Langbein Hermann. People in Auschwitz

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Fred tell you about our plan, Rudi?’’ I nodded. ‘‘Then how about you? I’m

sure we’ll get through.’’

‘‘Why do you want to do it, anyway? What’s in it for you? Why do you

want to risk your career and your life?’’

‘‘Because I hate all this rotten business,’’ he answered calmly. ‘‘Because

I hate having to witness the murder of women and children. I want to do

something to forget this stench and be able to feel a bit cleaner.’’

‘‘But how are we going to get through the gate? Let’s assume that some-

one will ask some questions. There are hundreds of traps.’’

‘‘If someone speaks to you, just nod in my direction. Don’t forget that

you are an ss lieutenant colonel and I am your adjutant. You don’t associate

with little people. You don’t bark if you have a dog that does it for you.’’

‘‘And what about the train? What happens if someone starts a conversa-

tion with me there? What about the conductor who asks to see the tickets?

What about the military police and the border control?’’

‘‘You’ll be asleep. An ss lieutenant colonel can’t be disturbed. Your adju-

tant will deal with all those minor problems.’’

It was a daring plan, and it was so simple that it might be successful. I

silently reﬂected for a while, looking for ﬂaws in this web, but I couldn’t

ﬁnd any. However, the specters of Fero and Charles were still too close to

me. ‘‘Many thanks for your oﬀer,’’ I ﬁnally said, ‘‘but I believe the risk is

too great.’’

A few days later Hugo Lenk, formerly of the International Brigade, who

had arrived on the ﬁrst transport of Czechs, said to me: ‘‘Do you know the

ss man Pestek? He has a plan. He wants to smuggle me out of the camp in

the uniform of an ss oﬃcer. It probably sounds crazy, but still...’’

‘‘I know all about it,’’ I replied. ‘‘He ﬁrst made this oﬀer to Fred Wetzler

and then to me. He appears to be trustworthy, if one can say this about an

ss man, but there is something about the whole thing that stinks. If you

want to listen to my advice, forget about the whole thing.’’

Lenk took my advice.

This is how Vrba, who soon thereafter escaped without the help of an ss

man,describedPestek’sfutileeﬀorts.JehudaBacon remembersthat this pecu-

liar ss man also maintained conﬁdential contact with Fredy Hirsch, the head

of the children’s block in the family camp. On several occasions Hirsch asked

Bacon to make sure that he was not caught conversing with Pestek.

n One day Pestek had to escort Vitezslav Lederer, a block elder in the family

camp, to the Political Department, which had summoned him for an interro-

gation. On that day he evidently was able to look at Lederer’s ﬁle, which in-

444 n the jailers

dicated that the inmate used to be an oﬃcer in the Czechoslovak army and

had already been interrogated in Theresienstadt several times without reveal-

ing anything. En route Pestek asked Lederer whether he was from a wealthy

home, and he replied that he had relatives in Pilsen. At length Pestek advised

him about his conduct at the hearing and gave him a cigarette.

Soon thereafter Pestek proposed to Lederer as well the idea of escaping

with him. Lederer had nothing to lose because he had been accused of sabo-

tage and had to expect to be eliminated sooner or later. For that reason he

accepted the oﬀer and assured Pestek that acquaintances in Bohemia would

help them if they managed to make their way there. Finally Pestek conﬁded to

him that hewas in love with Renée and wanted to return to Auschwitz and lib-

erate her. He procured material from which Lederer had tailors in the family

camp make an ss uniform, supposedly for Pestek.

On April 5, 1944, they were ready. Pestek had obtained papers for his leave

and said goodbye to his colleague in the room of the block leader, whom he

had gotten drunk. In the meantime Lederer had put on the ss uniform and

left the camp disguised as an inspection guard. Fearing that the guard might

notice his condition, the inebriated block leader gave Lederer a wide berth.

Pestek had taken the drunken man’s pay book out of his coat pocket, and thus

Lederer also had regular ss papers. They went right to the railway station.

