| The Auschwitz Institution |
| |
| [deter…] mine which prisoners would be killed
immediately and which permitted to work and thus live a while longer,* but also
a functioning medical block where prisoners could be treated by prisoner
doctors. Indeed, Auschwitz, more than any other camp, reflected the inner Nazi
struggle between pragmatic strengthening (through forced labor on war work) and
visionary murder. But however elaborate the work arrangements became, they
remained secondary to the camp's killing function. |
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| Auschwitz as Annihilation
Camp |
| |
The annihilation camp emerged in late 194 1 and early 1942
. There were six such camps in Poland: Chelmno (Kulmhof), Belzec,
Sobibór, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Auschwitz. The first four devoted
themselves exclusively to the killing function, though sometimes only Chelmno
and Belzec are viewed as “pure killing camps,” since minor industrial
activity with forced labor was conducted at Treblinka and at least planned at
Sobibór. But only Auschwitz and Majdanek combined a significant amount
of forced labor with the systematic killing function. The four exclusively
death camps were run by SS police units, not by the economic and administrative
division of the SS that ran Auschwitz. And unlike Auschwitz, much of their
killing equipment and personnel (with the added exception of Chelmno) came
directly from the “euthanasia” program, including the carbon monoxide
gas chambers and the killing-center staff. A great deal of the early
installation and function of their killing apparatus was in fact supervised by
Christian Wirth, who had done the same for the T4 killing centers (see page
71).18
Auschwitz marked a radical
escalation in both the vision and the technology of mass murder. The biological
image was intricately involved in the Auschwitz vision as revealed by
Höss’s recollection of Himmler’s description of the purpose of
the camp: |
| |
Jews are the eternal enemies of the German people
and must be exterminated. All Jews within our grasp are to be destroyed without
exception, now, during the war. If we do not succeed in destroying the
biological substance of the Jews, the Jews will some day destroy the German
people.19 |
| |
| As Höss recalled, he had been “suddenly
summoned” by Himmler in the summer of 1941 and told, “The Führer
has ordered that the Jewish question be solved once and for all and that we,
the SS, are to implement that order,” Himmler explained that existing
extermination centers in the East could not carry out “the large actions
which are anticipated.” |
__________
* The life expectancy of
Jewish workers at the Farben works was three or four months; in the outlying
mines, about one month.17
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