The Prisoners' Fate in Auschwitz-Birkenau
Following the German occupation of Hungary, the Nazis determined to turn the only still operational extermination camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau into the burial ground for the Hungarian Jews. Eichmann made a brief visit to the camp and he was displeased with what he saw: the direct rail-link to the crematoria had not been completed and the instruments of mass killing lay idle. Therefore in early May commander of the camp Arthur Liebehenschel was dismissed and control over the operation of massacring the Hungarian Jews was put into the hands of the most experienced expert on mass murder: the founder and commander of the camp, Rudolf Höss.
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Höss
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The mass transport of Hungarian Jews to Birkenau took place between May 16 and June 11. Previous to that, at the end of April, German authorities had already sent two transports from Hungary with Jewish inmates from Budapest prisons and the interment camps of Kistarcsa and Bácstopolya. In the weeks following the mass deportations, on July 22 and 26, two additional transports arrived at the ramps with Jews smuggled out of the country by Eichmann from the internment camps of Kistarcsa and Sárvár without the consent of the Hungarian government.
Of the 445,000 Hungarian Jews deported between the end of April and the end of July, 10,000-15,000 ended up in Strasshof, Austria. The rest were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In addition, smaller Hungarian groups continued to arrive until October 1944, so the final number of Hungarian Jews deported to the Auschwitz complex exceeded 430,000 people.
Arrival, selection, "Sauna"
The deportees arrived at the ramp in Birkenau after an average of three-day journey by cattle cars.
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Arrival of the Hungarian Jews to the Birkeanu ramp in May 1944 |
As soon as the doors were opened, inmates in striped prison uniforms jumped up among the arrivals (members of the Kanadakommando), "and they shoved and kicked us out of the cars. They told us to leave all luggage, it would be brought after us later."[4] Although forbidden under pain of death, Kanada inmates often provided vital information to Hungarian Jews: "They told us to give children to the elderly".[5] There was no time for explanation; suspicious deportees were unaware that during selection able-bodied women with children were sent directly to the gas chambers, and the elderly were automatically condemned to death.
The lives of Jews ordered to line up in rows of five and separated by gender rested in the hands of SS physicians conducting the selection (usually Dr Josef Mengele, Dr Heinz Thilo, head physician Dr Eduard Wirths and the Hungarian-speaking Dr Viktor Capesius, originally from Transylvania). The Germans were looking for healthy labourers between the age of 16 and 40, the rest were gassed within a few hours. In borderline cases the doctor asked about age, occupation and potential illnesses, then made a quick decision. Starving and thirsty deportees exhausted by days of travel standing in a railroad car could not even grasp what was happening to them, while doctors decided over their life or death with a wave of the hand.
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Selection on the ramp. Dr Mengele is on the right side, smoking |
The majority of the survivors saw their relatives for the last time. On average, 80 percent of the transports were murdered in
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Otto Moll, commander of the extermination zone |
The luckier 20 percent, the able-bodied inmates, was driven to a bathhouse at the western perimeter of the camp, the so-called "Sauna". There "we had to undress to the skin ...Our hair was completely cut, all body hair was shaven. ...This did not bother the SS soldiers in the least .., they walked among us laughing, stopping and watching, brutally violating our sense of propriety".[10] The sense of utter vulnerability was universal: "with our hair shorn and our clothes taken, we felt stripped of all human dignity, our human nature", remembered the B. sisters.[11] According to K. R., "The whole situation was most humiliating".[12] "It was horrible having to undress in the bathhouse in the presence of men" - said Mrs Miksa Salamon in 1945.[13]
Camp life
From the Sauna the prisoner, dressed in rags and with all bodily hair shaven, were usually driven to assigned barracks, and thus
camp sections BIId, BIIc and BIII. Inmates referred to the latter as "Mexico" due to the prevailing conditions (with barely any drinking water or plumbing), atrocious even by Birkenau standards.The majority of able-bodied Hungarian Jews was idle for days and spent their time in endless roll calls ("Appell"). G. R. from Carpatho-Ruthenia described the "Appell" "as one of the most effective means of torture". "We stood in rows of five from 2:30 in the morning to 6 a.m. and many times till 12 noon, arms-length from each other to prevent us from supporting or warming each other. In pouring rain, in bitter cold, in the snow - every day the same. The snow or rain fell on freshly shaven heads, or the sun was beating down, but you couldn't as much as budge, because if you did not stand at full attention you were lashed by a whip. As a form of special punishment they made you kneel for hours on wet or frozen ground, holding your hands high with a heavy stone in each."[14] In 1945 A. T. burst out as follows: "Oh, those Appells! To stand or kneel under the burning sun or in freezing rain. We often had to kneel." If an inmate went missing, everyone else was punished. "We knelt from the afternoon until eleven at night, first until they found the girl, and later as a form of punishment."[15]
Aside from the "Appells", the prisoners' living conditions were appalling. The filthy barracks were unbearably overcrowded. "11 people slept on a single bunk. When one of them turned around, all the rest had to turn, because there was simply not enough room." [16] "There were 14 of us on a bunk; we slept on top of each other like sardines. We could not climb down from the bed, because we were beaten, and we could not use the lavatories either."[17] "This was one of their favourite methods of punishment - refusing to let us go to the toilet. Considering that almost all of us had diarrhoea and at times we had to hold back for 24 hours, we suffered excruciating pain. It happened that some could not hold out any longer and had an accident - the poor soul was severely beaten."[18] Due to insufficient provisions, inmates' lost their stamina. "There was very little food: a little black water in the morning, turnip soup and a small slice of bread at noon and again half a litre of soup in the evening. We starved a lot and suffered from the cold as well."[19] The prisoners were beaten by everyone: the SS-guards, SS-women guards, male and female capos. Even the smallest infraction (being late from the "Appell" or sneaking out to the latrines) provoked the most vicious beating.
