Auschwitz - A History

A deceptively slender study of history’s most notorious killing ground. As German historian Steinbacher (Ruhr Univ., Bochum) observes, Auschwitz—known as Oswiecim in Polish—was a center of Galician Jewish life long before the rise of Nazism, with a 19th-century population that exceeded that of Polish Catholics. It was also the site of a huge WWI–era camp for Sachsengänger, seasonal workers in the Austro-Hungarian war economy; the camp comprised 90 barracks capable of housing 12,000 workers, and it was this that formed the core of the Nazi-era concentration camp.

That version of Auschwitz first served as a prison for Polish political prisoners, then expanded to hold Reich German prisoners who enjoyed special privileges as compared to the Jewish population that would soon fill the camp. Steinbacher notes that Auschwitz was never escape-proof, though only Poles tended to enjoy much success in fleeing the camp, and then only a few of them. Auschwitz expanded dramatically when German industries such as IG Farben established factories behind the barbed wire; Russian prisoners of war were apparently meant to serve as the labor force, though these were killed off quickly and in any event were in shorter supply once the war began to turn against Germany.

“When it became clear that Soviet prisoners of war were not going to be supplying the massive numbers of workers expected,” Steinbacher writes, “Birkenau camp was transformed, in a sequence of decisions that cannot be reconstructed, into an extermination camp.” In that guise, the now-massive Auschwitz complex saw the deaths of an unknown number of Jewish inmates; Steinbacher estimates the number to be between 1.1 million and 1.5 million, though the camp commandant boasted that 3 million had died there.

Steinbacher closes with a denunciation of Holocaust deniers such as David Irving, “a falsifier of history, an anti-Semite and a racist” whose unsuccessful libel suit against Deborah Lipstadt is the subject of the latter’s History on Trial (Feb. 2005), to which this little book serves as a valuable companion. A thoughtful overview of a place terrible to remember--and one that must always be remembered.

Pub Date : 16/08/2005
ISBN : 0-06-082581-2
Publisher : Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online : June 24th, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue : June 1st, 2005
Author : Sybille Steinbacher