During the Second World War, the largest concentration camp established by the SS and the Third Reich
was Auschwitz.
It was a former World War 1 camp and a polish army barracks, but following the occupation
of Poland the SS sought to create a new site which would carry out the evils of the final
solution.
Heinrich Himmler the Head of the SS approved the creation of Auschwitz in April 1940 as
it was recommended by Rudolf Hoess who was sent to examine the area.
Hoess later became the commandant and for his crimes he was taken back to the camp which
he oversaw and was then hanged on a specially built gallows.
But inside of Auschwitz, it is estimated that at leat 1.1 million people were killed inside
the barbed wire fences.
Gas chambers were used to exterminate and kill prisoners on an industrial scale, and
still today the full story of Auschwitz has not been fully uncovered.
When the red army liberated the camp they found death on a huge scale, and the prisoners
who managed to survive told of the horrors.
There was a womens camp established at Auschwitz, but women in particular had a very tough time
at Auschwitz, and many never even were allowed inside of the camp and were killed instantly
on arrival.
Join us today as we look at the horrific execution of the women of Auschwitz.
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When Auschwitz was initially opened with the first 30 prisoners arriving on the 20th May
1940, very few would have imagined how the camp would grow into the huge killing site
of the holocaust.
Over the following months new parts of Auschwitz were created, and the first mass transport
of prisoners was solely male prisoners, around 700 Polish prisoners including Catholic priests
and Jews.
By the end of 1940, the SS had taken possession of a huge around of land around Auschwitz
which was regularly patrolled by the SS and Gestapo, and over the following year the camp
grew with thousands of people imprisoned at the camp.
The first thing a prisoner saw at Auschwitz was the Arbeit Macht Frei Sign once they arrived,
and they were then admitted into the camp.
Exterminations at Auschwitz occurred even before the women’s camp was established,
as Hoess wrote in his memoirs that, ‘In the spring of 1942, the first transports of
Jews all earmarked for extermination arrived from Upper Silesia.’
However it is believed that on the 15th February 1942, a transport of Jews from Beuthen in
Upper Silesia arrived at Auschwitz I and were sent to the gas chambers straight away.
One eyewitness stated that the prisoners that were sent here were ‘the women of Beuthen,’
meaning that as soon as extermination began at Auschwitz, women were being sent to their
deaths.
Many women were living in misery inside of the ghetto’s in Poland, and many found themselves
living inside of occupied lands.
Jews and other people that the Nazis deemed as undesirable were then forced into ghettos
or were transported to extermination camps where they were killed upon arrival, or concentration
camps.
They had a greater chance of survival at concentration camps, but were forced to leave their homes,
families and belongings and many took their children with them to places such as Ravensbruck,
and all female camp, Sachsenhausen and Auschwitz.
The majority of prisoners were transported from the ghetto’s and their home towns and
cities via trains, and inside these transport trains many women along with their children
were forced to undergo the long journey with no food.
Many of the people onboard transports never made it to Auschwitz alive, and died from
the starvation and the suffocation inside the trains.
But the most harrowing part of the journey came when they arrived at Auschwitz.
The women along with children were unloaded off the trains and then on the railroad tracks
and at the station the selection process then took place.
During this, SS men and women including doctors and senior officers would patrol in and out
of the new inmates, and they would play god with people’s lives.
They would select who would live and who would die, and women and children had a lower chance
of survival following the selections than men.
During selections those who were deemed able to work were sent to the right and were admitted
to the camp, and the rest were then left to be sent to the gas chambers.
The groups who were selected to die mostly contained children, women with small children,
the elderly, and others who seemed less fit than others.
If someone even had a scar they could be seen as unfit, and then they were loaded onto the
trucks or marched to the gas chambers.
They were then taken to their places of death, and were forced to undress in the dressing
room before they were sent into the gas chambers and were killed.
One account of this says, ‘It would be difficult to even imagine that so many people would
fit in such a small [room].
Anyone who did not want to go inside was shot [...] or torn apart by the dogs.
They would have suffocated from the lack of air within several hours.
Then all the doors were sealed tight and the gas thrown in by way of a small hole in the
ceiling.
There was nothing more that the people inside could do.
And so they only screamed in bitter, lamentable voices.
Others complained in voices full of despair, and others still sobbed spasmodically and
sent up a dire, heart-rending weeping. ...
And in the meantime, their voices grew weaker and weaker ... Because of the great crowding,
people fell one atop another as they died, until a heap arose consisting of five or six
layers atop the other, reaching a height of one meter.
Mothers froze in a seated position on the ground embracing their children in their arms,
and husbands and wives died hugging each other.
Some of the people made up a formless mass.