Everything worked. They evaded the Czech border control by breaking into a

luggage car and staging an ss inspection in front of the intimidated postal

workers. By noon on the following day they were in Prague.

The money and jewelry that Lederer had ‘‘organized’’ in Auschwitz helped

them along; his acquaintances procured a hiding place for them and intro-

duced themto a Czech engineer who forged documents.Pestek bought papers

fromhim that identiﬁed him as an ss oﬃcer and empowered him to take three

inmates out of Auschwitz for an interrogation—namely Renée, her mother

(without whom Renée refused to ﬂee), and a female acquaintance of the engi-

neer, a condition for his cooperation. Meanwhile Lederer sneaked into the

Theresienstadt camp, whose layout he was familiar with from his earlier in-

carceration there, in order to warn the camp administration against further

transports to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. However, they would not believe

him.

On May 23 Pestek and Lederer traveled to Auschwitz wearing the uniforms

of ss leaders. There are diﬀerent reports about what happened next. Lederer

has stated that Pestek wanted to visit a Polish woman in neighboring Myslo-

wice and pick up some jewelry that he had ‘‘organized’’ in Canada and given

to her for safekeeping. That woman evidently revealed his return. According

to Lederer, the ss lay in wait for Pestek and arrested him at the Auschwitz

railroad station, while Lederer managed to get away.

Frank and Pestek n 445

The other reports, which are basically in agreement with one another, de-

viate from Lederer’s account. Thus Josef Neumann, who by virtue of his func-

tion as a capo of the corpse carriers in Birkenau had relative freedom of move-

ment, says that he was frisked by an unknown ss manonMay25.

Hefoundsomething onme but returnedthe things to meand said, ‘‘Be glad

that you weren’t caught by someone else!’’ When I looked in my pocket,

I found a slip on which was written ‘‘I am on Block X.’’ (Neumann has

forgotten the number.) That was the block in the as yet unﬁnished sec-

tion B III (later called Mexico) where I used to meet Pestek. I went to the

block, whistled, and Pestek responded. Hidden in the attic of the barracks,

he helped me climb up and said, ‘‘Now you can believe that I won’t betray

you. Hurry and get ready, take everything you can get, and we’ll leave at 11

o’clock.’’ I still couldn’t believe it, but I was prepared to take any risk.

When Neumann was on his way to the prearranged meeting place, he no-

ticed from afar that the block was surrounded by ss men. He quickly returned

to his section of the camp and slipped out of the civilian clothes that he was

wearing under his inmate uniform. Before he was called to the gate, he hid

everything that he had carried on him for his escape. Meanwhile Pestek had

been arrested. ‘‘My hands were tied to Pestek’s and we were driven to Block

11 of the main camp in Schwarzhuber’s car. The inmates there were quite as-

tonished that an ss man and a Jewish inmate were brought in tied to each

other.’’

Block leader Stefan Baretzki, who had known Pestek since his childhood,

conﬁrmed that Pestek was arrested in Birkenau. He heard that Pestek was be-

trayed by a slip of paper that had not reached its addressee but had fallen into

the hands of ss roll call leader Polotschek. Baretzki saw with his own eyes

how ss men beat Pestek, who was tied up.

Pery Broad gave the following testimony about Pestek’s arrest: ‘‘I can still

remember that various capos in the Birkenau camp bragged about having fer-

reted this ssman out in thevicinityof the camp and beaten him half to death.’’

According to him, a legal oﬃcer took charge of the case, and Pestek was exe-

cuted.

Wilhelm Boger, who dealt with matters relating to escapes gave this testi-

mony at the Frankfurt trial: ‘‘Pestek was duly sentenced by an ss and police

court in Kattowitz and then executed. His trial took place in Auschwitz. ss

Sergeant Heinrich Mertens, a clerk, was present there and in Miedzebrodze,

where the sentence was carried out. Pestek was convicted of favoring inmates

and desertion. He was nabbed when he returned to Auschwitz after his es-

cape.’’

