Auschwitz was one of the extermination camps, like Vernichtungslager, where the process was made more final "final solution" of how to exterminate the Jews.
Auschwitz was the greatest and most renowned, whose four huge gas chambers and adjoining crematoria gave it a capacity for death and burial far beyond that of others----Treblinka, Belsec, Sibibor and Chelmno, all in Poland. There were other minor extermination camps near Riga, Vilna, Minsk, Kaunas and Lwow, but they were distinguished from the main ones in that they were killed by shooting rather than by gas. Speed was an important factore, especially at Auschwitz, toward the end was setting a rate of gassing 6,000 victims a day.
Rudolf Hoess was one of the camps commanders , he deposed at Nuremburg on the superiority of the gas he employed.
The "Final Solution" in Germany meant the complete extermination of all Jews in Europe.
Hoess explained how the victims were selected for the gas chambers,
"We had two S.S. doctors on duty at Auschwitz to examine the incoming transports of prisoners. These would be marched by one of the doctors, who would make spot decisions as they walked by. Those who were fit to work were sent into the camp. Others were sent immediately to the extermination plants. Children of tender years were invariably exterminated since by reason of their youth they were unable to work."
In Auschwitz we endeavored to fool the victims into thinking that they were going through s delousing process.
The gas chambers themselves and the adjoining crematoria, viewed from a short distance, were not sinister-loking places at all; it was impossible to make them out for what they were. Over them were well-kept lawns with flower borders; the signs at the entrances merely said BATHS. The unsuspecting Jews thought they were simply being taken to the baths for the delousing which was customary at all camps. And taken to the acompaniment of sweet music!
When they were taken to the camps for "resettlement" men and women would be put in two lines, heads were shaved, all jewelery and wedding rings taken , even the gold filling from the corpes, they were tatooed with a prison number.
The ones who were fit for work were put to work making roads.
The dead bodies were simply thrown into ditches and burned and then the earth was bulldozed over. The camp commanders complained toward the end that the crematoria had proven not only inadequate but "uneconomical."
Pg. 979-The Medical Experiments a Doctor August Hirt head of the Anatomical Institute of the University of Strasbourg, explained in a letter 1941 to S.S. Lieutenant General Rudolf Brandt, Himmler's adjutant.
"We have large collections of skulls of almost all races and people at our disposal. Of the Jewish race, however, only a few speciements of skulls are available . . . . The war in the East now presents us with the opportunity to overcome this deficiency. By procuring the skulls of the Jewish-Bolshevik commissars, who represent the prototype of the repulsive, but characteristic, subhuman, we have the chance now to obtain scientific material."
Professor Hirt did not want the skulls of "Jewish-Bolshevik" commissars" already dead ,first be measured while they were alive.
Following the subsequently induced death of the Jew, whose head should not be damages, the phsician will sever the head from the bady and will forward....in a hermetically sealed tin can. Himmler was delighted, he directed that Professor Hirt be supplied with everything needed for his reseach work.
Wolfram Sievers was the actual supplier "Doctors" trial at Nuremburg a colonel of the S.S. and executive secretary of the Ahnenbe, the Institute for Research into Heredity , one of the "cultural" organizations, it had 50 research branches one called " Institute for Military Scientific Research", Sievers was a shifty-eyed , Mephistophelean-looking fellow with a thick, ink-black beard at Nuremburg he was dubbed the "Nazi Bluebeard", after the famous French killer. He loike so many others of his character kept a meticulous diary. They hanged him.
By June 1943 Sievers had collected at Auschitz the men and women who were to furnish the skeletons for the "scientific measurements" of Professor Dr. Hirt at the University of strasbourg. 115 persons, 79 Jews, 30 Jewesses, 4 'Asiatics' and 2 Poles were processed Processing; "Anthropological measurements and the casts were taken.
Narrated by S.S. Captain Josef Kramer also comdemned to death as the "Beast of Belsen" by a British court Luenburg.
"Professor Hirt of the Strasbourg Anatomical Institute told me of the prisoner convey en route from Auswitz. He said these persons were to be killed by poison gas in the gas chamber of the Natzweiler camp, their bodies then to be taken to the Anatomical Institute for his disposal. He gave me a bottle containing about half a pint of salts----I think they were cyanide salts---and told me the approximate dosage I would have to use to poison the arriving inmates from Auschwitz.
Early in August 1943, I recieved eighty inmates who were to be killed with gas Hirt had given me. One night I went to the gas chamber in a small car with about fifteen women this time. I told the women they had to go into the chamber to be disinfected. I did not tell them, however, that they were to be gassed.
By this time the Nazis had perfected the technique.
With the help of a few S.S. men [Kramer continued] I stripped the women completely and shoved them into the gas chamber when they were stark naked.
When the door closed they began to scream. I introduced a certain amount of salt through a tube. .. . .and observed throygh a peephole what happened inside the room. The women breathed for about a minute before they fell to the floor. After I turned on the ventilation I opened the door. I found the women lying lifeless on the floor and they were covered with excrements."
Captain Kramer repeated the performance until all eighty inmates were dead and turned the bodies over to ProfessorHirt.
"I had no feelings in carrying out these things because I had received an order to kill the eighty inmates in the way I already told you. 'That, by the way, was the way I was trained.'"
page 970-971, Surviving prisoners watched from blocks remebered a time signal for the orderlies to pour the crystals down the vents was given by Sergeant Moll "Na, gib ihnen schon zu fressen" ("All right, give'em something to chew on") and he would laugh. Throught heavy-glass portholes the executioners watched, twenty or thirty minutes later the Sonderkommando took over These were Jewish male inmates who were promised their lives and adequate food in return for cleaning out the gas chambers and removing the dead bodies.
They wore protective clothing with gas masks but were replaced by new teams. The S.S. wanted to survivors to tell the tales.
"Their first task was to remove the blood and decations before dragging the clawing dead apart with nooses and hooks, the prelude to the ghastly search for gold and the removal of teeth and hair which regarded by the Germans as stragegic materials. Then the journey by lift or rail-wagon to the furnaces, the mill that ground the clinker to fine ash, and the truck that scattered the ashes in the stream of the Sola."
The ashes were sometimes used as fertilizer. One Danzig firm used a electrically heated tank for making soap out of human fat. Recipe: "12 pounds of human fat, 10 quarts of water, and 8 ounces to a pound of caustic soda...all boiled for two or three hours and then cooled.
They were sent pretty postcards 'Waldsee" , "We are doing well here. We have work here and we are well treated. We await your arrival" after they had been gassed.
The gas used amethyst-blue crystals of hydrogen cyanide, or Zyklon B, which had been originally commercially manufactured as a strong disinfectant and Herr Hoess had so much pride in finding a new use. Page 970