April, 1944, Auschwitz concentration camp, Poland. 2 Slovak Jews Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd
Wetzler successfully escape from the deadliest concentration camp in Nazi-occupied territory
and write a detailed report about the mass killing which is taking place there.
The name of the camp’s commandant running the deadliest Nazi factory of horror
at the height of the Holocaust is Arthur Liebehenschel.
Arthur Liebehenschel was born on 25 November, 1901 in Posen, then German Empire.
He studied economics and public administration and like so many other Germans he was influenced
by Nazi ideology and joined Nazi party in 1932 and the SS in 1934. From that point on,
he held various positions in concentration camps. He was married with 4 children but after finding
a new lover, he divorced, remarried, and had his 5th child with his second wife.
On 11 November 1943 he succeeded Rudolf Höss as commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp.
Under Liebehenschel, the camp’s conditions seemed to improve a little.
He removed the standing cells from the notorious Block 11 in which the space was so cramped that
prisoners could only stand upright inside. The entry was a through a small opening at floor
level and the only source of air was a 5 x 5 cm hole. The prisoners were put into these standing
cells every night, sometimes for a period of a few weeks and had to go to work every morning. Another
change was that even the cruelest SS guards had to be a bit less brutal with the prisoners.
However, the rest did not change much. The mass killing in gas chambers continued as before
and Liebehenschel also took part in the selections on the platform.
Many of those two did not die in gas chambers, died every day from illnesses and starvation.
He was infamous for making promises he did not kept. After he promised the regular prisoners they
would not be selected for gas chambers, they were driven to gas chambers anyway a few days later.
One survivor testified that Liebehenschel had promised to release those prisoners who were ill.
However, such thing never happened. Those who could not work either died
or were sent to gas chambers and Liebehenschel was very focused
on the productivity of prisoners who were turned into slaves at Auschwitz.
In May 1944 he was moved to Majdanek concentration camp near Lublin and Rudolf Höss became commandant
at Auschwitz once again. There were rumors that it was because Liebehenschel ‘s second wife had
had an affair with a Jewish man long before she married him but it was rather because,
considering the Nazi standard, he was a little bit lenient with the prisoners.
Because of the advancing Soviet Army, Liebehenschel moved to Triest,
Italy where he was arrested by the US army shortly after the end of war. When being interrogated,
he claimed he had turned Auschwitz, the most notorious German Nazi concentration camp, into
a sanatorium. He somehow forgot that thousands of innocent people were dying every day in the camp
either of poisonous gas Zyklon B or of illness and starvation. He was extradited back to Poland where
he faced justice for his crimes. He was tried at the Auschwitz trial which began in November, 1947.
One month later, on 22 December, 1947 Arthur Liebehenschel was sentenced to death by hanging
together with 23 fellow staff of Auschwitz. He was 46 years old when he was hanged on 24 January,
1948. His last words were “ long live Poland “. There were no tears shed for Arthur Liebehenschel.
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