Wilhelm Zieg, a former ss man, testiﬁed before the court as follows: ‘‘I

446 n the jailers

still remember the shooting of an ss man named Pestek. It took place outside

the camp, near the Sola River. The entire company to which I belonged had

to attend and witness Pestek’s shooting as a deterrent. I was not part of the

ﬁring squad. From reports I learned that Pestek had helped an inmate to es-

cape and later returned to the camp in the uniform of an ss second lieutenant

in order to smuggle another inmate out of the camp. The shooting of Pestek

took place on a Sunday morning in September 1944.’’ Franz Wunsch also re-

members that after a successful escape Pestek returned to the camp in the

uniform of an ss second lieutenant and was caught and sentenced to death.

Like Zieg, Wunsch had to be present at the shooting.

Neumann was severely beaten but survived. No one bothered Renée.

Many aspects of this unique event remain mysterious. There are, for ex-

ample, the strikingly divergent versions of Pestek’s arrest, and it is not clear

why Pestek attempted to take Neumann out of the camp instead of the three

women, as agreed upon and planned.

n Other attempts by members of the ss to escape with inmates should be

evaluated diﬀerently from the actions of Frank and Pestek, for they were un-

dertaken at the evacuation of Auschwitz and thus were obviously intended to

provide a last-minute alibi when the victorious powers swept through. An un-

armed ss man who at that time had to escort thirty-two women enabled them

to hide among the inhabitants of a village named Wilchwy. He delayed the

march out of the camp until all of them had found a shelter, whereupon he

also concealed himself in the village. Halina Wrobel, who has recorded this

episode, emphasizes that the villagers helped not only Polish women but all

women on an equal basis.

When his detail was evacuated, Anton Lukaschek, the ss camp leader of

Bobrek, ﬂed on a horse-drawn carriage together with his capo, a German

criminal. He was probably inspired to do so by the nearness of his Upper Sile-

sian homeland, which was on the evacuation route. Both men were captured.

The capo was integrated into the evacuation process again, and so it is likely

that nothing bad happened to Lukaschek either.

The ss men who tried to provide an alibi for themselves at the time of the

evacuation were in the minority. Quite a few of them treated the inmates even

more brutally than they had in the camp; evidently they had no hope of es-

caping punishment and thus enjoyed their power for as long as possible.They

unmercifully shot anyone they suspected of trying to escape as well as those

who were unable to march. And the ss men dispersed with gunﬁre the in-

habitants of a town or a village who tried to give food to the inmates passing

through.

In this chapter and the one preceding, I have named many guards who

Frank and Pestek n 447

helped prisoners. An account of their actions may be impressive, but the fol-

lowing little statistic should put back into proportion what might have been

skewed by such descriptions.

These two chapters contain a description of the conduct of members of the

ss—from the block leader of the bunker, who supported the head of a bound

prisoner so he could eat, to Pestek, who risked his life.There were sixty-eight

of them, which is almost exactly 1 percent of the guards in Auschwitz. As al-

ready stated, prisoners have a good memory for aid rendered. All cases that

have become known have been included in my account.

There was nothing positive to report about 99 percent of the guards.

448 n the jailers

civilians in auschwitz

nnn

‘‘We really did not know anything about Auschwitz and the extermination of

the Jews.’’ This is what many witnesses who occupied high positions in the

government or the party when the Auschwitz crematoriums burned day and

night told the Frankfurt judges. Such assurances can be heard not only in Ger-

man courtrooms. Many people who had high rank and standing in the Third

Reich afterward endeavored to demonstrate that the extermination of human

beings had been a well-kept secret of the ss. Kaduk gave them a drastic re-

sponsewhen he let loose one dayduring the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial: ‘‘When

the ovens were burning, the leaping ﬂame was ﬁve meters high and could be

seen from the railroad station. That station was full of civilians. No one said

anything.There also were furlough trains that often stopped in Auschwitz for

a while. Sometimes thewhole station was fogged in; then theWehrmacht oﬃ-

cers looked out the window and asked why there was such a sweet smell. But

no one had the courage to ask, What’s going on? There is no sugar reﬁnery in

this place. Why are these chimneys here?’’

