Langbein Hermann. People in Auschwitz

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ask me where I got my information. We prisoners know many things, but

we aren’t allowed to know anything.’’ ‘‘I don’t care about that.’’ ‘‘That in-

former not only advised the Pole to escape now, but he brought him to that

point by threatening and blackmailing him on earlier occasions.’’ ‘‘Noth-

ing will be done to the Pole. I shall take a personal interest in this case.’’ ‘‘I

don’t know whether you will be able to prevent it, Lieutenant Colonel. The

Political Department has a great variety of methods. I spent more than two

months in the bunker myself.’’ ‘‘On what charge?’’ ‘‘On suspicion of politi-

cal activities.’’ He furrows his brow. ‘‘I’m sure this suspicion will surface

again and that there will be enough testimonials once the Political Depart-

ment ﬁnds out that I told you that today’s escapee was its main informer.’’

‘‘You are forgetting that I am the camp commandant.’’ He is angry, and

thus I am on the right track. ‘‘As long as I’m here, you won’t be sent to the

bunker again. Captain, let me know immediately if anything happens to

him.’’ Wirths nods: ‘‘Yes sir.’’

I don’t know whether I should leave now. ‘‘What else do you have to re-

port about the camp? You are well informed, aren’t you?’’ He doesn’t sound

ironic or dangerous. ‘‘May I answer freely again?’’ Liebehenschel nods.

‘‘There are two especially bad things. One is the informers. They keep the

whole camp in a state of agitation and are the cause of most escapes.’’

‘‘And the second thing?’’ ‘‘The dominance of the Greens in the camp. Camp

elders, block elders, and capos are usually Greens, and they are bent on

making life in the camp even harder than it ordinarily is. They steal food,

and harass and beat people. In this way they also diminish the prisoners’

capacity for work. There are, of course, exceptions, but the rule is bad

enough.’’ ‘‘Are you of the opinion that political prisoners would do a better

job running the camp?’’ ‘‘Yes sir.’’ Wirths looks at me, nods lightly, and

appears to be satisﬁed. ‘‘That will be all.’’ ‘‘Beg permission to leave.’’

I immediately notiﬁed Ernst of this conversation, and he passed this infor-

mation on to Józek in the bunker. That was a good thing, for Liebehenschel

sent for Cyrankiewicz, who was now able to testify in the same spirit. There

were quick results. I quote from my report again:

One day Wirths tells me that the commandant would like to have a list with

the numbers of all informers known to me. I immediately go to the camp

and speak with Ernst. ‘‘Sure, we’ll give him such a list. Once you start the

informer story, you’ve got to ﬁnish it. The list won’t increase our risk, ex-

cept, perhaps, if he asks you where you got the numbers.’’ ‘‘Then I’ll repeat

what I said before—namely, that I can’t say anything about it.’’

Józek agreed as well.Upon his release from thebunker he,Tadek (Holuj)

and Ernst wrote down the numbers. A few days later a transport to the

44 n Introduction

Flossenbürg concentration camp is put together, and all the informers on

our list are on it. Sighs of relief are heard throughout the camp. No one can

explain this development, least of all the informers themselves. They try

hard to get out of the transport, but all their tricks are in vain. Everywhere

they are told, ‘‘Express orders from the camp Commandant.’’

Erwin Olszowska, a roll call clerk (Rapportschreiber), testiﬁed as follows at

the Frankfurt trial: ‘‘When in the winter of 1943–44 the chief informer of

the Political Department, Dorosiewicz, escaped and murdered an ss man, the

new camp commandant ordered no reprisals. By way of punishment Gerhard

Lachmann, a member of the Political Department, was transferred. In those

days the bad inﬂuence of the abominable informer system seems to have been

noticed. On February 8, 1944, a special informer transport to Flossenbürg was

put together.’’

Soon after my intervention, Liebehenschel appointed Ludwig Wörl as the

ﬁrst ‘‘Red’’ camp elder. That man saw to it that an increasing number of Reds

were made block elders, and this ended or at least greatly reduced beatings by

inmate functionaries. The predominance of the Greens in the main camp was

over.

Jenny Spritzer, who worked in the Political Department, writes: ‘‘Everyone

felt an enormous relief when one day Höß, the camp commandant, was ap-

pointed to a higher position in Oranienburg and replaced by Liebehenschel.

