Status Updates From People in Auschwitz

There is another burden that we have to bear. Many years later I caught myself instinctively asking myself when I met a person, “How would he have behaved in Auschwitz? Would he have stood the test or failed?”

“When the ovens were burning, the leaping flame was five meters high and could be seen from the railroad station which was full of civilians. No one said anything. There also were furlough trains that often stopped in Auschwitz. Sometimes the whole station was fogged; then the Wehrmacht officers looked out the window and asked why there was such a sweet smell. But no one had the courage to ask, What’s going on?

Among the guards there were some individuals who suffered nervous breakdowns in the face of the mass murders. Jan Pilecki heard about an SS man who was evidently rendered insane by a campaign in which primarily Jewish children were gassed. He is said to have been gassed together with the children when he began to rave. A guard told Thomas Geve that many SS men became mad.

physician Janina Kowalczykowa confirms the stoppage of menstruation. She agrees that in addition to malnutrition there was a psychic component, namely constant fear. Even women who received above-average nourishment lost their period, The Russian commission that examined the inmates remaining in the camp after the liberation came to the conclusion that 97 percent of the women had no period during their imprisonment.

On another occasion Lengyel observed him attacking an unfortunate inmate and smashing her skull with his cudgel. Kramer’s portrait is filled out by his wife’s statement before a British military court. She testified: “The children have been everything to my husband. He is such a music lover.”

Rudolf fucking Höss: “Only in these Polish prisons did I learn what humaneness is. I, who as commandant of Auschwitz did so much damage and caused so much suffering to the Polish people [...], encountered a human understanding that often made me feel profoundly ashamed—not only from the top officials but also from the simplest guards. Many of them were former inmates of Auschwitz or other camps.”

"But we know that the Hößes and Bormanns, the higher-ups and the lowly, were in agreement with virtually everyone. Everyone enjoyed seeing the Jews being herded away like cattle, just as everyone enjoyed it when the black slaves were crowded to death on vessels of the East India Company".

“When he saw that the inmate was dead,” writes Steinberg, “he was frightened and said that he would never give injections again.” Two years later Dering’s position was far more secure than it had been in the early period, and therefore a refusal entailed less risk than before. Dering, however, did not refuse, for he was an anti-Semite and the experiments were being made on Jewish women and men".

"wooden shoes could mean a death sentence for their wearers. Good shoes, on the other hand, could save lives. One day Hess observed how a new arrival threw his good shoes out the window. He searched for him all over the camp in order to return these shoes. this touching deed, which under Auschwitz condition seems unworldly, was not the only way in which Lutz Hess helped others".

"Auschwitz taught a sensitive person like Grete Salus to make this confession: 'Much as I would like to, I cannot write a heroic epic about people. All I can say is that a human being should never have to endure as much as he can endure, and never should a human being have to see that there'".

"On January 17, 1943, 230 “Aryan women” arrived in Auschwitz; on April 10 of that year 73 of them were still alive and on August 3, 57. Charlotte Delbo, the chronicler of that transport, emphasizes that such a low death rate in the women’s camp was “unique in its history.” She attributes this exceptional situation to the fact that these women were political prisoners who knew one another and practiced solidarity".

"The investigation of SS men in the Auschwitz concentration camp was triggered by a package found in the army post office. Because of its striking weight it was confiscated, and it turned out that it contained three gold nuggets. It was high-carat dental gold that was sent by a medic on duty in Auschwitz to his wife. I estimated that this amount of gold corresponded to about 100,000 corpses.".

I had learned to avoid fine, big phrases like "never again." No matter how impressive these may sound, history since 1945 has shown that the possibility of repetitions cannot be easily excluded.