Auschwitz concentration camp

“ The Reich Leader SS has promised SS Brigadefuehrer Professor Clauberg that Auschwitz concentration camp will be at his disposal for his experiments on human beings and animals. By means of some fundamental experiments, a method should be found which would lead to sterilization of persons without their knowledge. The Reich Leader SS wanted to get another report as soon as the result of these experiments was known, so that the sterilization of Jewesses could then be carried out in actuality. ”

“ This figure represents about 70 or 80 percent of all persons sent to Auschwitz as prisoners, the remainder having been selected and used for slave labor in the concentration camp industries; included among the executed and burned were approximately 20,000 Russian prisoners of war (previously screened out of prisoner-of-war cages by the Gestapo) who were delivered at Auschwitz in Wehrmacht transports operated by regular Wehrmacht officers and men. ”

“ Rascher suggested a large series of experiments in the Auschwitz concentration camp. This place would be suitable for such experimentation because it was colder there, and the spacious open country within the camp “would make the experiments less conspicuous, as the experimental subjects yell when they freeze severely.” [Emphasis supplied.] (1616-PS, Pros. Ex. 105.) Himmler gave Rascher permission to carry out additional freezing experiments in the concentration camps Auschwitz and Lublin. ”

“ Suddenly a lot of people aren’t claiming to be Auschwitz survivors any more. Elie Wiesel, for one, for example, he has always been uncertain whether it was Auschwitz he had been in, or Dachau, or Buchenwald. [Laughter]
Well, I say that, because there’s a photograph, a photograph, in which he identifies himself as being a prisoner in a photograph of various prisoners in a bunk-house in a barracks in the concentration camp in Buchenwald, and he said, “Yes, that’s me”. But it turns out that photograph was in Auschwitz and he says, “Ohh, yes, I meant Auschwitz.” ”

“ Hirt should be provided with all necessary material for his research work. I have already reported to the Reich Leader SS that for some anthropological studies 150 skeletons of inmates or Jews are needed and should be provided by the Auschwitz concentration camp. It is only necessary for the Reich Security Main Office to be furnished now with an official directive by the Reich Leader SS ”

“ Rascher in the Auschwitz Camp—I remind the Tribunal that Auschwitz was the central section of the camp situated near the town of Oswieczim—was not accidental. In Auschwitz cruel experiments on live persons were carried out on a scale greatly exceeding all that was done in Dachau or other concentration camps of the Reich. ”

“ The concentration camp of Buchenwald, set up in 1938, and the camp at Dachau, established in 1934, turned out to be only the anemic prototypes of Maidanek, Auschwitz, Slavuta, and numerous death camps, set up by the Hitlerites in the territories of Latvia, Bielorussia, and the Ukraine.
The very coming into power of the Hitlerites was marked by many provocations which served as an excuse for committing grave Crimes against Humanity. Inflicting punishments without due process of law by the Hitlerites upon all who did not share the ideology of the fascist clique became widespread. ”

“ People both from Western Europe and from the countries of Eastern Europe were brought into these camps. This is shown not only by official reports on these camps, but also from a board with names of inmates of one of the camp’s sections which Your Honors can find in the album of documents on Auschwitz. The citizenry of all European countries may be found.
A special technique was used in the extermination of the people and in connection with this I draw the attention of Your Honors to one fact, which I especially investigated when I was analyzing the materials relating to concentration camps. ”

“ As indicated previously, the Defendant Frank knew and approved that Poles were taken to concentration camps in connection with resettlement projects. He had certain jurisdiction as well in relation to the extermination camp Auschwitz, to which Poles from the Government General were committed by his administration. ”

“ Accordingly, the concentration camps will be classified into the following categories:
“Category I—for all prisoners charged with minor offenses only and definitely qualified for correction; also for special cases and solitary confinement—Camps Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Auschwitz I. The latter also applies in part to Category II.
“Category Ia—for all old prisoners conditionally qualified for work who could still be used in the medicinal herb gardens—Camp Dachau. ”

