Commandant of Auschwitz Read online

  This was a bad time for me. Loritz was forever treading on my heels. The more so because my departure in 1938, to become adjutant to his most hated rival, had caused him considerable irritation. He assumed that I had organized my transfer behind his back. This was not so. The commandant of Sachsenhausen had asked for me because he had seen that I was being pushed into a dead-end job at Dachau, owing to my excessive loyalty to himself when he had been commander of the protective custody camp there.

  Loritz was very resentful of this and made me only too clearly aware of his dislike.

  In his opinion everyone in Sachsenhausen was treated much too softly, SS men and prisoners alike.

  In the meantime Commandant Baranowski, who was an old man, had died and Eicke, who had enough on his hands with the formation of his new division, let Loritz do much as he liked.

  Glücks had never cared much for Baranowski. Loritz’s return to the concentration camp suited him very well. In him he saw one of the “old guard” commandants, who would give him full support in his new post of Inspector of Concentration Camps.

  When the question of building a new camp at Auschwitz became urgent, the authorities had not far to go for a commandant. Loritz was glad to let me go, so that he could find a commander of the protective custody camp more to his liking. This was Suhren, later to be commandant of Ravensbrück, who had been Loritz’s adjutant in the General SS.

  I therefore became commandant of the quarantine camp which was to be built at Auschwitz.

  It was far away, in the back of beyond, in Poland. There the inconvenient Hoess could exercise his passion for work to his heart’s content. That was what Glücks, the Inspector of Concentration Camps, had intended. It was in these circumstances that I took up my new task.

  I had never anticipated being made a commandant so quickly, especially as some very senior protective custody camp commanders had been waiting a long time for a commandant’s post to fall vacant.

  My task was not an easy one. In the shortest possible time I had to construct a transit camp for ten thousand prisoners, using the existing complex of buildings which, though well-constructed, had been completely neglected and were swarming with vermin. From the point of view of hygiene, practically everything was lacking. I had been told in Oranienburg, before setting off, that I could not expect much help, and that I would have to rely largely on my own resources. In Poland I would find everything that had been unobtainable in Germany for years!

  It is much easier to build a completely new concentration camp than to construct one quickly out of a conglomeration of buildings and barracks which require a large amount of constructional alteration. I had hardly arrived in Auschwitz before the Inspector of the Security Police and of the Security Service in Breslau was inquiring when the first transports could be sent to me!

  It was clear to me from the very beginning that Auschwitz could be made into a useful camp only through the hard and untiring efforts of everyone, from the commandant down to the lowest prisoner.

  But in order to harness all the available manpower to this task, I had to ignore all concentration camp tradition and customs. If I was to get the maximum effort out of my officers and men, I had to set them a good example. When reveille sounded for the SS rankers, I too must get out of bed. Before they had started their day’s work, I had already begun mine. It was late at night before I had finished. There were very few nights in Auschwitz when I could sleep undisturbed by urgent telephone calls.

  If I wanted to get good and useful work out of the prisoners then, contrary to the usual and universal practice in concentration camps, they must be given better treatment. I assumed that I would succeed in both housing and feeding them better than in the other camps.

  Everything that, from my point of view, seerned wrong in the other camps, I wished to handle differently here.

  I believed that in such conditions I could obtain the willing cooperation of the prisoners in the constructional work that had to be done. I also felt that I could then demand the maximum effort from them.

  I had complete confidence in these assumptions. Nevertheless, within a few months, I might even say during the first weeks, I became bitterly aware that all good will and all the best intentions were doomed to be dashed to pieces against the human inadequacy and sheer stupidity of most of the officers and men posted to me.

  I used every means at my disposal to make all my fellow workers understand my wishes and intentions, and I attempted to make it clear to them that this was the only practicable way of getting everyone to co-operate fruitfully in completing the task assigned us.