Pery Broad restrained himself during the trial, but at the preliminary ex-

amination he did not mince words. ‘‘The pitch-black smoke clouds could be

seen and heard for kilometers. The stench was simply unbearable. The ﬂames

that came fromthe chimneys of the crematorium could also be seen from afar.

In those days (1944) I had the impression that people were no longer trying

to keep these things secret or to camouﬂage them.’’ Adolf Bartelmes, a rail-

road oﬃcial in Auschwitz, also conﬁrmed that the ﬂames could be seen from

a distance of ﬁfteen or twenty kilometers and that people knew that human

beings were being burned there. From the busy railroad tracks it was possible

to see columns of inmates escorted by ss men.

This studydoes not include an in-depth investigation of thenumberof Ger-

mans who must have known about the well-organized mass extermination. I

shall merely point to some sources that could be plumbed for such knowledge

or that can at least provide an impetus for well-founded assumptions.

It is true that thethousands of ssmen assigned to the extermination camps

were sworn to silence. However, it is only naturalthat suchan obligationcould

not be strictly observed by so many people, especially when one considers the

demoralization of the guards.

René Juvet, a Swiss, reports that during a train ride through Bavaria an ss

man unknown to him spoke to him and, evidently under the inﬂuence, de-

scribed the terrible conditions in the Mauthausen concentration camp, where

he was stationed. Was Juvet the only person who happened to be informed in

such a way about crimes committed in the camps?

How many people sent packages home from the extermination camps, like

the university professor Kremer, who kept a record of this in his diary? Did

none of the recipients wonder where these articles, which had become rare in

wartime, came from?

ss men with higher-level positions lived in the camp area with their fami-

lies. Can anyone believe that all their wives and children, who played a ‘‘gas-

sing game’’ in Auschwitz, strictly observed their pledge of secrecy for years?

Railroad workers came as far as the ramp and saw from close up what was

going on. Every month employees of the Reichsbank took delivery of heavy

containers of gold derived from prisoners’ teeth. Alex Zink’s felt factory at

Roth near Nuremberg processed women’s hair, which this ﬁrm regularly

bought by the bagful from the commandant’s oﬃce in Auschwitz at ﬁfty pfen-

nigs per kilogram. The machinery of the death organization extended far be-

yond the extermination camps.

Listening to broadcasts of enemy stations carried the most severe punish-

ments, and all too often executions for this crime were publicized as a deter-

rent, but such broadcasts were listened to all the same. Goebbels knew this,

and so he addressed the arguments of the broadcasts. We clearly noticed that

the ss was also listening to the bbc from London. The radio stations of the

Allies repeatedly reported about the organized mass murder in the East.

On March 1, 1943, Professor Kremer noted in his diary that he saw, at the

workshop of a Münster tradesman of his acquaintance, a leaﬂet issued by the

Socialist Party of Germany that said, ‘‘We have already liquidated two million

Jews by shootings and poison gas.’’ In the spring of 1944 a leaﬂet illegally

distributed in Vienna contained detailed information about Auschwitz. My

brother Otto gave the material to a communist group, which then produced

the leaﬂets. No one should assume that there were only these two leaﬂets with

information of this nature.

To be sure, the situation was as Ernest K. Bramsted has described it. ‘‘For

many people the false atrocity stories of the Allies (duringWorld War I) were a

kind of protective curtain behind which their minds could hide so that theydid

not need to inform themselves about the real atrocities being committed by

the Nazi regime.’’ Anyone who did not want to have his tranquility disturbed

by disastrous news found reasons to push all rumors away.