The new commandant was aghast at the conditions in Auschwitz and im-

mediately abolished capital punishment. Even the hanging of unsuccessful

escapees was prohibited, as was the beating of inmates during interrogations,

at work, or anywhere else.’’ To be sure, the authoradds that these prohibitions

were not observed by everyone.

Artur Rablin, a trusty assigned to the commandant and, as such, in a posi-

tion to make good observations, has described inspections by Liebehenschel

that were diﬀerent from those of his predecessor. He visited the kitchen and

asked (forexample), ‘‘Howdoes the soup taste?’’ and did not insist that every-

one stand at attention in his presence.

Owing to the tripartition of Auschwitz this change did not have equal ef-

fects everywhere. It was least eﬀective in Birkenau, where the dominance of

the Greens remained untouched, but even there the new developments were

somewhat perceptible.

Mathilde Hrabovecka, who knew the women’s camp from the ﬁrst day to

the last, told me that in those days most of the German prostitutes, who had

hitherto occupied key positions, were relieved of them. She remembers that

in the end hardly any ‘‘Blacks’’ were in a position to give orders. As has already

been mentioned, prostitutes had to wear the black triangles of antisocials.

The History of the Extermination Camp n 45

According to statistics relating to the quarantine section in Birkenau, there

was a marked decrease in random killingsin that period, a result of the change

in leadership in that section of the camp. At the time its head, Schillinger, was

replaced by Johann Schwarzhuber.

That Liebehenschel let himself be inﬂuenced by prisoners is unusual but

not unprecedented. Kogon reports that German capos occasionally com-

plained to the commandant of Buchenwald, Hermann Pister, about ss men

who had maltreated inmates, and that these complaints were successful.

In those days something blossomed that had previously been unknown in

Auschwitz: hope. The selections of Muselmänner in the camp ceased. It is true

that transports were subjected to selections at the ramp every day and that

the crematoriums burned constantly, but there now was hope that Auschwitz

could lose the character of an extermination camp at least for those who had

already been admitted to it. Together with good news from the fronts this

improved the atmosphere of the camp.

n Appearances were deceiving. This is what I wrote about it in my Bericht:

Today the messenger Tadek comes to me with a note. ‘‘Read it right away!’’

Ernst wants me to come to the camp as soon as possible. ‘‘What’sgoingon,

Ernstl?’’ ‘‘They’ve put together a transport to the gas chambers again. All

Jews.For thetimebeingthey locked them up in the bath barracks.Thereare

more than a thousand of them. Try to reach the commandant via Wirths.

Perhaps it’ll be possible to stop this.’’

I stand at the window the entire time looking for Wirths, who is out-

side the camp, to enter the inﬁrmary. But his wide car with its light brown

military paint does not turn into our street until evening. Finally he rings.

I come right away, but his sergeant is already in front of his desk and has

presented a folder for the physician’s signature. ‘‘Take this down,’’ he says

and dictates unimportant things. I have to keep quiet and take it down in

shorthand while a thousand people are locked up in the bath who want to

live but are going to be gassed within the next few hours.

Ernst is already waiting for me on the camp road. ‘‘Have you been able

to do something?’’ ‘‘No, I didn’t have a chance. Are they gone?’’ ‘‘Before the

roll call the trucks were here. So it’s starting all over again.’’ I can see it

in every face: Death has again come closer to everyone. Were the last few

weeks only a dream?

The next day I speak with Wirths, and he speaks with the commandant.

‘‘The commandant knew about the transport. It wasn’t done behind his

back, as you may think, Langbein. The action was ordered directly from

Berlin, by the Labor Assignment Oﬃce (Arbeitseinsatz). They have been

46 n Introduction

informed that there are too many prisoners in the camp who are not com-

pletely ﬁt for work.’’

This ﬁrst camp selection after a considerable hiatus was discussed in the

Auschwitz trial at Frankfurt. ss roll call leader Oswald Kaduk conﬁrmed what

Wirths had told me: ‘‘At that time Liebehenschel tried to get Berlin not to send

that transport to the gas chambers, but Berlin was in favor of gassing. The

selection was madebyMax Sell, theheadof the LaborService (Arbeitsdienst).’’

Franz Hofmann, then ss camp leader at the main camp, said in his de-

fense at Frankfurt: ‘‘It is not true that a selection was made in Liebehenschel’s

absence. A selection was made in Block 2a, and 400 to 500 prisoners were

chosen. Afterwards, however, there was a discussion with Liebehenschel, and

on this basis he went to Berlin to prevent the gassing. He came back and told

me, ‘Hofmann, these people won’t be gassed.’’’