  My good intentions were in vain. Over the years the teaching of Eicke, Koch, and Loritz had penetrated so deeply into the minds of the “old hands,” and had become so much ä part of their flesh and blood, that even the best-willed of them simply could not behave otherwise than in the way to which they had become accustomed during long service in the concentration camps. The “beginners” were quick to learn from the “old hands,” but the lessons they learned were unfortunately not the best.

  All my endeavors to obtain at least a few good and competent officers and noncommissioned officers for Auschwitz from the Inspector of Concentration Camps were of no avail. Glücks simply would not co-operate. It was the same with the prisoners who were to act as supervisors of the others. The Rapportführer Palitzsch was to find thirty useful professional criminals of all trades, since the RSHA[41] would not let me have politicals for this purpose at Auschwitz.

  He brought back thirty of these, whom he considered the best among those offered to him at Sachsenhausen.

  Less than ten of them were suited to my wishes and intentions.

  Palitzsch had selected these men according to his own opinions and his own ideas as to how prisoners should be treated, which he had already acquired and to which he had grown used. He was by disposition incapable of behaving in any other way.

  So the whole backbone about which the camp was to be built was defective from the start. From the very beginning the camp was dominated by theories which were later to produce the most evil and sinister consequences.

  Despite all that, it might have been possible to control these men, and indeed even to bring them around to my way of thinking, if the officer in charge of the prison camp and the Rapportführer had followed my instructions and obeyed my wishes.[42]

  But this they neither could nor would do, owing to their intellectual limitations, their obstinacy and malice, and above all for reasons of convenience.

  For these men the key prisoners we had been sent were exactly right, right, that is, for the purposes which they envisaged and for their attitude.

  The real ruler of every concentration camp is the officer in charge of the prison camp. The commandant may set his stamp upon the outer form of communal camp life, and this will be more or less obvious according to the energy and enthusiasm he devotes to his job. It is he who directs policy, has final authority, and bears ultimate responsibility for all that happens. But the real master of the prisoners’ whole life, and of the entire internal organization, is the officer in charge of the prison camp or alternatively the Rapportführer, if that officer is strong-minded and more intelligent than his immediate superior. The commandant may decide the lines on which the camp is to be run and issue the necessary general orders and regulations concerning the life of the prisoners, as he thinks best. But the way in which his orders are carried out depends entirely on the officers in charge of the prison camp. The commandant is thus entirely dependent on their good will and intelligence.

  It follows that if he does not trust them, or considers them incapable, he must take over their duties himself. Only thus can he be certain that his instructions and orders will be carried out in the way he intends. It is hard enough for a regimental commander to be sure that his orders will be carried out correctly at section level in the manner he intends, particularly when they relate to matters other than mere routine. How much harder it is for the commander of a
concentration camp to know that all his orders concerning the prisoners, orders which are often of the greatest consequence, will be correctly interpreted and carried out regardless! The Capos always prove particularly difficult to control. For reasons of prestige as well as for disciplinary reasons, the commandant can never interrogate the prisoners concerning the SS set over them: only in extreme cases, with a view to a criminal investigation, can this be done. Even then the prisoners, almost without exception, will say they know nothing or will give evasive replies, for they inevitably fear reprisals.

  I had learned enough about all this at first hand in Dachau and Sachsenhausen, as block leader, Rapportführer, and commander of the protective custody camp. I know very well how easy it is in a camp for unwelcome orders to be deliberately misinterpreted, and even to be given an entirely opposite construction, without the issuing authority ever being aware of this. In Auschwitz I was very soon quite sure that this was being done.

  Such a state of affairs could only be radically altered by an immediate change of the entire protective custody camp staff. And the Inspector of Concentration Camps would never in any circumstances have permitted this.

  It was impossible for me personally to see that my orders were carried out down to the smallest detail, since this would have meant diverting my attention from my main task, the building of a serviceable camp as rapidly as possible, and acting as officer in charge of the protective custody camp myself.

