Auschwitz

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ The commandant of the concentration camp will furnish SS men and a truck for the execution of the action. Should it not yet be possible to take the Poles from Alzen to Auschwitz”—and Auschwitz, Your Honors will recall, is where the concentration camp was—“they should be transferred to the empty castle at Zator. The liberated Polish property is to be given to the needy racial German farmers for their use.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Can anyone seriously believe that Poles, Jews, and Russians, or even Germans, voluntarily submitted themselves to the tortures of the decompression chamber and freezing basin in Dachau, the poison gas chamber in Natzweiler, or the sterilization X-ray machines of Auschwitz? Is it to be held that the Polish girls in Ravensbrueck gave their unfettered consent to be mutilated and killed for the glory of the Third Reich? Was the miserable gypsy who assaulted the defendant Beiglboeck in this very courtroom a voluntary participant in the sea-water experiments? ”

“ 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. ”

“ I thought, well, whatever the Nazis are doing to the Jews, they were not killing them on a conveyor belt system in gas chambers in Auschwitz, against which has to be said that I’ve read the manuscript memoirs of two commandants of Auschwitz.. [Höss...and Almeyer (sic) ] ...and they both refer to people being gassed in Auschwitz, and this is a methodological problem for a historian then. You have to look at that and say: well, there’s no trace of cyanide in the building, but you’ve got these confessions by these Germans. How do you explain that? That is where you enter a grey area ”

“ 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. ”

“ And the more they come to have taken part in a traumatic experience themselves, the more they are persuaded that they were right centre stage. They are the bride at every funeral and the corpse at every wedding, I think somebody once said’ (pp14-15) .
‘And there are so many survivors of Auschwitz now, in fact, that I get very tasteless about all of this. I don’t see any reason to be tasteful about Auschwitz. ”

“ But the explanation is perfectly simple: the Germans simply can’t afford to do that,...Not murdered, not gassed – far more than half of the inmates of the concentration camp Auschwitz died of natural causes that means, of diseases, of epidemics, of typhus fever, of typhoid, of hunger, of cold or of being overworked or of various other natural causes , that’s what, far more than half of the Auschwitz inmates died of, that means perhaps 30,000 people at most were murdered at Auschwitz. ”

“ What, today, does the name of Auschwitz convey to you?
VON SCHIRACH: It is the greatest, the most devilish mass murder known to history. But that murder was not committed by Hoess; Hoess was merely the executioner. The murder was ordered by Adolf Hitler, as is obvious from his last will and testament. The will is genuine. I have held the photostat copy of that will in my hands. He and Himmler jointly committed that crime which, for all time, will be a stain in the annals of our history. It is a crime which fills every German with shame.
The youth of Germany is guiltless. ”

“ Even though it be possible, by a tremendous effort, to rebuild the cities and villages destroyed by the Hitlerites, even though it be possible to restore the factories and plants blown up or burned down by them, mankind has lost for all time the irreplaceable art treasures which the Hitlerites so ruthlessly destroyed, as it has lost forever the millions of human beings sent to their death in Auschwitz, Treblinka, Babye-yar, or Kerch. ”

“ Research carried out more recently, notably by Raul Hilberg and by Dr Piper of the Auschwitz Museum, has concluded that the true figure for the number of deaths at Auschwitz is in the region of 1.1 million of which the vast majority perished in the gas chambers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How can one reconcile this part of your report which mentions Auschwitz and Maidanek, where mass murder took place, with your statement that you heard of Maidanek only at the end of 1944. Well, your report is dated June 1943; you mentioned there both Maidanek and Auschwitz.
FRANK: With reference to Maidanek we were talking about the extermination of Jews. The extermination of Jews in Maidanek became known to me during the summer of 1944. Up to now the word “Maidanek” has always been mentioned in connection with extermination of Jews. ”

“ The letters ‘A’ or ‘M’ on the escorting instruction documents indicated Auschwitz or Majdanek; it meant that the passengers were to be gassed. * * * Regarding Hungarian Jews the following general ruling was laid down in Auschwitz: children up to the age of 12 or 14, older people above 50, as well as the sick, or people with criminal records (who were transported in specially marked wagons) were taken immediately on their arrival to the gas chambers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The case advanced by the Defendants can by simply summarised: they contend that there is a substantial body of evidence, from a variety of different sources, which should demonstrate to any fair-minded objective commentator that gas chambers were constructed at Auschwitz and that they were used to extermination Jews on a massive scale. This case rests upon what the Defendants contend is abundant evidence, both contemporaneous and more recent, which amounts to convincing proof that Auschwitz played a pivotal role in the Nazi scheme to exterminate European Jewry. ”

“ In April ’43, the Tribunal will remember, the Warsaw ghetto was destroyed. Between April 1942 and April 1944, 1,700,000-odd Jews were killed in Auschwitz and Dachau—I quote now from the transcript—and throughout the whole of that period millions of Jews were to die. It is my submission that that article appearing on the 4th of November and signed by him shows that he knew what was happening, perhaps not the details, but that he knew that the Jews were being exterminated. ”

“ HOESS: Yes. In the summer of 1941 I was summoned to Berlin to Reichsführer SS Himmler to receive personal orders. He told me something to the effect—I do not remember the exact words—that the Führer had given the order for a final solution of the Jewish question. We, the SS, must carry out that order. If it is not carried out now then the Jews will later on destroy the German people. He had chosen Auschwitz on account of its easy access by rail and also because the extensive site offered space for measures ensuring isolation. ”

“ She knows that the people who are questioning her about Auschwitz want to hear about the crematoria and the gas chambers and after a time she describes the crematoria and the gas chambers, because human pride demands that she not have been in one of the other barracks, perhaps five miles away from the crematorium but right next door to it. It’s a matter of human pride and we can’t really begrudge these people for placing themselves and their recollections so close to the event, so close to the heart of the particular trauma. ”

“ I remained true to my oath as an officer, a youth leader, and an official. I was no blind collaborator of his; neither was I an opportunist. I was a convinced National Socialist from my earliest days—as such, I was also an anti-Semite. Hitler’s racial policy was a crime which led to disaster for 5,000,000 Jews and for all the Germans. The younger generation bears no guilt. But he who, after Auschwitz, still clings to racial politics has rendered himself guilty. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As such, he frequently sent prisoners to Auschwitz for incarceration or execution. He visited Auschwitz on several occasions. The Gestapo court, the SS Standgericht, which tried persons accused of various crimes, such as escaping prisoners of war, et cetera, frequently met within Auschwitz, and Mildner often attended the trial of such persons, who usually were executed in Auschwitz following their sentence. I showed Mildner through the extermination plant at Auschwitz and he was directly interested in it since he had to send the Jews from his territory for execution at Auschwitz. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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... ”

“ I will now quote an extract of the appeal to the public opinion of the world from the representatives of several thousand former internees at Auschwitz:
“The gassing of unbelievable numbers of people took place upon the arrival of transports from various countries: France, Belgium, Holland, Greece, Italy, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Poland, the U.S.S.R., Norway, and others. The new arrivals had to pass before an SS doctor or else before the SS commandant of the camp. The latter pointed his finger to the right or left. The left meant death by gas. ”