After a few weeks of mental speculation about the events inside the Third Reich, lingering somewhat from long unanswered or poorly answered questions and fueled forward by clips from a fictionalized film of all things, I find the commander at the camp at Auschwitz has this to say on trial at Nuremberg:
Q. From 1940 to 1943, you were the commandant of the camp at Auschwitz. Is that true?
A. Yes.
Q. And during that time, hundreds of thousands of human beings were sent to their death there, Is that correct?
A. Yes.
And later, this:
Q. When were you commandant at Auschwitz?
A. I was commandant at Auschwitz from May, 1940, until 1st December, 1943.
Q. What was the highest number of internees ever held at one time at Auschwitz?
A. The highest number of internees held at one time at Auschwitz was about 140,000 men and women.
Q. Is it true that in 1941, you were ordered to Berlin to see Himmler? Please, state briefly what was discussed.
A. Yes. In the summer of 1941, I was summoned to Berlin to Reichsfuehrer S.S. Himmler to receive personal orders. He told me something to the effect - I don't remember the exact words - that the Fuehrer had given the order for a definite solution of the Jewish question. We, the S.S., must carry out that order. If it was not carried out now then the Jews would later on destroy the German people. We had chosen Auschwitz because of its easy access by rail and also because the extensive site could readily be isolated.
Q. During that conference, did Himmler tell you that this planned action had to be treated as a "Secret Reich Matter"? (Geheime Reichssache).
A. Yes. He stressed that point. He told me not to say anything about it to my immediate superior Gruppenffuehrer Glucks. This conference only concerned the two of us and I was to observe the strictest secrecy.
Q. What was the position held by Glucks?
A. Gruppenfuehrer Glucks was, so to speak, the Inspector of Concentration Camps at that time and he was immediately subordinate to the Reichsfuehrer.
Q. Does the expression "Secret Reich Matter" mean that no one was permitted to make even the slightest allusion to outsiders without endangering his own life?
A. Yes, "Secret Reich Matter" means that no one was allowed to speak about such matter with any person and that everyone promised upon his life to observe the utmost secrecy.
Q. Did you happen to break that promise?
A. No, not until the end of 1942.
Q. Why do you mention that date? Did you talk to outsiders after that date?
A. At the end of 1942 my wife's curiosity was aroused by remarks made by the then Gauleiter of Upper Silesia regarding happenings in my camp. She asked me whether this was the truth and I admitted that it was. That was my only breach of the promise I had given to the Reichsfuehrer. Otherwise I have never talked about it to anyone else.
Some of this starts to allow some humanity in, into a government operation that was not a matter of public policy. Men who could not tell their wives, or should not under penalty of death. The belief in what was being carried out is still the mystery, there is so little moral ambiguity in much of this testimony. Certainly later with Eichmann, none at all. More:
Q. Will you briefly tell whether it is correct that the camp of Auschwitz was completely isolated, and describe the measures taken to insure the secrecy of the carrying out of the task given to you?
A. The camp Auschwitz, as such was about three kilometres from the town. About 20,000 acres of the surrounding country had been cleared of all inhabitants, and the entire area could only be entered by S.S. men or civilian employees who had special passes. The actual compound called "Birkenau," where later on the extermination camp was constructed, was situated two kilometres from the Auschwitz camp. The camp installations themselves, that is to say, the provisional installations used at first, were deep in the woods and could from nowhere be detected by the eye. In addition to that, this area had been declared a prohibited area and not even members of the S.S. who did not have a special pass could enter it. Thus it was impossible, as far as one could judge, for anyone, except authorised persons, to enter that area.
Q. And then the railway transports arrived. During what period did these transports arrive and about how many people, roughly, were in a transport?
A. During the whole period up until 1944, certain operations were carried out at irregular intervals in the different countries, so that one cannot speak of a continuous flow of incoming transports. Each series of shipments lasted four to six weeks. During those four to six weeks, two to three trains, containing about two thousand persons each, arrived daily. These trains were first of all shunted to a siding in the Birkenau. region and the locomotives then went back. The guards who had accompanied the transport had to leave the area at once and the persons who had been brought in were taken over by guards belonging to the camp. They were there examined by two S.S. medical officers as to their ability to work. The detainees capable of work at once marched to Auschwitz or to the camp at Birkenau and those incapable of work were at first taken to the provisional installations, then later to the newly constructed crematoria.