Hofmann went on to say: ‘‘The ﬁrst selection in Liebehenschel’s term was

in January 1944, and this was ordered by Berlin.’’ After his sentencing Hof-

mann told me in prison about anotherattempt by Liebehenschel to slowdown

the machinery of extermination. Defects in the ramp gave him an opportunity

to report to Berlin that the railroad siding would have to be repaired before

new transports could be directed to Auschwitz. However, the Central Oﬃce

did not permit even a temporary stoppage of the exterminations.

Another campaign of mass murders was also ordered directly from Ber-

lin. On September 8, 1943, 5,006 Jews were transferred from Theresienstadt

to Auschwitz with the notation ‘‘sb (Sonderbehandlung, special treatment) six

months.’’ They were housed in a special section of Birkenau which, like the

Gypsy camp, was run as a family camp. These Jews were not assigned to any

work details, and were permitted to write letters (they were even required to

notify their relatives) and to receive parcels. To illustrate conditions in Birke-

nau, it may be stated that despite this preferential treatment 1,140 inmates of

that family camp died within six months. When that time had elapsed, those

still alivewere killed in thegas chamberson March 9, 1944. Onlyabout seventy

young inmates were exempted from this murderous action.

n Liebehenschel stayed in Auschwitz foronly six months, and anotherchange

of commandants worsened the atmosphere in the camp. On May 8, 1944,

Rudolf Höß appeared in Auschwitz again and assumed the function of an

ss senior garrison commander, but three days later Richard Baer replaced

Liebehenschel as the commandant of Auschwitz I. The measures that fol-

lowedin rapid succession indicatedthereason forthis change.Höß reinstated

his proven assistants in the key positions of the extermination machinery

from which they had been removed. On May 16 the ﬁrst three trains from

The History of the Extermination Camp n 47

Hungary arrived, and the biggest campaign of extermination began, directed

against the Jews from Hungary and Siebenbürgen, a territory that had been

annexed by Hungary. Evidently, the central administration had not regarded

Liebehenschel as the appropriate man for the smooth completion of this un-

paralleled mass killing. ‘‘On some days the arrivals were simply wild,’’ wrote

Oswald Kaduk. ‘‘Five transports had already arrived by half past ten one morn-

ing.’’ As had been done in the early period of the camp, the corpses were

burned on pyres that were set up in the open air next to the crematoriums, for

the capacity of the ovens was insuﬃcient.

In the ﬁnal phase of the war, the arms industry urgently needed additional

workers, who were to be distributed among the numerous labor camps that

tightly ringed all concentration camps. For this reason those who had been

found ﬁt for work at the initial selection and allowed to live were ‘‘put on

ice,’’ as the ss called it—that is, they had to wait in Section B II c of Birkenau

and in an unﬁnished section of that camp for their transport to one of the

work camps. Since they were not slated to remain in Auschwitz, these pris-

oners did not receive Auschwitz numbers, and thus their numbers can only

be estimated.

The new section of the camp reproduced the indescribable conditions that

had had such devastating consequences in the Birkenau women’s camp and

later in the Gypsy camp. The absence of even the most primitive hygienic

facilities and the lack of water caused a mortality rate that was especially high

even by Auschwitz standards. In the camp lingo, the new section was called

‘‘Mexico.’’ The inmates had received neither prison garb nor camp blankets,

and so were now given all sorts of blankets that had been amassed in Canada

from the belongings of deportees. When they walked around draped in blan-

kets, the colorful scene evoked Mexico.

Baer followed Höß’s policies, though not with the same energy. Paul Stein-

metz, an ss master sergeant (Hauptscharführer) with administrative duties that

enabled him to observe the work of the various commandants, came to this

conclusion: ‘‘While a certain improvement had been eﬀected under Liebehen-

schel, conditionsunder Baer soon becameas bad as they had been under Höß.

This involved not only the prisoners but the ss as well.’’

Not all of Liebehenschel’s reforms were rescinded, however. After its most

important informers had been transferred, the Political Department was un-

able to achieve the unlimited dominance that it had had under Höß. Under

Baer, Greenswere given importantfunctionsagain,but the Reds retained their

key positions, at least in the main camp. In Birkenau, the dominance of the

Greens had never been broken, but, as a result of developments at the fronts,

brutal acts of the ssand capos were less frequent than they had been in Höß’s

time.

