II being the larger of the two. Note that prior to the largescale use of gassing people to death prisoners who were to feeble, ill, the invalids, or deemed unable to work were murdered at euthanasia T4 centres (1941-1944) in a covert program known as Action 14f13 (Sonderbehandlung or Special Treatment) selection process was normally performed by camp physicians.

Although many people could be killed these 2 bunkers, the Nazi authorities wanted to kill an extraordinarily larger number of people, at a hectic pace. From March 1943 to June 1943 four large crematoria were constructed in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Each crematoria contained a gas chamber, undressing area, and specially designed crematory ovens. Gassing operations ended in Bunkers I and II when Crematoria II to V began to be used. Bunker II was later re-used during the deportation of Hungary’s Jews in 1944 (another nationality of Jews would perish in large numbers). Between late April to early July 1944 nearly 440,000 Jews were deported from Hungary. Of the estimated 425,000 Hungarian Jews sent to Auschwitz nearly 320,000 ended up in the Auschwitz-Birkenau

gas chambers. Many Hungarian Jews were assigned to forced labour in Auschwitz and to other concentration camps in Germany and Austria.

Gassing of fresh new arrivals stopped in early November 1944, on orders from Himmler. The war was nearing its end and even the most hardline Nazis knew they were finished. If the war had continued for a longer period of time, many more people would’ve been victimized, and the additional property damage would have been insurmountable. Additional orders were given to destroy incriminating evidence as the Soviet Army’s arrival to the camp was imminent and soon.

19 year-old Ester Wajcblum and her 14 year-old sister Hana became inmates at Auschwitz in the spring of 1943. They were assigned to work at the munitions factory. Here they befriended Regina Safirsztain and Ala Gartner, women involved in resistance activities. Along with Roza Robota, who worked in the clothes storehouse, they started smuggling gunpowder to the men in the adjacent camp.

Sometimes gunpowder was ingeniously placed on the bodies that were sent to the Sonderkommandos for disposal. Sonderkommandos were groups of Nazi death camp prisoners, predominately Jews, who were forced, or threatened with death, to help in the disposal of of victims. Sonderkommandos were usually granted a several month reprieve, after which their fate was like that of the bodies they disposed of. Thereafter, a new batch of Sonderkommandos were put to work, the process was repeated as many times as necessary.

Knowing that the time of their execution was near, several hundred assigned to Crematoriums I through IV staged an uprising. The prisoners managed to kill 3 guards, blew up the crematorium and adjoining gas chamber. One cruel Nazi guard in Crematorium I was overpowered and then shoved into an oven where he was burned alive (poetic justice?). The prisoners had access to explosives and light arms. Their doom came when the Germans brought in heavy machine guns. The escapees were captured and returned to the camp. Nearly 200 Sonderkommandos were made to lie face down outside the crematoria. They were executed. Many prisoners, both men and women, were tortured in an attempt to extract information. The women held out significantly better than the men. On January 5, 1945, four of the leading females involved in the uprising were hanged in front of the assembled women’s camp. Just before Roza Robota’s trapdoor dropped she shouted ’Be strong and be brave’. On January 17, 1945, the camp workers sent 56,000 prisoners on a long, body-tormenting death march into what was left of the rapidly dwindling Third Reich. 7,500 prisoners that were still in the camp were liberated by the approaching Soviet Armies on January 27.

Auschwitz III also known as Buna or Monowitz, was set up in October 1942. The prisoners therein were forced to work in the Buna synthetic rubber worker plant located on the outskirts of the village of Monowitz. In the spring of 1941, the German corporation I.G. Farben opened a factory to acquire free labour from concentration camp prisoners in the manufacture of synthetic rubber and fuels.

I.G. Farben, confident of its money-making scheme, invested a whopping 700 million Reichsmarks into Auschwitz III. From May 1941 to July 1942, the SS sent prisoners from Auschwitz I to Buna. Initially, the transport was done by foot, later by railway. There was a brief cessation of transports from July to October 1942 caused by the typhus epidemic and quarantine.