Q. During an interrogation I had with you the other day you told me that about sixty men were designated to receive these transports, and that these sixty persons too had been bound to the same secrecy described before. Do you still maintain that today?
A. Yes, these sixty men were always on hand to take the detainees not capable of work to these provisional and, later on, to the other installations. This group, consisting of about ten leaders and sub-leaders, as well as doctors and medical personnel, had repeatedly been told both in writing and verbally that they were bound to strictest secrecy as to all that went on in the camps.
Still more, detail, and continued military testimony:
Q. And after the arrival of the transports did the victims have to dispose of everything they had? Did they have to undress completely; did they have to surrender their valuables? Is that true?
A. Yes.
Q. And then they immediately went to their death?
A. Yes.
Q. I ask you, according to your knowledge, did these people know what was in store for them?
A. The majority of them did not, for steps were taken to keep them in doubt about it so that the suspicion would not arise that they were to go to their death. For instance, all doors and all walls bore inscriptions to the effect that they were going to undergo a delousing operation or take a shower. This was proclaimed in several languages to the detainees by other detainees who had come in with earlier transports and who were being used as auxiliary crews during the whole action.
Q. And then, you told me the other day, that death from gassing occurred within a period of three to fifteen minutes. Is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. You also told me that even before death definitely set in the victims fell into a state of unconsciousness?
A. Yes. From what I was able to find out myself or from what was told me by medical officers, the time necessary for the arrival of unconsciousness or death varied according to the temperature and the number of people present in the chambers. Loss of consciousness took place after a few seconds or minutes.
Q. Did you yourself ever sympathise with the victims, thinking of your own family and children?
A. Yes.
Q How was it possible then for you to carry out these actions?
A In spite of all the doubts which I had, the only one and decisive argument was the strict order and the reason given for it by the Reichsfuehrer Himmler.
Q. I ask you whether Himmler inspected the camp and convinced himself that the order for annihilation was being carried out?
A. Yes. Himmler visited the camp in 1942 and he watched in detail one processing from beginning to end.
So it is systemized extermination, state run and dictated; the generalized discrimination of a people is no relationship of guilt to that decision -- but there must be some reason, however cold, to undertake such a huge task. One deeper or at least more logical than the general "hate" and "intolerance" that are cited. If for nothing else, the huge financial undertaking of such an operation would have to be justified in some however spotted way. The 1,700 year history of the Jewish people in Germany requires more research than I've put into it, I don't understand the economic set and climate of 1929 or 1933. As generally as possible: Germany was a defeated nation, surviving politically and economically but "spiritually" fragmented. Did this new leader promise a holism long lost (or recently lost) in a western idea of democracy and individualism? The only census information on the Jewish population in Germany in 1930:
The social position of the Jews in the various economic branches was also different from that of the total population. Only 16.4% of the total of German gainfully employed persons were independent, but 46% among the Jews. The figures for employees (white collar workers) were 12.5% and 33.5% respectively, and for manual workers 46.3% and 8.7% respectively. The Jews were better represented in the liberal professions than the average population, e.g., while the Jews constituted 0.74% of all gainfully employed persons, their proportion in the total number of physicians, lawyers and notaries public, and dentists was 10.8%, 16.25% and 8.59% respectively.
Most intrigued by Hitler's close Jewish aides and advisors, they seem to be difficult to track information on, and in the activities of the camps themselves. The photographs recently released (http://www.ushmm.org/research/collections/highlights/auschwitz/) of guards at Auschwitz stand in some stark constrast to the impression I've had of daily life in the camps. Or to what one would imagine the affect would be of seeing constant suffering. So is it cruelty on the extermination end, decent camp life, near starvation as the war ends and typhus breaks out, or is it dependant on some mood, the camp, the year. What is camp policy, what is behavioral policy? A puppet show at Ravensbruck, late in the war:
Whether it was because the SS too had the feeling that the war was coming to an end, or that not even the toughest Nazi could help being affected by the fact that there were children in the camp, when Christmas Eve 1944 approached, the SS agreed that a Christmas party for the children be arranged.
