The SS garrison in Auschwitz

published 23/05/2013 at 17h41 Contributed by Bohdan Piętka


Various estimates indicate that the Auschwitz Concentration Camp SS garrison numbered 700 in 1941, about 2 thousand in June 1942, about 3 thousand in April 1944, and about 3,300 SS men and female overseers in August 1944. The peak figure came in mid-January 1945, in connection with the final evacuation of the camp, when there were 4,480 SS men and 71 female SS supervisors there. Throughout the entire period that the camp was in existence, a total of some 8,000 to 8,200 SS men and some 200 female guards served in the garrison.

Education

Available data on the education of 1,209 Auschwitz SS men indicates that they had received relatively little schooling. 70% of them had elementary education, 21,5% secondary, and 5.5% higher education. Among those with higher education, the majority were doctors or architects working in the SS construction offices.

Religious denomination

The religious affiliation of 556 garrison members is known; Catholics accounted for the highest number, followed by Lutherans. Atheists (the Gottgläubig category) made up the third largest group. Among the SS men who belonged to the NSDAP, the Nazi party, the greatest number were Lutherans.

Nationality

The majority of the Auschwitz garrison was made up of Germans who held German citizenship (Reichsdeutsche). There were also ethnically German SS men there (Volksdeutsche) who had previously held citizenship in occupied countries or in Third Reich satellite countries like Romania, Slovakia, and Hungary. The percentage of such soldiers in the Auschwitz garrison rose steadily, and then declined in 1944 as older Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe soldiers were stationed there.

Female SS supervisors

Women began to be posted to Auschwitz in 1942. This was connected primarily with the creation of the women’s camp, but also because of personnel shortfalls caused by the assignment of SS men to the eastern front. The female camp supervisors did not belong to the SS, an all-male formation. Applicants signed employment contracts with the SS-Totenkopf unit stationed at a given camp. Once the contracts came into force, they were counted among the members of the SS retinue (SS-Gefolge), on duty and under the disciplinary oversight of the camp commandant.

Women also served in Auschwitz as radio operators in the camp communications office. They were referred to as “SS auxiliaries” (SS-Hilferinnen). This was a relatively small group. The German Red Cross nurses working in the medical service for the SS men made up a third category.

The Auschwitz Concentration Camp commandant stood at the head of the camp personnel and the garrison stationed there. The first commandant of SS-Obersturmbannführer Artur Liebehenschel Auschwitz was SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss (May 1940-November 1943). His successors were SS-Obersturmbannführer Arthur Liebehenschel (November 1943-May 1944) and SS-Sturmbannführer Richard Baer (May 1944-January 1945). After the first organizational reform of the Auschwitz complex, the commandants of Birkenau (Auschwitz II Concentration Camp) between November 1943 and November 1944 were, first, SS-Sturmbannführer Friedrich Hartjenstein, replaced by SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Kramer. The commandant of Auschwitz III (known from November 1943 as Monowitz Concentration Camp) was SS-Hauptsturmführer Heinrich Schwarz.

The commandant had complete authority over the camp and the SS garrison. In turn, he reported to the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps. After the inspectorate became part of the SS Main Economic-Administration Office (Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamat, SS-WVHA) on March 3, 1942, the concentration camp commandants came under the authority of Office Group D (Amtsgruppe D) in the SS-WVHA.

Below the commandant in the command hierarchy came the camp director (SS-Schutzhaftlagerführer), who, in turn, was in charge of the non-commissioned report officers (Rapportführer) and the SS men responsible for supervising each prisoner block (Blockführer) and prisoner labor detail (Kommandoführer).

The expansion of the Auschwitz complex led to the creation of the posts of directors of the sectors that made up the Birkenau camp, director of the Monowitz camp, and directors of the sub-camps that made up Auschwitz III Concentration Camp. Some of these figures became notorious, such as main camp (Auschwitz I Concentration Camp) directors SS-Haupsturmführer Karl Fritzsch and SS-Haupsturmführer Hans Aumeier, or the main camp Rapportführers, SS-Hauptscharführer Gerhard Palitzsch and SS-Oberscharführer Oswald Kaduk.

