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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and Operation
of
the Gas Chambers © | |
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| Finally, a common psychological mechanism, he assimilates the
girl he loves, Jola and/or Jolka to one of these girls (who were in
fact old women whom he would never have wanted in exchange for his
Jola-Jolka): |
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“...if the photo that fills the whole wall against
which so many people perished isn't that of Jolka, Jolka in the
first row of girls running to their deaths in waves of four, hair
flying in the wind, a bit of soap in their hands, rushing towards
the execution pyre, encircled on all sides by flames.”
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Thanks to this photo-montage we pass from reasonable history to
irrational legend. The tendency to tum the history of the camp into
legend was very strong indeed in the 50's, but has since been
abandoned. Thus one of the last photographic publications of the
Auschwitz Museum, dating from 1980, entitled “KL Auschwitz -
Photographic documents”, simply reproduces the three famous
Polish Resistance photographs, enlarged but printed from the
original negatives (pages 184 and 185, photos 183 [17], 184 [15] and
185 [16].
Having the original photographs makes it
possible to identify and precisely locate the scenes and the
position of the photographer. Photos 15 and 16 were taken from the
inside of a building, through an open door. The only Birkenau
Krematorium possessing the three elements to he found on the two
photos, a door giving onto a barbed wire fence with the birch wood
in the background, was Krematorium V. In the western section there
was the door of the western gas chamber meeting these conditions and
two doors in the north side, that of the northern gas chamber and
the double door of the furnace room. A beam, the end of which is
visible on the photos, supported the porch roofs over these doors
(not shown on Drawing 2036, but visible on photo PMO neg.
no 20995/ 509). The porch roof outside the furnace room was
about a metre higher than the door and was not visible from the
interior, but those of the gas chambers, where the roof of the
building was lower, were only just above the doors and could be seen
from the interior. The line of the crowns of the trees in the Birch
Wood diminish from left to right. while it would have been
horizontal had the picture been taken from the west end of the
building. This clue together with the orientation of the shadows
indicates that the pictures were taken looking northwest. the
photographer being in the northern gas chamber of Krematorium V [see
sketch map]. The wind, normally from the north, was blowing from the
west, or more likely, northwest.
As regards Photo 17,
possession of the original is essential. It shows that the women are
concentrated in the bottom left comer, while on the right it is
possible to see the top of a Krematorium chimney which does not have
the shape of those of Krematorien II and Ill, but those of
Krematorien IV and V. The scene cannot have been located at
Krematorium IV, with no trees in the immediate vicinity. Krematorium
V was surrounded by birch trees. The photo was taken against the
light, the south being in front of the photographer and the north
behind him, with one of the two chimneys of a type IV/V Krematorium
visible on the right. Given this orientation and these clues, the
scene could be nowhere other than at the eastern end of an area
between the south wall of Krematorium V and the line of frees
bordering the Ringstraße. The photographer was to the east of
Krematorium V and the three naked women were moving with their backs
to the gas chambers in its western part. They were not running, but
walking. awaiting their “turn”.
The chimney of Krematorium V,
as we might expect is not smoking. We know from David Szmulewski
that the four pictures were taken virtually one after the other,
with only about fifteen minutes between the first and the last. One
of the open-air cremation ditches was therefore operating quite
close to the north side of Krematorium V while its furnace was not
working, so that contrary to the testimony of Sonderkommando men,
the ditches were not in addition to the furnace but were dug to
replace it, as it was out of service.
The author, having
determined the location of the three photographs and of the
Sonderkommando man who took them, had a conversation with Mr David
Szmulewski at the end of 1987, and established just how the episode
took place:
In the summer of 1944, the Sonderkommando men
asked the camp resistance for a small camera so that they could
record the criminal tasks they were forced to carry out: emptying of
the gas chambers and incineration of the bodies. The Sonderkommando
organized some damage to the roof of the gas chambers of Krematorium
V and requested repairs. The internal camp resistance then came into
action. A “flying squad” to which Szmulewski, a member of
this organization, belonged came to repair the damage. Szmulewski
was carrying a dixie can with a false bottom in which the camera was
hidden. Once the prisoner-repairmen were on the roof, Szmulewski
passed the camera to a Sonderkommando man working at the cremation
ditch who had placed himself against the north wall of the gas
chambers, under the roof overhang which was 2.45 from the ground.
This prisoner then quickly entered the north gas chamber whose door
was open for ventilation purposes. There he was safe, as the room
had already been emptied of corpses. From the centre of this room he
took two photographs of his comrades feeding bodies into the
cremation ditch. Then, hiding the camera in his right hand, he
emerged from the building and went along the north wall to the
eastern end of the building then about 30 metres into the wood,
moving parallel to the eastern end of the building, under the cover
of the trees. In front of the Krematorium, to the south, a group of
women considered unfit for work, the next “batch”, was undressing.
Some of them were already naked, a little way away from the others,
taking a few steps while waiting. The sun was shining right in his
face, through the trees lining the Ringstraße, so there could be no
question of using the camera normally, using the viewfinder as he
had done in the gas chamber. From rather far away, so as not to be
noticed, he took a first picture of the women by guesswork. holding
his right arm against his side with the camera in his palm. Hidden
behind a tree, he wound on the film, emerged and took another
picture in the same way as before. The direction the lens was
pointing in was difficult to judge under these conditions and he
pointed the camera too high, photographing the tops of the trees
instead of the women [Photo 18]. Retracing his steps, he
returned to the comparative safely of the Krematorium, moving along
the north wall to the gas chambers. Szmulewski was watching out for
him. A quick look round, no SS. The Sonderkommando man held up the
camera which rapidly changed hands again [see the photograph showing
the assumed path of the photographer]. Szmulewski replaced the
camera in the bottom of the dixie, the repair was completed and the
flying squad departed. The whole process had taken only fifteen to
thirty minutes. The photos were taken out of the camp and handed
over to the Polish resistance in Cracow.
After the
Liberation, the prisoner who took the photographs did not come
forward, probably having been liquidated after the Sonderkommando
revolt on 7th October 1944, so David Szmulewski became the sole
survivor of this operation. The honour came to him and he was
declared the author of the photographs, though honestly enough he
always stated that he had been on the roof of Krematorium V
throughout the whole episode. His friendship with Judge Dan Sehn
probably counted for much in this designation. After the war, David
Szmulewski remained in Poland and was employed in an important post,
but in 1968, one of the periodic waves of anti-Semitism swept
through the Polish government and he lost his job because he was a
Jew. He emigrated to France and has lived there ever since. |
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Photo 19 |
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Photo
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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and operation
of the gas chambers
Jean-Claude Pressac
© 1989, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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