“ In places like Auschwitz, evidence of the horror of the Holocaust has been preserved to help the world remember the past. We must never forget the cruelty of the guilty and the courage of the victims at Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps.
During the Holocaust, evil was systematic in its implementation and deliberate in its destruction. The 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is an opportunity to pass on the stories and lessons of the Holocaust to future generations. The history of the Holocaust demonstrates that evil is real, but hope endures. ”

“ It is therefore impossible to imagine that the whole of Germany was unaware of the existence of the concentration camps and of what was going on there, since these women had been released from the camps and it is difficult to believe that they never mentioned them. Besides, in the factories where the former internees were employed, the Vorarbeiterinnen (the forewomen) were German civilians in contact with the internees and able to speak to them. The forewomen from Auschwitz, who subsequently came to Siemens at Ravensbrück as Aufseherinnen, had been former workers at Siemens in Berlin. ”

“ The case for the Defendants in summary
7.6 Auschwitz was not, on the Defendants’ case, either the first or by any means the only extermination camp where gas chambers were employed to kill Jews. However, according to the Defendants, the evidence establishes that more more deaths occurred at Auschwitz than in all the other extermination camps put together. ”

“ Jews, who in accordance with Number VI of the directives are released from prison, are to be committed for life in the concentration camps Auschwitz or Lublin by the head office of the State Police competent for the district in which the prison is located, in compliance with directions issued about protective custody. ”

“ For these experiments Auschwitz is in every respect better adapted than Dachau, for the climate is colder there and, as the camp area is larger, less attention will be attracted. The victims yell when they are being frozen. ”

“ M. DUBOST: The system of detention was the same as at Auschwitz?
MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: No. In Auschwitz, obviously, extermination was the sole aim and object. Nobody was at all interested in the output. We were beaten for no reason whatsoever. It was sufficient to stand from morning till evening but whether we carried one brick or 10 was of no importance at all. We were quite aware that the human element was employed as slave labor in order to kill us, that this was the ultimate purpose, whereas at Ravensbrück the output was of great importance. It was a clearing camp. ”

“ The younger generation is guiltless. It grew up in an anti-Semitic state, ruled by anti-Semitic laws. Our youth was bound by these laws and saw nothing criminal in racial politics. But if anti-Semitism and racial laws could lead to an Auschwitz, then Auschwitz must mark the end of racial politics and the death of anti-Semitism. Hitler is dead. ”

“ It’s baloney, it’s a legend. Once we admit the fact that it was a brutal slave labour camp and large numbers of people did die, as large numbers of innocent people died elsewhere in the War, why believe the rest of the baloney? I say quite tastelessly, in fact, that more women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz. [Laughter] Oh, you think that’s tasteless, how about this? There are so many Auschwitz survivors going around, in fact the number increases as the years go past, which is biologically very odd to say the least. ”

“ Jews discharged from prison were turned over to the Gestapo for final detention in Auschwitz, Lublin, and other concentration camps. The above-described proceedings resulted in the murder, torture, and ill-treatment of thousands of such persons. The defendants von Ammon, Engert, Klemm, Schlegelberger, Mettgenberg, Rothenberger, and Westphal are charged with special responsibility for and participation in these crimes. ”

“ Schmelter: * * * Dorsch will accompany me to Greiser to try and get 20 to 30 thousand men out of him.
Reich Minister Speer: Kammler had his doubts about that before.
Representative of Kammler: He didn’t think the 100,000 Jews would come.
Schmelter: To that I can add the following. Till now two transports have arrived at the SS camp Auschwitz. For fighter construction we were offered only children, women, and old men with whom very little can be done. * * * Unless the next transports bring men of an age fit for work the whole action will not have much success. ”

“ Those present at the conference must have carried away the impression that the objectives were the extermination of the Jewish people.” (2645-PS)
The deportation of Jews into concentration camps was part of the program for slave labor. Jews not fit for work were screened out at extermination centers, such as Auschwitz, and the remainder were taken into concentration and work camps. The orders were issued by Himmler and passed through the Chief of the Security Police and SD, Kaltenbrunner (formerly Heydrich) to Mueller, Chief of the GESTAPO, and then to Eichmann for execution. ”

