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kind. Moreover, as Dr. Fejkiel went on to explain, the
average diet in Auschwitz permitted a prisoner, to remain alive no more than
three months, after which time symptoms of emaciation and "hunger disease" set
in; and the early hospital blocks served as places “where the people
suffering from the hunger disease could spend the time from the beginning of
the sickness until their death”10 In
that sense, the medical blocks became a particularly direct means of
maintaining the murderous ecology of the camp.
In terms of general
Auschwitz function, medical blocks remained a contradiction. In the face of
camp conditions and the near-starvation diet, they could not contribute
significantly to the health of the work force; and enough Jews arrived
constantly to replace weaker members of that force. The medical blocks probably
existed because of prior concentration-camp practice, concern about epidemics,
the professional and psychological inclinations of Nazi doctors, and above all
the broad Nazi impulse toward medical legitimation of killing.
With the
arrival of Eduard Wirths as chief SS physician in September 1942, and the
increasing official emphasis on the working capacity of large numbers of
prisoners, medical facilities were considerably expanded and improved. Prisoner
doctors were permitted to do real medical work; responsible political prisoners
(many of them German Communists) replaced the often brutal criminal prisoners
in important medically related positions; and SS doctors, for the most part,
lent their support to these developments. Yet at precisely the same time, the
mass murder of Jews was also expanded to reach its most extreme proportions,
and SS doctors were major coordinating figures. They “did everything the
command wished”: that is, “cooperated closely ... in the annihilation
of the prisoners, and simultaneously did everything to make believe that they
administered the proper medical treatment and in such away they helped to
conceal various crimes.” Their falsifications included certification of
the food rations as sufficient for life as well as the subsequent death,
certificates (required for prisoners admitted to the camp).11
I. G. Farben contributed a significant
economic dimension to Auschwitz murder-triage. In March 1941, it agreed to pay
the SS three Reichsmarks a day for each unskilled concentration-camp inmate and
four Reichsmarks for skilled inmates. The price set for children was one and
one-half Reichsmarks. I. G. Farben representatives sometimes complained about
SS brutality to prisoners insofar as it impeded their work (though also
sympathizing with the SS position that “only brute force has any effect on
these people,” and “it is impossible to get any work done without
corporal punishment”); but perhaps the main complaint was that
“transports from Berlin [meaning Berlin authority] continued to have so
many women and children as well as old Jews” (that is, not enough
able-bodied male workers). And by September 1942, I. G. Farben was running its
own concentration camp at Monowitz.12
This I. G. Farben-SS collaboration departed from “the conventional
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