  It was during the early period, when the prison camp was being got under way, that I should have spent my whole time in the camp, just because of this attitude of mind of the camp staff.

  But it was precisely then that I was compelled to be almost always away from the camp owing to the inefficiency of most of the officials with whom I had to deal.

  In order to get the camp started I had already had to negotiate with various economic offices, and with the local and district authorities. My executive officer was a complete half-wit and I was thus forced to take matters out of his hands and to organize the entire provisioning of troops and prisoners myself.

  Whether it was a question of bread or meat or potatoes, it was I who had to go and find them. Yes, I even had to visit the farms in order to collect straw. Since I could expect no help of any kind from the Inspectorate, I had to make do as best I could on my own. I had to “organize” the trucks and lorries I needed, and the fuel for them. I had to drive as far as Zakopane and Rabka[43] to acquire cooking utensils for the prisoners’ kitchen, and to the Sudetenland for bedsteads and paillasses.

  Since my architect could not acquire the materials he needed most urgently, I had to drive out with him to look for them. In Berlin they were still quarreling about the responsibility for the construction of Auschwitz, for it had been agreed that the whole project was an army affair and had only been handed over to the SS for the duration of the war.

  The RSHA, the Commander of the Security Police in Cracow, and the Inspector of the Security Police and the Security Service in Breslau were repeatedly inquiring when ever-larger groups of prisoners could be accepted at the camp.[44]

  Yet I still could not lay my hands on a hundred yards of barbed wire. There were mountains of it in the Engineer Depot at Gleiwitz. But I could not touch it without first getting authority to have it decontrolled from the Senior Engineer Staff in Berlin. The Inspectorate of Concentration Camps refused to help in this matter. So the urgently needed barbed wire just had to be pilfered. Wherever I found old field fortifications I ordered them to be dismantled and the pillboxes broken up, and thus I acquired the steel they contained. Whenever I came across installations containing material I urgently needed, I simply had it taken away at once without worrying about the formalities. I had to help myself.

  Furthermore, the evacuation of the first zone of the area assigned to the camp was going on.[45]

  The second zone had also begun to be cleared. I had to work out how all this additional agricultural land was to be used.

  At the end of November 1940 the first progress report was submitted to the Reichsführer SS, and an expansion of the whole camp area was begun as ordered.[46]

  I thought that the construction and completion of the camp itself were more than enough to keep me occupied, but this first progress report served only to set in motion an endless and unbroken chain of fresh tasks and further projects.

  From the very beginning I was so absorbed, I might say obsessed, with my task that every fresh difficulty only increased my zeal. I was determined that nothing should get me down. My pride would not allow it. I lived only for my work.

  It will be understood that my many and diverse duties left me but little time for the camp and the prisoners themselves.

  I had to leave them entirely in the hands of individuals such as Fritzsch, Meier, Seidler, and Palitzsch, distasteful persons in every respect, and I had to do this even though I was well aware that they would not run the camp as I wished and intended.

  But I could only dedicate myself completely and wholly to one task. Either I had to devote myself solely to the prisoners, or I had to use all my energies in the construction and completion of the camp. Either task required my entire and undivided attention. It was not possible to attempt both. But my job was, and always remained, to complete the construction and enlargement of the camp.

  In the course of the years many other tasks occupied my attention, but the primary one remained the same throughout. All my thoughts and aspirations were directed toward this one end, and everything else had to take second place. I had to direct the whole undertaking from this standpoint alone. I therefore observed everything from this one point of view.

  Glücks often told me that my greatest mistake was in doing everything myself instead of delegating the work to my responsible subordinates. The mistakes that they would make through incompetence I should simply accept. I should become reconciled to that. Matters cannot be expected to run just as one wants always.

  He refused to accept the validity of my arguments when I objected that in Auschwitz I had certainly been given the worst type of human material to act as Capos and as junior officers; and that it was not only their incompetence, but far more their deliberate carelessness and malice that compelled me to handle all the more important and urgent tasks myself.