“ It is common knowledge that the anguish of the concentration camp was spread, not only over the Continent of Europe, but over all the world. Even today all over the world people are still seeking word of their friends and relatives who vanished into the Nazi concentration camps and left no trace behind. ”

“ Dachau and the other death camps, Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Treblinka and the others, were the machinery used by the Nazi regime to perpetrate the Holocaust-the systematic, state-sponsored extermination of six million Jews and the murders of millions of other people. The Holocaust was a crime virtually without equal in history. It has left deep moral scars on all humankind. No one who participated in the liberation of those camps or who knows their history can ever forget them-least of all the 250,000 survivors who found a home and built a new life in this country after the war. ”

“ They're are saying, “This is just going to nourish the neo-Nazi stereotype of the Jew - grasping, gold hungry, greedy, inconsiderate, vengeful; all these anti-semitic stereotypes that the neo-Nazis have are just being nourished by this latest clamour about the Swiss gold.”’
‘Well, they have been dining on Auschwitz. Auschwitz is a big tourist site now. They have millions of visitors every year. It’s like Hitler’s mountain top retreat in Berchtesgaden. They have half a million visitors a year there too. They make money out of it. Auschwitz has become a major money-spinner, the Holocaust. ”

“ It is atrocious to die of hunger, to die of thirst, to be ill, to see all one’s companions dying around one and being unable to help them. It is atrocious to think of one’s children, of one’s country which one will never see again, and there were times when we asked whether our life was not a living nightmare, so unreal did this life appear in all its horror.
For months, for years we had one wish only: The wish that some of us would escape alive, in order to tell the world what the Nazi convict prisons were like everywhere, at Auschwitz as at Ravensbrück. ”

“ I believed that millions of people had been killed in factories of death. I believed in the gas chamber. I believed in all the paraphernalia of the modern Holocaust. But 1988, when I came to Canada and gave evidence in the trial of Ernst Zündel, as an historian, I met people who knew differently and could prove to me that that story was just a legend. I changed my mind and I’ve now revised the Hitler book so that all reference to Auschwitz and the gas chamber and the factories of death have now been totally removed and eradicated’ (p4) . ”

“ It's a matter of weeks, Orville, because Nazi Germany is collapsing ... only a matter of weeks. You must manage to stay alive. Look, you are fighting criminals, not soldiers. There's a prison named Auschwitz where the Nazis are murdering thousands of Jews, innocents, women, kids. German factories employ slave labor... ”

“ Irving relied on the note as evidence that Auschwitz was essentially a work camp. But Longerich pointed out that Himmler had made provision that 10% of those deported did not need to be fit for work. Longerich inferred that they were to be killed on arrival. Irving contended that the 10% provision was for wives and children. Such documents are, Irving argued, wholly inconsistent with the Nazis having been engaged at the same time upon a programme of exterminating Jews in gas chambers at Auschwitz. ”

“ Pohl, as Chief of WVHA, and Kaltenbrunner, as Chief of RSHA, often conferred personally and frequently communicated orally and in writing concerning concentration camps....”
You have already told us about the lengthy report which you took to Kaltenbrunner in Berlin, so I will omit the remainder of Paragraph 5.
“6. The ‘final solution’ of the Jewish question meant the complete extermination of all Jews in Europe. I was ordered to establish extermination facilities at Auschwitz in June 1941. ”

“ Whilst the Defendants do assert that these deaths are the result of deliberate genocidal policy on the part of the Nazis, they must of course be discounted in order to reach a correct estimate of the number of deaths in the gas chambers. Initial estimates, largely based on the capacity of the crematoria, ran as high as 4 million. As has been see the camp commandant, Hoss, gave varying estimates, ranging from 3 million to 1.1 million. However, analysis of the numbers of Jews transported to Auschwitz produced a lower estimate of around 1 million. ”