With increasing need for skilled laborers to outfit the partially finished buildings, many unskilled prisoners were redeployed from the autumn of 1943 in the construction of makeshift and permanent air-raid shelters. Previously, the firm had given air-raid protection low priority, but abruptly changed course with the Allied advances in Sicily and Italy in the summer of 1943. (The capture of southern Italy brought Poland within the theoretical bombing range of the U.S. Army Air Force.) The air campaign in the summer and fall of 1944 magnified the horrors of the prisoners’ daily existence, even as these attacks underscored that the Nazi regime’s days were numbered. At least 158 Monowitz prisoners were killed in the course of four U.S. daylight bombing raids between August and December 1944. The Soviets also attacked the plant at least twice in December 1944 and January 1945. The number of detainees killed in the December and January attacks is unknown, but all the air attacks disrupted water, food, and electrical power, even as they also raised morale.{24}
By December 1944, the I.G. Auschwitz labor force included almost every European nationality. Its “paper” strength was 31,000, with 29,000 effectives at work. These workers included Italian civilians and Italian military internees, British POWs, Belgian and French contract workers, numerous Poles and Ukrainians (both forced and “free”), and other non-Jewish Eastern Europeans. The status of workers, free or forced, depended upon the regime’s dictates and I.G. Farben’s assessment of their labor productivity. Theoretically, Monowitz comprised one-third of the total I.G. Auschwitz workforce (just over 10,000 prisoners), but the number of forced laborers at the plant was smaller. In November 1944 the WVHA listed Monowitz as a new main camp, with responsibility for the almost forty Auschwitz satellites. The establishment of the Monowitz and Mittelbau (Dora) main camps was part of the last reorganization of the SS camp system.{25}
For Monowitz’s prisoners, horrible days lay ahead. In January 1945, the Soviets began the Vistula-Oder Offensive and the timing caught the German army by surprise. The Red Army consequently captured the still unfinished plant with little damage. The SS evacuated Monowitz on 18 January, as part of the larger evacuation of the Auschwitz satellite camps. The “death march” that Mr. Berg describes so vividly had begun.{26}
After four years of construction, I.G. Auschwitz remained unfinished. Under the Germans at least, it never produced synthetic oil or rubber, but wasted tens of thousands of human lives. The plant was a monument to a totalitarian dictatorship that enlisted private industry in the service of refashioning humanity along “racial” lines.
GLOSSARY
APPELPLATZ (German) The place for roll call (Appel) in the camps.
AUSCHWITZ The original Auschwitz camp (Auschwitz I) was built in 1940 in the suburbs of the Polish city of Oswiecim. On June 14, 1940, the first convoy of Polish political prisoners—728 men—arrived at the camp. By 1943, Auschwitz was the largest Nazi camp complex, with three main camps—Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and Auschwitz III-Monowitz—and some forty subcamps. Over 50 percent of the registered Häftlinge in the Auschwitz complex died; 70 to 75 percent of each transport was sent straight to the gas chambers. Untold numbers of victims of the gas chambers were never registered. The total number of Jews murdered in Auschwitz will never be known, but estimates range from 1 million and 2.5 million. The next highest groups were Poles and Russian POWs, most of them dying in the construction of the I.G. Farben plant and as gas chamber “guinea pigs,” and Gypsies. Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet army on January 27, 1945.
BIBELFORSCHER (German) A Jehovah’s Witness, a purple triangle. German Jehovah’s Witnesses, because of their beliefs, refused to use the Hitler salute, salute the Nazi flag, bear arms as soldiers, or participate in affairs of the government. Viewed as enemies of the state, many Jehovah’s Witnesses lost their jobs, homes, businesses, and pen-sions. If they renounced their faith, they could avoid persecution. Over 900 Jehovah’s Witness children who refused to join the Hitler Youth were thrown into penal institutions and juvenile homes. Jehovah’s Witness publications wrote many scathing articles on Hitler’s regime and on the concentration camps. In 1937, the magazine Consolation ran an article on poison-gas experiments in Dachau, and in June 1940, the magazine stated, “There were 3,500,000 Jews in Poland when Germany began its Blitzkrieg… and if reports are correct their destruction seems well under way.” Auschwitz camp commander Rudolf Franz Höss saw the Bibelforscher in his camp as “poor idiots who were quite happy in their own way.” Over 10,000 German and European Jehovah’s Witnesses were shipped to concentration camps. It’s estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses were murdered during the Nazis’ reign, more than 1,500 of them in the camps.
BIRKENAU (German) Literally “birch grove,” this was Auschwitz II, an extermination camp built in October 1941 and located near the Polish village of Brzezinka. In the spring of 1942, the “showers” and crematoriums were operational. On October 10, 1944, there was the uprising of the Sonderkommando, during which the prisoner crew of crematoria IV revolted and destroyed the crematories. In November 1944, Heinrich Himmler shut down the gas chambers and made efforts to conceal the mass murder that had taken place there.
BLOCK/BLOCKS (German) Barracks.
BLOCKAELTESTE/R (German) Barracks supervisor/s.
BLOKOWA (Polish) Female barracks supervisor.
BLOKOWY (Polish) Barracks supervisor.
BOCHE/BOCHES (French/slang) A derogatory term for a German citizen/s.
BUNA Acronym for butadiene natrium, or synthetic rubber. The I.G. Farben plant was called “Buna” by the inmates. The plant was built to produce synthetic rubber and fuel. When the Nazis abandoned Auschwitz, not an ounce of synthetic rubber had yet been produced.
CROIX DE FEU Literally, Cross of Fire. A right-wing organization founded in 1915 by a group of French officers. Original members were all holders of the Military Cross. Many conservative Catholics joined the nationalist, monarchist, and revanchist (“revenge”) organization in the 1920s. Membership peaked at 750,000 in 1937. Widely regarded as the counterpart of Germany’s and Italy’s fascist organizations.
DER STÜRMER Literally “The Attacker.” An anti-Semitic Nazi weekly newspaper first published on April 20, 1923. Based in Nuremberg, its publisher and editor, Julius Streicher, used the paper to spread Hitler’s doctrine of hatred with crude, simply written articles and “Jew-baiting” cartoons. The final edition of Der Stürmer was published on February 1, 1945. After the war, Streicher was tried at the Nurem-burg trials for inciting hate and was hanged on October 16, 1946.
DORA, MITTLEBAU-DORA (Also known as Dora-Nordhausen) Established in August 1943 near the southern Harz Mountains and north of the town of Nordhausan, Dora was originally a subcamp of Buchenwald. The first Häftlinge were forced to build the underground factory for the production of the V-1 and V-2 rockets. In November 1944, the camp was renamed Mittelbau. About 60,000 men were used as forced or slave laborers, and more than 20,000 died there. Mittelbau-Dora was liberated on April 11, 1945, by the U.S. 33rd Armored Regiment.