Others stood in a leaning position, while the upper parts, from the stomach up, were
in a lying position.
Some of the people had turned completely blue under the influence of the gas, while others
looks entirely fresh, as if they were asleep.’
Once admitted into the camp, women had their heads shaved and were tattooed and then disinfected
before they were given their striped prisoner uniform.
Around 30% of the registered prisoners at Auschwitz were women, and the first mass transport
of them was made up of 999 women from Ravensbruck on the 26th March 1942.
The women held there initially were classed as criminal, political and asocial inmates,
and they were taken there as founder workers of the women’s camp.
It was said by Rudolf Hoess in regards to the male guards that, ‘It was easy to predict
that these beasts would mistreat the women over whom they exercised power, spiritual
suffering was completely alien to them.’
These first women were given serial numbers from 1 to 999 and then along with the women
came a number of female guards, including Johanna Langefeld who became Auschwitz’
first Lagerfuhrerin of the women’s camp.
More women arrived on the same day, and over the next few days more arrived.
To begin with in Auschwitz, women were held in blocks 1-10 inside of Auschwitz I but in
August 1942, 13,000 women were transferred to the new women’s camp found inside of
Auschwitz II Birkenau, the main extermination complex of Auschwitz.
However the conditions inside of the women’s camp were known for being absolutely shocking.
When a group of male prisoners arrived there to create a hospital and infirmary, they were
given the job to begin with of working out who was actually alive, and who was dead.
There was a huge problem with disease, starvation and malnutrition there, and to begin with
things were completely terrible.
One former inmate of the women’s compound wrote, ‘There was one latrine for thirty
to thirty-two thousand women and we were permitted to use it only at certain hours of the day.
We stood in line to get in to this tiny building, knee-deep in human excrement.
As we all suffered from dysentry, we could barely wait until our turn came, and soiled
our ragged clothes, which never came off our bodies, thus adding to the horror of our existence
by the terrible smell that surrounded us like a cloud.
The latrine consisted of a deep ditch with planks thrown across it at certain intervals.
We squatted on those planks like birds perched on a telegraph wire, so close together that
we could not help soiling one another.’
It was also found that water inside of the camp was polluted heavily by human waste which
was causing disease and also thirst within the female prison population.
Some historian’s have argued that the situation in Auschwitz for women was much worse than
for men, as in one area there was just one tap for 15,000 women and the conditions of
the barracks were awful.
Women did bond with each other differently, as opposed to men who did not particularly
bond.
They would sometimes share their bowls and meals which was imperative for survival, but
they were overseen by a number of female guards who were completely savage.
Langefeld was later succeeded by Maria Mandl as the Head of the Women’s camp, and she
was known for being a brute.
She inspired the other female guards to brutalise the prisoners, and many of them including
Irma Grese and Elisabeth Volkenrath whipped and beat the women until they were a bloody
mess, and on occasion some even were killed by the guards.
Also ss guards would patrol the camp with their dogs, and they encouraged the animals
to attack and maim some of the women who would not work hard enough.
This resulted in death a number of times, and the guards became nicknamed for their
sadism, for example Johanna Bormann was named as the Women with the dog.
Executions also occurred inside of the roll call yard, and women who were found breaking
the rules were often hanged in public.
A number of executions did take place with female prisoners forced to watch the horrific
spectacles, and many women were hanged en mass and were then left hanging once dead
as a reminder to the other prisoners for days.
In terms of the day, it began earlier for women when a block supervisor sounded a gong,
and then entered the barracks and started beating the prisoners with sticks to make
them go to wash and use the limited toilets quickly.
Sanitation as mentioned was truly awful, and then the women would be forced to stand for
roll call, and they could be forced to stand for hours on end, and beatings and collective
punishment was sometimes given out even for the most minor of infractions.
If a female guard was in a bad mood, the prisoners would feel it badly.
Then some women would go off to work in other areas of Auschwitz including Kanada where
they sifted through the belongings that had been confiscated from the prisoners.
There was also a women’s camp orchestra established to play during roll call.
But many women were also forced to take part in the brutal medical experiments that occurred
at the hands of SS doctors inside of Block 10.
Many arrived there perfectly well, but were killed by injections or by what was done to
them.
Thousands of women who arrived at Auschwitz along with their children never made it through
the gates of the horrific compound.
They were killed as soon as they arrived, and throughout the years in which it was in
operation over 1 million people died there through mass extermination, execution, poor
conditions, disease, starvation or horrific experiments.
Many of the women who were liberated told of the horror of the camp, and many were found
heavily emaciated and suffering.
Their stories are many of Auschwitz’ history which remains untold, and today many of the
secrets and brutal acts of Auschwitz remain untold.
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