SS attitudes towards the prisoners

On October 1, 1933, Theodor Eicke, commandant at the time of Dachau Concentration Camp and inspector from 1934 of the concentration camps and SS guard divisions, defined the relationship between the camp garrison and the prisoners in instructions that he issued to the SS guard units. Eicke stressed the necessity of treating the prisoners harshly, as enemies of the Third Reich and the German people. Showing any kind of human impulses towards them was not only frowned upon by superiors, but also sneered at among the SS men themselves as being “soft” and showing a “lack of character.” Many years of indoctrination in the spirit of National Socialism, along with the cultivation of the German militaristic tradition, purged the SS guards of humanitarianism and respect for human dignity, and trained them to ignore moral and legal norms.

The SS departments

The organizational structure of Auschwitz was composed of seven departments (the commandant’s office, the political department, camp administration, prisoner labor, administration-economic, camp SS medical service, and SS unit welfare and training) and such separate administrative units as the Construction Board, the SS unit supply stores, the German Equipment Factory, the German Food Factory, the construction materials plants, the camp farms, and the Waffen-SS Hygiene Institute.
Załoga SS

Departments III (camp administration) and II (political department) played the leading role in the terror and extermination system. The officials in the political department were employees of the Gestapo or the Kripo (criminal police), seconded from the State Police post in Katowice. The head of the political department reported to the camp commandant and to the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), and carried out orders from both the commandant and the RSHA apparatus.

The heads of the political department were SS-Unterstumführer Maximilian Grabner and his successor, SS-Unterstumführer Hans Schurz. Among the organizational sub-units in the political department, the one that evoked the greatest fear among the prisoners was the interrogation and investigation unit (Vernehmungsabteilung). The most notorious henchmen there included SS-Oberscharführer Wilhelm Boger and SS-Unterscharführer Gerhard Lachmann.

The political department had a wide range of prerogatives in admitting and releasing prisoners, keeping personal files and identifying the prisoners, administering the crematoria, exercising oversight in relation to prisoners and SS men, combating the prisoner resistance movement, and supervising the campaign for the mass extermination of Jews. These functions made the political department the most important component in the Auschwitz organizational structure.

Auschwitz – pomieszczenie dla esesmanówThe camp director and the head of the political department jointly made decisions on placing prisoners in the camp jail and shooting prisoners at the Death Wall.

The SS medical service

The SS medical service also played a salient role in the extermination system. The medical unit had two different goals: treating the SS crew and exterminating prisoners. SS doctors carried out selection in the prisoner hospitals and turned a blind eye to the horrid sanitary and hygienic conditions in the camp. They also participated in selections for the gas chamber among the newly arrived Jewish transports and carried out criminal medical experiments.

The head doctor of the SS garrison (Standortarzt) directed the camp medical service. His immediate supervisors were the head physician of the concentration camps and the head SS physician. The post of head doctor of the SS garrison in Auschwitz Concentration Camp was held in turn by Max Popiersch, Oskar Dienstbach, Siegfried Schwela, Franz Maria von Bodmann, Kurt Uhlenbroock, and Eduard Wirths.

The auxiliary medical personnel, the SS orderlies (Sanitätsdienstgrade – SDG), were also involved in the extermination process. SS orderlies took part in the killing of terminally exhausted prisoners by lethal injection of phenol to the heart. Some of them, such as Josef Klehr, were famed for their sadistic cruelty. Some of the SS orderlies made up the so-called SS disinfection detail (SS-Desinfektionskommando) that dumped the Zyklon B into the gas chambers.

Guards

Seventy-five percent of the Auschwitz garrison performed guard duty. The SS guard battalion was made up of 8 to 10 guard companies, two staff companies, and a company of guard-dog handlers (Hundesstaffel). The SS men assigned to guard duty belonged to the SS-Totenkopfverbände. At a later date, Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe soldiers who were too old for frontline service were also assigned to guard duty at Auschwitz.

More members of the Auschwitz SS garrison stood trial in Poland than anywhere else. From 1946 to 1949, about 1 thousand people suspected of committing war crimes at Auschwitz were extradited to Poland, mostly from the American occupation zone in Germany. Charges were brought against 673 people, including 21 women.