Prisoners at the construction factory were later forced to build their own barracks. The guards at Auschwitz III Monowitz were extremely brutal. Specially selected guards along with SS personnel forced workers to work well beyond their normal capacity; in addition to this, the hapless prisoners were starving. Many thousands of workers died, many more were sent to the gas chambers. The dreaded Zyklon-B was manufactured by I.G. Farben’s subsidiary company Degesch. I.G. Farben was the only German company that operated its own concentration camp.

“There was no retirement plan for the prisoners at IG Auschwitz. Those who were too weak or too sick were selected at the main gate of the IG Auschwitz factory and sent to the gas chambers. Even the chemical gas Zyklon-B used for the annihilation of millions of people was derived from the drawing boards and factories of IG Farben.” (By Vera Sharav, Global Research, January 26, 2020; Auschwitz: The Role of IG FarbenBayer; globalresearch.ca), (Alliance for Human Research Protection, October 26, 2006; Auschwitz: 60 Year Anniversary The Role of IG Farben-Bayer; ahrp.org).

IBM was another corporate giant that exploited many people during the Second World War:

“Central to the Nazi effort was a massive 500-man Hollerith Gruppe, installed in a looming brown building at 24 Murnerstrasse in Krakow. The Hollerith Gruppe of the Nazi Statistical Office crunched all the numbers of plunder and genocide that allowed the Nazis to systematically starve the Jews, meter them out of the ghettos and then transport them to either work camps or death camps.

The trains running to Auschwitz were tracked by a special guarded IBM customer site facility at 22 Pawia in Krakow. The millions of punch cards the Nazis in Poland required were obtained exclusively from IBM, including one company print shop at 6 Rymarska Street across the street from the Warsaw Ghetto. The entire Polish subsidiary was overseen by an IBM administrative facility at 24 Kreuz in Warsaw.” (By Edwin Black, October 8, 2002; The IBM Link to Auschwitz; villagevoice.com).

After being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp Stanislava Leszczynska (May 8, 1896 March 11, 1974; died of intestinal cancer) continued her occupation as a midwife. In a camp swarming with diseases, bug-infested barracks, the survival rate was expected to be low. If you were born in Auschwitz-Birkenau your life expectancy was at or near zero. Many newborns were drowned in a bucket, died of starvation, or disease.

But Stanislava, a true dedicated heroine, decided to deliver as many babies as she could, nearly 3,000. By her account, 30 babies survived the ordeal until liberation of the death camp on January 27, 1945, by Soviet troops. Other inmates claim that 60 babies survived the ordeal. One baby that survived was Zofia Warluk, born on January 13, 1945. In a recent magazine interview she said:

“Mama was already pregnant when she was taken to the camp. My cousin, who is no longer alive, remembered that when I was born my mother called to him and said, ‘Come and see my daughter’. After I was born I only weighed one and a half kilos, its very little for a newborn baby. I was delivered by a midwife Stanislava Leszczynska. It was said that I was wrinkled like an old woman ... I have never met her personally but my mum said she was a hero.” (By Stuart Dowell and Dagmara Leszkowicz, June 17,2019;The Midwife of Auschwitz: Extraordinary life of heroine who delivered 3,000 babies in horror death camp to be told in new documentary; thefirstnews.com).

When the war started the Leszczynska family became passionately involved in underground activities in Lodz. Stanislava’s husband was a printer, making his job as a maker of forged documents for Jews living in the ghetto, easier. She distributed food for them. Her occupation as a midwife allowed her better access to the ghetto.

Someone tipped off the Nazi authorities, so in February 1943 the Gestapo converged on the Leszczynska family apartment. Stanislava and her daughter were sent to Auschwitz, her 2 sons to Mathausen-Gusen concentration camp complex, located on a hill above Mathausen, Austria. Her husband was able to escape. He later died while fighting the Germans during the Warsaw Uprising.

Upon Stanislawa’s arrival to Auschwitz in April 1943, an SS guard tossed her midwife papers onto the ground and told her that she wouldn’t need them any more. As soon as the guard turned away she grabbed her papers and hid them in her uniform.

Later, she presented herself to a camp physician, a brazen act, considering that addressing a German in the camp without permission was an act punishable, possibly by death. She was assigned duties in the so-called maternity ward. As Stanislava soon discovered, most pregnant women were sent to the gas chambers, others were promptly executed.