However, a considerable number of Germans who did not wear an ss uni-

form did not merely hear about the destruction of human beings; many of

them had contact with Auschwitz as civilian employees and saw with their

450 n the jailers

own eyes what happened there.The testimony of skilled workers of the Krupp

Works, given under oath in Nuremberg, shows how they kept the silence to

which they were pledged.

Erich Lutat testiﬁed as follows: ‘‘It was, of course, forbidden to talk about

the things we learned about the kz. However, we workers discussed it among

ourselves, and I also mentioned it when I visited my family in Essen.’’ His col-

league Paul Ortmann said, ‘‘After about two weeks I went back to Essen (from

Auschwitz) for a brief visit, and I know that at home I gave a horriﬁed report

about what I had learned in Auschwitz.’’

Civiliansin Auschwitz learned details that were known only to a small num-

ber of people. On one occasion Georg Heydrich, the oﬃce manager of the IG

Farben Works near Auschwitz, was told by an obviously shaken and tearful ss

man how corpses were burned on pyres outside the crematoriums in Birke-

nau. The ss man said that he had witnessed living people being thrown on

these pyres. This information is contained in a document submitted to the

Allied courts in Nuremberg.

Those who did not want to learn the truth could pretend to be blind even

in the face of the ﬁery glow of the crematoriums and the disgusting stench

of burned human ﬂesh. Hermann Hausmann, a metal worker who, like Hey-

drich, was employed at the IG Works, aﬃrmed that the gassing of prisoners

was in fact discussed at that time, but ‘‘we refused to believe it.’’ Anyone who

refused to believe it could assure people afterward that he did not know about

all this.

The prisoners intentlyobserved the reaction of civilians at the sight of their

misery, since it told them whether themurderous attitude of the sswas shared

by the German people.

The ﬁrst time I encountered Germans without a uniform in theThird Reich

was at the main railway station in Munich when I was escorted, together with

sixteen comrades in the zebra-striped uniform of kz inmates, from the track

onwhich the local trainsfrom Dachau arrivedto anothertrack wherewewould

be put on a train goingtoAuschwitz.Onthat August day in 1942theconcourse

of the station was full of life and movement. I could understand that no one

dared to make a gesture of compassion, forthe guards wearing the ssuniform

surely acted as a deterrent. However, I found it revealing that I was unable to

ﬁnd even a trace of compassion in the faces of the people who were staring

at us. I cannot believe that they gave us contemptuous looks because they re-

gardedus as criminals. People in Munich must have known that human beings

were being detained in Dachau for political reasons. Besides, we were clean

and clean shaven, which means that we did not look the way criminals are

popularly imagined. Pierre Petit, who was escorted through the same railroad

Civilians in Auschwitz n 451

station almost two years later, was reviled and physically attacked by people,

and so the ss escorts had to protect him and his comrades.

Leo Vos, a Dutchman, was interned in Upper Silesian labor camps for

twenty-seven months. Along with many others who also wore the Star of

David, he was escorted past German civilians twice a day. Since he could not

discern any signs of compassion on their part, he came to this conclusion:

‘‘Even those who did not actively participate in the horrors bear responsibility

because of their halfheartedness and callousness.’’

In late 1944 Siegfried van den Bergh was ordered to load and unload rail-

road carriages in Gleiwitz,only a fewdozen kilometers from Auschwitz. Since

the carriages were supposed to be placed at the disposal of the railroad again

as soon as possible, both the ss guards and the capos beat the inmates while

they worked. ‘‘German citizens,’’ as van den Bergh calls them, ‘‘watched the

ss menﬂoggingaway.Ithenheardthemsaytothess guards, ‘I don’t under-

stand why you don’t beat those dirty Jews to death.’ This encouraged an ss

man to throw another piece of coal at my head.’’

