Translated by Virginie Bonfils-Bedos
Before discussing these detailed accounts, and in order to better explain them, it is necessary to know the spirit and targets of the German extermination policy.
Warning
According to the laws of ‘Mein Kampf’ and using the generous formula of the European community, which too many dismal Frenchmen had adopted, Nazism dreamed of enslaving Europe, the dominated nations henceforth to be nothing more than a breeding ground for slaves in the service of the greater Reich.
But this could only happen, or remain, with the total disappearance of opposition or resistance elements in the various enslaved countries. These elements were easy to spot.
Elements of opposition
They were first of all the politicians, or the militants of movements which had proclaimed their hostility to all forms of fascism. They were the patriots who had revealed themselves by their activity against the occupation. They were the intellectuals, professionals, etc. whose critical spirit would not have approved of the new slavery. They were the Jews who were hostile, by self-protection, to the National Socialist regime. And they were all those who were reported to the Gestapo by hate, political revenge, informing, corruption. All the Gestapo had to do was to read their mail, send their agents, rape, loot and deport.
But there was a category of individuals – less interesting targets and which I mention only for the sake of completeness – namely convicts, black-market dealers, pimps, idlers, etc., whom the Germans referred to under the label ‘antisocial’. They saw them as rebels, difficult to subdue and therefore bad subjects for Nazification.
11. Disposal after use
It was these elements, indiscriminately mixed together – and presented as ‘terrorists’ to the German population, for the benefits of the few who may get upset – who, deported from all the occupied countries of Europe, fed the extermination camps.
By the way, note that the French were hardly more than 10%.
So we were doomed to die, but before we disappear, why not use us?
Especially sin the wars of the Reich required more workers than warriors. Hence the sending of deportees to factories, mines, and various construction sites, where their mass compensated for their competence or their ardour. So be it! You listener you may object, that you understand the principle of extermination and labour, but why did they add to them the horrors of starvation? Why these clever, deliberate, coordinated atrocities?
Famine
The answer is too easy, when enabled by a painful experience.
Feeding thousands of convicts normally is costly for a country that is already stretched, despite the looting that had temporarily enriched it.
The farmer, who uses horses and oxen for his work, feeds and cares for them, as their replacement would mean monetary strains.
But the Nazis had little to worry about: they had snatched away and could continue to snatch away so many men, that replacing the dead the dead was done almost automatically.
Atrocities
As for the atrocities, they are the product of the Nazi mind, methodical, cowardly and perverse, inflated with contempt and hatred for its enemies. What a joy to have them at mercy to torture them slowly, skilfully, and to enjoy a cigarette while watching the convulsions of the victims!
And, let us repeat as many times as necessary, these were not isolated acts, due to the varying degrees of sadism of a particular camp leader, but to a global policy, applied as much in Auschwitz as in Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Flossembürg, Lublin, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück or Neuengamme, to mention only the best known.
As for the fear of the reactions or indignation of the universal conscience, let us laugh. What is there to fear when you are the master of the world?
Besides, what traces and what proofs? The dead are discreet, aren’t they, Mr Himmler? You almost won since 80% of the deportees cannot speak!
All the men transported to Germany and in excess considering the needs of the workforce, were massacred upon arrival. Happy are those whose death was not preceded by the agony of long months of suffering! The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp is the most horribly eloquent type of camp in this regard.
When a convoy reached the camp, carrying deportees from all over Europe, the vast majority of them racial deportees, all the unfortunates were lined up on the platform as soon as they got off the train.
First of all – it is almost needless to say! – they were forced to undress from head to toe and completely stripped of their suitcases, bags, clothes and even their wedding rings.
Woe to those who showed gold teeth!
Then the SS would go through the ranks and drew out those whose physical appearance revealed a better aptitude for work. These would swell the mass of slaves. As for the others, they were taken to a group of buildings whose entrance bore the inscription ‘Baden’ which means ‘baths’ or ‘showers’.
The men in one wing, the women and babies in another, they were pushed two to three hundred at a time into a room, known as the stripping room. Many pegs with numbers were fixed to the wall and, on the occasions the condemned entered dressed, the SS made the sinister joke to recommend not to forget their numbers, in order to find the clothes after the shower.
