Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews Peter Longerich (grave mercy .TXT) 📖

time, such as the spring

of 1942.30 While he himself was not in Auschwitz, Höß wrote, his deputy used Zyklon B on his own initiative to murder Soviet prisoners of war; later he agreed

with Eichmann to use this gas in future. 31 This plainly self-exculpatory account, which, for understandable reasons, was in fact disputed by Eichmann during his

hearing in Jerusalem, 32 makes it clear once again that Höß is hardly an ideal witness for the history of Auschwitz concentration and extermination.

In the course of the planned expansion of the camp complex and with regard to

the high number of prisoners killed and those who lost their lives in other ways as

a result of the disastrous conditions of imprisonment, on 21 and 22 October the

construction of a new and considerably larger crematorium facility, consisting of a

total of fifteen cremation chambers, was discussed with representatives of the

specialist firm Topf & Söhne. 33 The American historian Michael Thad Allen has indicated that there were already plans at this time to incorporate a ventilation

system along with the aeration system that was already a standard part of such a

facility. He takes this as proof that there were already plans at this point to use the

room as a gas chamber because the introduction of warm air—which fundamen-

tally contradicts the task of a ‘morgue’—was plainly intended to distribute the

Zyklon B more quickly. Aside from this, the plans indicate that the pipes in

question were to be cemented in; Allen presumes that they were thus to be

protected against damage from victims struggling against death. Robert Jan van

Pelt and Deborah Dwork, on the other hand, date the conversion of the ‘morgue’

into a gas chamber only to September 1942, when the building was already under

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Final Solution on a European Scale, 1941

construction. 34 If we accept Allen’s dating—the current state of research does not allow the question to be definitively resolved—one cannot conclude that a

decision was made a short time previously (in October 1941) to murder the

European Jews. The installation of a gas chamber in the new crematorium

corresponded to what had already been done provisionally in the old cremator-

ium; it was nothing really new, and it was primarily used on non-Jewish victims

who were being murdered at this time. There was also the fact that time was being

taken over the construction of the crematorium: it was not started until August

1942, not in the old camp, but in Birkenau, and the crematorium was finally

completed in March 1943. Similarly, it was only in August 1942 that the decision

was taken considerably to extend the capacity of the crematorium. It was decided,

on the basis of the same plans, to build a second crematorium in Birkenau, which

was finally completed in June 1943. Auschwitz played no part in the planning for

the murder of the European Jews in 1941; the advocates of a radical Judenpolitik

seem to have become aware of its potential only in January 1942, in connection

with Himmler’s order to confine Jews from Germany in concentration camps. 35

Hence, it would be wrong to assume that the conversion of Birkenau camp

complex would have gone ahead at full speed immediately after a decision by

the Führer in the summer or autumn of 1941 to murder the European Jews.

In November 1941 the same firm, Topf & Söhne, also received a commission to

construct a gigantic incineration facility with thirty-two chambers in Mogilev

(Belarus). The reason given to the firm was that such a facility was needed for the

hygienic removal of corpses because of the great danger of epidemics in the East.

As the construction was not completed, the superfluous ovens came to Ausch-

witz. 36 It is not inconceivable that this planned crematorium facility was actually intended for the construction of an extermination camp in Mogilev, whose

function was assumed in the course of the coming months by Auschwitz and

the extermination camps in Poland. 37

Thus, in Auschwitz, in the autumn of 1941—still independent of the plans for the

‘Final Solution’ that were going on at the same time—various developments were

under way which would only a few months later make the camp seem practically

predestined to assume a central role in the murder of the European Jews: the

expansion of the camp, for which a new purpose had to be found when it proved

after a few months that because of the mass deaths among Soviet prisoners of war

the original numbers of prisoners would not be reached; the hitherto unparalleled

expansion of the capacity of the crematoria; and finally the experiments with

poison gas.

Accordingly, late in 1941, preparations were made to construct extermination

camps in Riga, in the area around Lodz (Chelmno), in Belzec, and in Auschwitz,

presumably in Mogilev near Minsk, and possibly in Lemberg (Lvov). 38 Hence, facilities for mass murder with gas were prepared near all the ghettos that had

been selected as destinations for the first three waves of deportation from the

Autumn 1941: Deportation and Mass Murders

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Reich. In Auschwitz they were intended for a large number of predominantly

non-Jewish prisoners, and possibly in the district of Galicia to cover the area that

was to become an important link to the future colonial territories further to the

east. The temporal parallels between the start of the deportations and the

preparation and installation of these murder facilities in the autumn of 1941

reflect the planning of the Nazi regime to extend the strategy of judenfrei areas,

already applied in the Soviet Union, to the Polish territories. In certain regions

that were of central importance for the further population displacements planned

as part of the racist ‘New Order’, at least those members of the local Jewish

population who were ‘unfit for work’ were to be exterminated. Parallel efforts by

various parties during these months to develop technologies for the mass killing

of people with gas are clear indications that preparations were generally under

way to carry out mass murders on a large scale in the near future. (In the case of

Auschwitz these preparations did not primarily affect Jewish prisoners, but

Soviet prisoners of war and sick prisoners.39) However, the plans for systematic mass murder among the Jewish population had so far affected only certain

regions, and the intention to deport the remaining Jews to the occupied Soviet

territories after the end of the war