| AUSCHWITZ: THE RACIAL CURE |
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which, headed by Oswald Pohl, was concerned with economic
issues in the use of inmates. In contrast, the Central Security Department of
the Reich (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or RSHA), as the political and
police unit, was preoccupied with the brutal detention of prisoners and the
mass murder of Jews (see pages 174-75).13
Auschwitz was to become a major source of slave labor serving an
enormous I. G. Farben enterprise for the manufacture of synthetic oil and
rubber. Indeed the factory site was chosen in early 1941 largely because of its
accessibility to the camp and to resources of coal and water. The overall
operation became known as I. G. Auschwitz. Auschwitz inmates were working on
the construction of that factory, known as I. G. Buna,* even before the
establishment of the subsidiary camp at Birkenau where most of the killing was
done. During 1942, I. G. Farben setup its own outer camp at Monowitz, still
part of the overall Auschwitz constellation. This facility was meant to
increase Farben’s control over labor, to lower expenses, and to reduce the
loss of time and energy in marching to the work site. In the Monowitz economy,
Farben was responsible for food, housing, and medical care; the SS, for
security and punishment. There was always close liaison between camp
authorities and I. G. Farben officials in the brutal exploitation of inmates,
who generally worked from three or four in the morning until evening darkness
on close to a starvation diet (see pages 187-88). But whatever measures they
took either to abuse the prisoners further or slightly improve their lot, work
efficiency was always poor.14 †
From early 1943, other big firms joined I. G. Farben in exploiting
Auschwitz labor. These included Krupp, which moved a bombed-out fuse plant to
Auschwitz; the Hermann Göring Works (coal mines); Siemens-Schuckert
(electrical parts); and the Jägerstab (Pursuit Planes Staff) from
the Speer ministry, whose attempts in 1944 to recruit inmates for the
construction of underground aircraft factories were hampered by the increasing
shortage of prisoners capable of working. These and other firms drew mostly
upon inmates of Monowitz (known as Auschwitz III) and set up a network of
satellite camps for miles around.15
Höss has made the point that, because of the official policy of
keeping significant numbers of prisoners alive in order to work,
“Auschwitz became a Jewish camp ... a collecting place for Jews, exceeding
in scale anything previously known.”16
But in actuality, since most Jews were killed on arrival, they probably did not
begin to constitute a majority of camp inmates until 1944, and even then
remained dominated in the prisoner hierarchy by smaller groups of Germans
(political prisoners and ordinary criminals) and Poles. The work function
required not only large-scale selections to deter- […mine] |
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* Buna, a synthetic rubber
developed by I. G. Farben, was made experimentally first from coal and later
from oil.
† In initial discussions between
the SS and Farben, it was estimated that efficiency of no more than 75 percent
(compared with German workers) could be expected from slave laborers; in
practice, they were less than one-third as efficient. |
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