From there, under shouts and flogging, the tormented were pushed in the next room, a large hall crossed by pipes and with many sprinkler heads falling from the ceiling. The doors were hermetically sealed. And it was not water falling from the numerous sprinkler, but the infamous ‘Cyclone’ gas was coming out of the columns running through the room.
Here I let a witness speak.
“People were naked, pressed against each other, and did not take up much space. On the 40m² for the premises, they packed over 250 prisoners. A special team equipped with gas masks poured the ‘Cyclone’ gas from its round tins and poured it in the pipes going through the room. Once the ‘cyclone’ had been poured into the pipes, the SS in charge of the operation of asphyxiation operation turned a switch and the room lit up. From his observation post, his eyes glued to the peephole, he could follow the asphyxia which lasted 10 minutes. He could see everything through the peephole, without any danger to himself: the horrible faces of the dying, and the gradual action of the gas! The peephole was placed just at face level. When the victims were dying, the observer didn’t need to look down to the ground: in dying, the victims did not fall, for lack of space; the room was so crowded that the dead continued to stand without changing posture”. Afterwards, the corpses were taken to the crematorium and burned. The ashes were scattered in the fields.”
And if not the gas chambers, the gazwagen: gas carriage fitted to either the engine or the exhaust.
Afterwards, the bodies were transported to the crematorium and burned. The ashes were scattered in the fields.
Levy in the camp
But convoys of deportees did not arrive every day; they were separated by weeks, and sometimes months. And yet, the extermination could not be allowed to slow down.
So, periodically, during the roll calls, the SS would go through the ranks and designate the more fragile-looking detainees – called, I never knew why, “the Muslims” – for transport. These unfortunate people, who knew their fate, were led in rows of 5 to the gas chambers.
In the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp where seven crematoria operated continuously, day and night, for over 4 years from 1941 to late 1944, it is estimated that more than five million people were killed, including more than three and a half million Jews of all nationalities. 98% of those deported to Auschwitz were murdered; 2% had the miraculous fortune to escape. More than three million Jews of all nationalities!
In camps where gas chambers and crematoria were not built, extermination was carried out by shooting or mass hangings.
On 3 November 1943, on that day alone, 18,000 prisoners, half men, half women and children, were shot in the Lublin camp.
Mass graves
Ditches had been dug, two metres wide and several hundred metres long. All the deportees were forced to go down naked into these pits: they were immediately shot from the top of the bank with machine guns.
A second row of sufferers was then forced to lie on the corpses.
Second shooting.
Third row of condemned men and so on until the ditch was full. Then those who were still alive covered the ditch with soil, and moved to another ditch where they were shot in turn.
Only those shot in the last row at the last ditch were buried by the SS.
In the beginning, in 1941, the bodies were burned according to the ancient Hindu method: one row of wood, one row of corpses, etc.
In periods of intense killing, the ovens proved insufficient. Cremation was then carried out outside the camps.
On rails or car frames, serving as grids, boards and corpses were put on top, then boards and corpses again. This is how 500 to 1000 corpses were piled up on the blaze. They would pour fuel on it and set it on fire.
Hitler’s thugs buried the ash in holes and ditches, spread it with manure over the vast expanse of the camp’s vegetable gardens and used it to fertilise the fields.
In the Lublin camp, more than 1,350 cubic metres of compost was found, consisting of the dung and ashes of burnt corpses and the small bones of human beings. The Nazis ground the smallest bones in a special mill.
Except, however, in the last weeks before the Liberation when, sensing the approach of the Russians and Americans, they drastically reduced and then eliminated all food. More than four hundred comrades a day died in an accelerated depletion, and the single crematorium at Ebensee was not enough to absorb them. The corpses were then thrown into a vast pit, mixed with quicklime.
This explains the photographs of mass graves taken and published by the Americans.
In the last few days, no one bothered to undress and carry the dead, who were lying here, scattered where they had fallen, in the most horrifyingly diverse postures. It was at the end of last April, in the midst of a famine, while some were devouring grass –yours truly was feeding on pine buds– that the hungriest, returned to the state of beasts, engaged in cannibalism.
Moreover, our fellow doctors warned us that the most vigorous among us would not last more than three weeks. So I’ll let you guess how our liberators were received.
To be continued…