It was then no wonder that the physical and psychological strength of Hungarian Jews declined steadily. "Life" in the camp was nothing but "struggle to go to the
Latrine block in Birkenau
latrine not only in closed rows of fives, but when nature called, struggle for a gulp of water and the chance to get washed, struggle for a piece of raw potato or a piece of cabbage that we stole from around the kitchen with trembling hearts, struggle to get round the Blocksperre [block curfew] and sneak over to another barrack where they distributed lunch and get an extra portion."[20] An office woman deported from Carpatho-Ruthenia accurately described the conditions: "It was a struggle for survival, a battle at the expense of the weaker, the less resourceful. You either stay on top or get trampled. This was the law of nature."[21] According to S. G., a seamstress from Técső, "we practically became like beasts, suffering brought out our worst innate qualities ...We did not help each other, everyone was trying to save her own life."[22] The experience of 19-year-old H. I. was the exception: "There were twenty-five of us good friends, and we shared every piece of food among each other. This was the only way to survive it somehow."[23]
In theory, Hungarian Jews in Birkenau constituted one of the most essential labour reserves for the Nazi camp network. When fresh
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Close-cropped Hungarian Jewish women |
Words of the survivors - link centerWe were close to wishing to die. He was not shot dead, but he was thrown into the oven alive; they even heard his voice from inside |
Between 1940 and 1945, approximately 1.3 million people were transported to the Auschwitz complex, of whom 1.1 million found their death there. Nine-tenth of those killed ended up there because of their Jewish origin, and every third victim was a Hungarian citizen.[29] The largest group of victims from any single country killed in the vastest death camp the world has ever known were Hungarian citizens. Auschwitz-Birkenau became not only the largest cemetery in the world, but the largest Hungarian cemetery as well: never have so many Hungarians been killed as at that site.
Footnotes
[1] Protocol 2257.
[2] Protocol 2902.
[3] Protocol 2820.
[4] Protocol 313.
[5] Protocol 129.
[6] Protocol 1860.
[7] Protocol 2820.
[8] Protocol 2257.
[9] Protocol 1645.
[10] Protocol 1210.
[11] Protocol 2209.
[12] Protocol 174.
[13] Protocol 473.
[14] Protocol 313.
[15] Protocol 2257.
[16] Protocol 117.
[17] Protocol 1533.
[18] Protocol 228.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Protocol 1330.
[21] Protocol 2257.
[22] Protocol 576.
[23] Protocol 928.
[24] Protocol 1087.
[25] Protocol 228.
[26] Protocol 1051.
[27] Protocol 473.
[28] Protocol 1864.
[29] As the Nazis destroyed most of the camp documents, one can only estimate the total number of Hungarian Jews killed at Birkenau. On average, 80 percent of the deportees, or approximately 340,000 people, were found unfit for work and killed within hours of their arrival. The forced labour at Auschwitz, illness, brutal treatment and selections inside the camp claimed the lives of many thousands of Hungarian Jews. Tens of thousands were transported to other camps; of these, thousands more died within months. The number of direct and indirect victims of Auschwitz may be estimated between 360,000-390,000, i.e., 80 to 90 percent of all deportees. For estimates, see Kádár - Vági, 1999, p. 103.
References
Kádár - Vági 1999
Gábor Kádár - Zoltán Vági: Magyarok Auschwitzban. (Hungarians in Auschwitz) In Holocaust Füzetek 12. Budapest, 1999, Magyar Auschwitz Alapítvány-Holocaust Dokumentációs Központ, pp. 92-123.