48 n Introduction

Höß left Auschwitz on July 29, when the Hungarian campaign was essen-

tially completed. Baer received the title ss senior garrison commander.

On orders from the central administration the inmates of the Gypsy camp

were gassed on August 1. The prisoner Regina Steinberg, who as the clerk of

the Political Department of that section was best situated to observe events,

has made this statement about some exceptions: ‘‘Those Gypsies were sum-

moned who had fought in the front lines and had been transported from the

front to the camp at the time of Easter 1944. Pery Broad, who headed the Po-

litical Department for this section of the camp, told them that if they agreed

to be sterilized, they would be released. Those who agreed were transferred

to the main camp, sterilized, and sent back to us. On the day of the liqui-

dation, or the day before, they were transferred to the quarantine section of

Auschwitz.’’

A man involved in this action testiﬁed before the court as follows: ‘‘Before

the liquidation of the Gypsy camp, those who had served in the Wehrmacht

were sent to Ravensbrück to be sterilized.Afterwards we were supposedtovol-

unteer for army duty and be readmitted to the Wehrmacht in 1945.The others

were gassed. I was wounded in 1945.’’

Even before that, exceptional instances occurred in which it was possible

to be released from the camp in return for sterilization. A Gypsy woman who

was married to a German front-line soldier was sent to Auschwitz with her

child.The child becameill, and themother tried all sorts of things, forshewas

afraid to go to the inﬁrmary, which did not have a good reputation. When she

was at her wits’ end, she implored Dr. Mengele in the hkb to help her child,

for her husband was wearing the same uniform as the physician. This gave

Mengele pause; he asked her some questions, examined the child, and pre-

scribed medicine that helped. Some time later he sent for the Gypsy woman,

told her he had checked her statements, and would recommend that she and

her child be released if she agreed to be sterilized.The woman had no choice,

and the two actually went free. Although they are still alive, their lives are

destroyed.

n The Russian front came closer. In July 1944 Russian troops liberated Majda-

nek near Lublin, the second kz that had been expanded into an extermination

camp. Acting hastily, the panic-stricken administration ordered the evacua-

tion of the prisoners—especially the Germans—who had not already been

killed and also attempted to obliterate all traces of the mass extermination.

This attempt was unsuccessful, and in light of this failure, which aﬀorded

the Allies some insight into the methods of exterminating human beings, the

Auschwitz administration began to prepare for the liquidation of the camp.

First, theadmission authority’s documents revealing the scope of theextermi-

The History of the Extermination Camp n 49

nation campaign were burned. Even before then, the central administration

had ordered thetransferof Russian and (particularly)Polish prisoners to other

camps, where there was no nearby Polish population with whom they could

establish contact. The transfer of Poles increased in the second half of 1944.

The machinery of extermination, which had been greatly enlarged for the

slaughter of Hungarian Jews and, subsequently, of the inhabitants of the Lodz

ghetto, was dismantled, and the Sonderkommandos were reduced—that is,

the superﬂuous prisoners were killed. Knowing the fate that threatened them,

members of this detail organized a desperate attempt at breaking out. On

October 7 they were able to blow up a crematorium, but they could not escape

their fate.

rsha transports were still rolling into Auschwitz. On November 3 ss oﬃ-

cers for the last time decided the life or death of new arrivals with a move-

ment of their hands. Then the machinery of extermination, which had been

in operation for more than two and a half years, was stopped, and in late

November 1944 Himmler ordered the destruction of the extermination facili-

ties. Only CrematoriumIV remained intact so thatthecorpses fromtheAusch-

witz camps could be burned. A member of the Sonderkommando had re-

corded in a chronicle that later was dug up near a crematorium in November

1953: ‘‘Today, on November 25, they began to demolish Crematorium I. Cre-

matorium II is next.’’ This entry ends with the words: ‘‘Now we, the 170 male

survivors, are on our way to our women. We are convinced that we are being

led to our deaths.Thirty people were picked to stay in Crematorium IV. Today,

November 26, 1944.’’

On January 17, 1945, the advancing Russian armies forced the ss to order

the evacuation of Auschwitz, and it was accomplished by the nineteenth of

the month. Patients and members of the nursing staﬀ stayed behind, and so

did some inmates who thought they might have a better chance of survival

if they hid in the camp than if they participated in the evacuation march in

the wintry cold. After days of uncertainty, those who had stayed behind were

liberated by Russian troops on January 27.