  According to him, the commandant should direct and control the whole camp by telephone from his office desk. It should be quite enough if he took an occasional Walk through the camp. What innocence! Glücks was only able to hold this view because he had never worked in a concentration camp. That was why he could never understand or appreciate my real needs.

  This inability on the part of my superior to understand me brought me to the verge of despair. I put all my ability and my will into my work; I lived for it entirely; yet he regarded it as though this were a game or even a hobby of mine, in which I had become too absorbed and which prevented me from taking the broader view.

  When, as a result of the visit of the Reichsführer SS in March 1941,[47] new and larger tasks were assigned me without any extra help in the most vital matters being forthcoming, my last hope of obtaining better and more reliable assistants vanished.

  I had to resign myself to the “bigwigs” and to my continuing quarrels with them. I had a very few good and reliable colleagues to support me, but unfortunately these were not in the most important and responsible positions. I was now forced to load and indeed to overload them with work, and I was often slow in appreciating that I was making the mistake of demanding too much of them.

  Because of the general untrustworthiness that surrounded me, I became a different person in Auschwitz.

  Up to then I had always been ready to see the best in my fellow creatures, and especially in my comrades, until I was convinced of the contrary. I had often been badly let down by my credulity. But in Auschwitz, where I found my so-called colleagues constantly going behind my back, and where each day I suffered fresh disappointments, I began to change. I became distrustful and h
ighly suspicious, and saw only the worst in everyone. I thus snubbed and hurt many honest and decent men. I had lost all my confidence and trust.

  The sense of comradeship, which up to then I had regarded as something holy, now seemed to me to be a farce. The reason was that so many of my old comrades had deceived and double-crossed me.

  Any form of friendly contact became repugnant to me. I repeatedly refused to attend social gatherings, and was glad when I could find a plausible excuse for staying away. My comrades strongly and repeatedly reproached me for this. Even Glücks drew my attention more than once to the lack of that friendly comradeship which should have linked the commandant and his officers at Auschwitz. But I simply could not do it any more. I had been too deeply disillusioned.

  I withdrew further and further into myself. I hedged myself in, became unapproachable, and visibly harder.

  My family, and especially my wife, suffered on account of this, since my behavior was often intolerable. I had eyes only for my work, my task.

  All human emotions were forced into the background.

  My wife was perpetually trying to draw me out of my seclusion. She invited old friends from outside the camp to visit us, as well as my comrades in the camp, hoping that I would be able to relax in their company. She arranged parties away from the camp with the same end in view. She did this in spite of the fact that she had never cared for this-sort of social life any more than did I.

  These efforts did succeed for a time in making me abandon my self-imposed seclusion occasionally, but new disillusionments quickly sent me back behind my glass wall.

  Even people who hardly knew me felt sorry for me. But I no longer desired to change, for my disillusionment had, to a certain extent, made me into an unsociable being.

  It often happened that when I was with friends whom I had invited, and who were close friends of ours, I would suddenly become tongue-tied and even rude. My only desire then was to run away, and be alone, and never see anyone again. With an effort I would pull myself together and try, with the help of alcohol, to put my ill-humor aside: I would then become talkative and merry and even boisterous. Alcohol, more than anything else, was able to put me in a happy and contented frame of mind. Drink has never made me quarrel with anyone. It has, however, made me admit to things that I would never have divulged when sober. I have never been a solitary drinker, nor have I ever had a craving for drink. I have never been drunk or given way to alcoholic excesses. When I had had enough, I would quietly disappear. There was no question of neglecting my duties through overindulgence in alcohol. However late I returned home, I was always completely fresh for work and ready for duty next morning. I always expected my officers to behave in the same way. This was on disciplinary grounds. Nothing has a more demoralizing effect on subordinates than the absence of their superior officers at the beginning of the day’s work due to overindulgence in alcoholic consumption on the previous night.