A minority of which were sent to hospital barracks, a true nightmarish place. Therein, a German orderly named Sister Klara would declare every newborn ‘stillborn’ and without severing the umbilical cord, held down the baby into a bucket of water, the baby tried to kick and thrash, to no avail. Frequently, the murderous act was done in front of the baby’s mother. The dead babies were tossed out of the barracks, where giant rats feasted on its flesh.

Later, the extremely rigid rules were loosened a bit. Jewish babies were not spared, however, non-Jewish mothers, predominately Poles and Soviets, were permitted to have their babies at their side. But it certainly wasn’t easy; the surviving babies, if that’s what we can call them, died a slow, agonizing death caused by starvation. Their mothers were too malnourished to produce mammary milk. Dysentery, a type of gastroenteritis that results in diarrhoea in the blood, was common among women. Their loose stools dribbled to the lower bunks. Some mothers gave up their meagre bread ration for bed linen to use as bandages and covering.

Stanislava refused to be part of the death march that cost the lives of up to 15,000 prisoners in frigid temperatures, -20 Centigrade (-4 Fahrenheit). She wanted to treat her patients. Years after liberation, Dr. Maria Oyrzynska, a former inmate stated in an official testimony:

“The midwife Stanisława Leszczyńska from Łódź was ordered not to cut the cord from the babies and just to literally bin them with placenta. She said she was a Catholic woman and that she wouldn’t murder any children. She said she would do what she was supposed to do as a human being.” (ibid).

Dr. Irena Konieczna, said, “Leszczynska was short and petite, very humble, almost in love with her profession, extremely religious. Every newborn had to be baptised immediately. She would help any mother she could. Leszczynska would deliver babies on her own, usually on the chimney canal running through all of the barrak. Hundreds of prisoners would be watching that.” (ibid).

The Auschwitz-Birkinau State Museum, created by the Government of Poland in 1947, is a public museum located in the Polish town of Oswiecim, sanctified for the memory of the victims of the Nazi concentration camp, forced labour, and extermination camp. The museum occupies 191 hectares (472 acres) and was granted the status of a Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 1979. Many people from around the world visit the site annually; in 2016, 2 million people did so.

“When we think of the crimes of Nazi doctors, what comes to mind are their cruel and sometimes fatal experiments… Yet when we turn to the Nazi doctors’ role in Auschwitz, it was not the experiments that were most significant. Rather, it was his participation in the killing process—indeed his supervision of Auschwitz mass murder from beginning to end.” (Lifton, Robert Jay, 1986; The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide).

The Nazis made use of physicians, medical geneticists, psychiatrists, and anthropologists. The Nazi experiments can be classified into 3 categories:

1. Experiments pertaining to the survival of military personnel.

2. Experiments to test drugs and treatments.

3. Experiments to foster Nazi racial and ideological goals.

Below is a listing and brief description of some of the Nazi experiments:

1. Freezing/Hypothermia experiments were conducted on men to duplicate the conditions the German soldiers endured on the Eastern Front. The experiments were conducted under the direction of Dr. Sigmund Rascher at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Dachau.

2. Sun Lamp experiments, victims were placed under a very hot sun lamp that would burn the skin. One young homosexual was cooled down until he lost consciousness over and over again then ‘resuscitated’ with lamps until he was drenched with sweat; he eventually died.

3. Internal Irrigation experiments, the freezing victim had very hot water vigorously inundated into the stomach, bladder, and intestines. Every victim in this experiment is believed to have died.

4. Hot bath experiments, the victim was placed in warm water and the temperature was slowly increased. Many victims died of shock if the temperature was increased too fast.

5. This appears to be a sexually perverted experiment. Not surprisingly, the idea came from none other than Heinrich Himmler. He who asked Dr. Rascher to try to warm up frozen men by having them copulate with women. Dr. Rascher was sterile, and because he and his wife violated one of the complex rules of marriage, they were executed.

6. Sterilization experiments were performed to discover medicines or rays that can destroy the reproductive organs with the least effort. May victims underwent these experiments. The history of these Nazi experiments begins on July 14, 1933, the National Socialists (Nazis) put forth the Law for the Prevention of Heredita