The Warsaw trial of commandant Rudolf Höss

Przed egzekucją Rudolfa HoessaThe best known trial was that of the first commandant, Rudolf Höss, before the Supreme National Tribunal in Warsaw. On April 2, 1947, the tribunal sentenced Höss to death.

The Cracow trial of the SS garrison

The Supreme National Tribunal sat in Cracow for a second important trial, known as the Auschwitz garrison trial. Of the 40 people indicted, 23 (including the second Auschwitz commandant, Arthur Liebehenschel, political department head Maximilian Grabner, and women’s camp director Maria Mandel) were sentenced to death, and 6 to life imprisonment.

Other trials

Other trials were held between 1946 and 1953 before regional, voivodship, and special courts in Katowice, Cracow, Cieszyn, Gliwice, Racibórz, Sosnowiec, and Wadowice. The most common sentences for lower-ranking members of the Auschwitz garrison were three years in prison (203 times, for 31.9% of all the sentences) and 4 years (111 times, 17.5%). Death and life sentences were relatively rare (41 times, 6.1%).

Trials of Auschwitz SS garrison members outside Poland

German Federal Republic

Poland aside, the German Federal Republic held the most trials of members of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp garrison. The watershed in prosecuting Nazi war criminals there did not, however, come until the 1960s.

The best known trials of members of the Auschwitz garrison were four trials in Frankfurt am Main between 1963 and 1976. Six defendants (including Rapportführer Oswald Kaduk and political department henchman Wilhelm Boger) were sentenced to life imprisonment, and the others to prison terms of 3 to 14 years. Many former SS men from the Auschwitz garrison were examined as witnesses in this trial but never faced charges themselves, before or afterwards.

Despite significant efforts by the prosecutors in some German states, and especially the office of the prosecutor in Ludwigsburg, the results of the investigation and punishment of Auschwitz SS men by West German justice were extremely modest.

Austria

In 1972, charges were brought in Austria against 4 former SS men from the Auschwitz garrison, including two officers from the SS Construction Board. All of the accused were acquitted.

German Democratic Republic

The most famous (and only) trial in East Germany was that of SS doctor Horst Fischer, in 1966. The court condemned Fischer to death. In Czechoslovakia, one SS orderly and one female SS overseer were sentenced to death.

American, British, and French military tribunals

SS men from the Auschwitz garrison were tried before American, British, and French military tribunals in the late 1940s as part of the trials of garrisons from other concentration camps.

Auschwitz II commandant Josef Kramer, Auschwitz I and Birkenau women’s camp director Franz Hössler, and female SS overseers Irma Grese andi Elisabeth Volkenrath were sentenced to death at the trial of the Bergen-Belsen garrison in 1945.

For their part, the British sentenced 2 Auschwitz doctors to death in 1946 at the trial of the Neuengamme Concentration Camp garrison. In 1945, an American military tribunal sentenced Auschwitz III-Monowitz director Vinzenz Schöttl and Birkenau crematorium boss Otto Moll to death at the trial of the Dachau garrison.

The Americans also passed death sentences on SS doctors Helmuth Vetter and Friedrich Entress at the trial of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp garrison, and Auschwitz II-Birkenau men’s camp director Johann Schwarzhuber at the trial of the FKL Ravensbrück staff.

A French Military Tribunal sentenced Friedrich Hartjenstein, commander of the SS guard battalion and commandant of Auschwitz II-Birkenau Concentration Camp, and Heinrich Schwarz, commandant of Auschwitz III-Monowitz, to death at the trial of the Natzweiler garrison in 1946.

In total, not more than 15% of the Auschwitz garrison faced trial before the tribunals of various countries. This percentage is, nevertheless, high in proportion to that for other concentration camps.

The battle to bring war crimes suspects to justice was definitively lost after the war, and not only with regard to Auschwitz. The solemn declarations that the Allies made at the beginning of the war had little in common with the situation just a few years after the end of hostilities. The Cold War and the new political division of Europe did not favor a thorough search for justice or a reckoning for the memory of the victims of German genocide.

Some countries in fact hindered the extradition of war criminals. Ghana, for instance, protected Auschwitz doctor Horst Schumann, and some South American countries were sufficiently uncooperative that the criminal SS physician Josef Mengele succeeded in living out his life in hiding.