At the time there were about 400 older and younger children in the camp. After the war Ilse Unger, a well-known German political prisoner, has described the children’s Christmas party in Ravensbrück, as follows:
“In every block women sat and sewed, knitted, embroidered, darned and made the loveliest toys from the smallest remnants. Innumerable gifts accumulated. The women created veritable works of art, toys, dolls, sweaters, clothes and suits. Tenderly we clutched toy after toy in our hands and dried our tears as they fell.
Christmas Eve arrived. The puppet show began. The flashlights that were used as stage lights illuminated the dolls’ faces with a fairytale-like glow. As for us, we sat and watched the children’s faces. The children were completely absorbed by the play forgetting, for a little while, the sad fate they had met with. And when they began laughing and eagerly crowded together around the stage, a quiet joy surfaced in all of us. Something dissolved within us, and the desire to right again the wrong that was done to the unfortunate tiny human beings in this camp, rose in all of us.”
Monsters are so much friendlier than monstrous ideas. It is still nearly impossible not to think of these men as that, it makes it able to be taken. Hitler quoted Wagner, must find out what his issue was with the Jews other than the competition of Mendelsson. There is always the question of the assertion of authority -- if you are elected by popular parliament vote to the exclusion of an economically powerful, the most economically powerful, group must you cripple that group and alienate it to maintain authority? If he knows the Jewish constituency holds most of the financial capital, why speak against them so openly and early in his career? What is it he believed the deficit was to the German people to have a flourishing Jewish sector contributing to the economy? Back to the question of holism, maybe. This may be an embedded splinter group mentality -- impossible to unite the nationalistic pride of the country without excluding and expelling it. The testimony of the commander nonetheless distracted and unhinged my initial desire and interest, the un-archetyping.
A country built up, quite high, on idealism willfully implemented collapsed in 10 days and in a hailstorm of weaponry of apocalyptic proportion. This is the ordering of nature collapsing, social order giving way to survival, and a major western city destroyed to the ground. Men hung on the streets for a lack of valor, supposed support of the russians, mocking and warning signs hung around their necks ("I support the bolsheviks") so all civilians should fight to their death before surrending to the red army. These are complex social laws, reverting to the barbaric and yet maintaining their code to the last second. A functional, economically flourishing nation hellbent on its own self-determined (or, selected dictator-determined) system, total national control, which dies by it, refusing to even surrender together, splintering.
We reject Hitler as an unsavory symbol of the archaic desire to control the outcomes of nature, sex, individual will. To regiment what a people will be -- imposed and forceful holistic culture. We move together as one, like it or not, is how I imagine we'd hear it now, though it could be more -- it could be the small space in which a people could rush in and still be one identifying culture. If individualism is just setting in, if it is alienating generations and confusing the goals of individuals, families, and nations. And if your country is on its knees after a surrender a decade before, more so. Is there a patriarchal breakdown? Why in this symbol-making, this object-making and vibrant artistic and scientific country does this fall on such grateful ears? Why was individualism not rewarding?
And, before I'm out of juice, the consideration of state communication. For 12 years there would be news from the Third Reich, little else to connect it to experience. This must be related to all things -- to the way a people could then be so led by one man's vision. Hitler may be the last first-world king in the sense of control over a land. It's difficult, or too easy, to accept an idea of propaganda completely wiping clean and gullible the brains of intelligent Germans, but it certainly affects the plausibility of belief in the general principles of the party, which may have centered on discipline and honor and pride and less on exclusion and certainly less on murder. Those ideas are all military traditions -- the haywire parts are all archaic land feuds from a distance. More delving, more and more delving.
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-11/tgmwc-11-108-01.shtml
http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/occupation.htm
http://www.theverylongview.com/WATH/mothers/children.htm