There was an entirely diﬀerent reaction when inmates encountered non-

Germans. Like all the others in the satellite camp Jaworzno, Karl Dubsky was

every day escorted to work in a coal mine in chains. Polish civilians frequently

put out packages of food for them. Most of thechained prisoners were marked

as Jews. Jewish women who had towork in a foundry in the satellite camp Hin-

denburgwere helped by Polish workers in that factory. Inmates whoworked in

a machine factory in Sosnowitz also report that Polish workers secretlyslipped

them food and left lit cigarettes for them. The Polish master Niklaszynski

procured civilian clothes for Russian inmates working in the same camp and

thereby helped them escape.

Charles Goldstein was transferred from Auschwitz to Warsaw with his de-

tail forclearing operations, and their inmates’ garb and run-down appearance

attracted the attention of the civilian population. ‘‘On more than one occa-

sion,’’ writes Goldstein, ‘‘strangers declared their solidarity with us, cheered

us up, and even greeted us with a kind of reverence. For us, who had for years

known only curses, boots in the rear, and beatings as greetings, these mani-

festations of friendship were a great experience.’’ Like his companions, he

wore the Star of David on his inmate uniform.

n In the years 1943 and 1944 Auschwitz was surrounded by an ever-growing

ring of arms factories. ‘‘We are now swamped with factories that insist on get-

ting inmates.’’ This statement, made by the ss garrison physician to his friend

Dr. Horst Fischer, refutes an assertionfrequentlyheard after thewar—namely,

that inmates were forced on the armaments industry at that time. In those

factories ss men were limited to guard duty, while German directors, engi-

452 n the jailers

neers, and master craftsmen were in charge of the work and thus determined

the atmosphere.

Höß sums up this situation by saying that he was aware that inmates were

beaten not only by the ss and inmate functionaries but also by civilian em-

ployees.

IG Farben pioneered the building of a factory in the vicinity of the camp;

as early as the ﬁrst part of 1941, construction of a chemical factory for the

production of Buna (synthetic rubber) was started near Monowitz. Because of

the steadily growing need for inmates, the satellite camp that was built a year

and a half later in the immediate vicinity of this factory soon became the big-

gest labor camp. For this reason, and also because soon after the end of the

war the directors of IG Farben were called to account by an American mili-

tary court, the behavior of the German employees of this factory has been the

most thoroughly documented; numerous former inmates testiﬁed about this

subject.

The judgment in this trial is accompanied by this laconic statement: ‘‘There

were cases of inhumane treatment on this construction site (of the Buna

Works) as well. Now and again the workers (that is, the inmates) were beaten

by theplant’ssecurityforceand the foremen,whowere guarding the prisoners

duringworking hours. On some occasionstheworkers suﬀered breakdowns.’’

As conﬁrmation that the executives of this factory could not have remained

ignorant of the character of the extermination camp, I shall quote only from

the sworn testimony given in Nuremberg by Christian Schneider, a member

of its board of directors: ‘‘The smokestacks of the kz Auschwitz were visible

from the IG Auschwitz. I heard that IG people who visited Auschwitz—for

example, Walter Dürrfeld and other engineers—smelled the odor of burning

bodies. Those gentlemen told me that it was a terrible stench.’’

Dr. Walter Dürrfeld was asked by an American court: ‘‘Were there inmates

who had no shoes?’’ His answer was, ‘‘Yes, therewere some.’’ To further ques-

tions he replied that his superiors Dr.Otto Ambros and Dr. Heinrich Buteﬁsch

also knew about it. These gentlemen could easily have remedied this lack by

pointing to the negative eﬀects on the inmates’ capacity for work. The top

leaders did anything to step up the production of Buna.

Likehis superiors, engineer Gustav Murr, IG Auschwitz’shead of construc-

tion, endeavored to present his work and himself to the court in as good a

light as possible. When he was asked about the employment of inmates, he

responded, not without some pride, that ‘‘at ﬁrst the inmates walked from

Auschwitz to the Buna Works, but I urged that they go by train. I did this

for humane reasons because if the inmates had to walk six kilometers every

day, they could no longer do a full day’s work.’’ This selﬂess humanitarian-

ism, coupled with fear of the infectious diseases raging in the main camp at

Civilians in Auschwitz n 453