On the evacuation marches, all those who could not go on were shot, and

the others were taken to Mauthausen, Buchenwald, and other camps. This

last chapter in the history of the camps was characterized by overcrowding,

a breakdown of provisions and services, and constant evacuations and death

marches. Neither those marches nor the ﬁnal phase of the camps, as illus-

trated by the piles of bodies of people who had starved to death and were

found by the Allies in Bergen-Belsen, are the subject or background of this

study. It will conclude with the day on which Auschwitz ceased to be a con-

centration camp.

50 n Introduction

numbers

nnn

Because the Auschwitz system never assigned the same number twice, it is

possible to make a rather accurate survey of the prisoners registered in that

camp—that is, those who were admitted in the regular way or, having arrived

on an rsha transport, were classiﬁed at the ramp as ﬁt for work. Those who

were immediately taken from the ramp to the gas chambers received no in-

mate number and were not registered anywhere, and thus their numbers can

only be estimated.

According to the documents collected and processed in the Auschwitz-

Birkenau State Museum, 405,000 people had to live in Auschwitz for varying

lengths of time. In addition, some tens of thousands were ‘‘put on ice’’ in

Birkenau at the time of the Hungarian campaign or at a later date to await

their transfer to labor camps in Germany. These prisoners remained unnum-

bered, and so their numbers cannot be reconstructed exactly. Also, approxi-

mately 300,000 people, predominantly Poles from the vicinity, were locked

up in Block 11 of the main camp awaiting a court-martial as prisoners of the

police. Only those admitted to the camp on a court order were given a num-

ber, and they have therefore been included in the ﬁgure of 405,000. The great

majority were immediately shot and remained unregistered.The 405,000 con-

sisted of almost exactly two-thirds men and one-third women.

The documents permit us to learn about the fate of these inmates. Some

261,000 died in Auschwitz—that is, they were murdered.The numberof those

released can be ignored; with some exceptions only Poles who revealed them-

selves as ethnic Germans and Germans who volunteered for the special Dirle-

wanger Unit of the ss were released. An even smaller number of prisoners

successfully escaped from the camp.The great majority of those who survived

the extermination camp were transferred to another camp, either with one

of the numerous transports that kept shuttling from one camp to another or

on one of the evacuation marches. Only a rough estimate of the number of

those who perished on those death marches or in other camps can be given. If

one estimates that in the spring of 1945 60,000 ‘‘Auschwitzers’’ regained their

freedom, this ﬁgure is probably not too low.

Some extant documents indicate the nationalities of the prisoners.Two let-

ters from the resistance movement that have been preserved in Cracow reveal

the ethnic composition of the camp on May 11, 1943, and on August 22, 1944.

On the ﬁrst of thesedates, 2.7 percent of the prisoners were registered as Ger-

mans, but by August 1944 this percentage had declined to 1.9.The main camp

had the highest percentage, 5.6. Germans were employed for the most part

in the camp’s administration oﬃce. Promises and pressure induced Upper

Silesians, who spoke both Polish and German, to sign the ethnic list; as soon

as they had done so, they were registered as Germans. Next to the thin upper

crust of Germans, the Poles were the most inﬂuential ethnic group.Originally,

they were in the overwhelming majority, but after Auschwitz’s expansion into

an extermination camp their percentage declined. In May 1943 it was 30.1,

but in August 1944 only 22.3. At that time it was highest (29.5 percent) in the

Birkenau men’s camp and lowest (18.6 percent) in the women’s camp.

Because of the steady rsha transports, the number of those who had to

wear the Star of David grew constantly despite the high mortality rate of this

group, which was subjected to the worst treatment. On May 11, 1943, 57.4

percent of all prisoners were registered as Jews, and by August 22, 1944, this

percentage had risen to 64.6 (and to 68.2 in the women’s camp). This ﬁgure

includes neither the Jews who were ‘‘put on ice’’ in Mexico nor thosewho were

doing forced labor in the satellite camps. The percentage of Jews in the work

camps was much higher; thus it has been reported that in Jaworzno 80 percent

of all inmates were Jews and in Günthergrube 95 percent.

Another list, smuggled out of the camp by the resistance movement, con-

tains the Jews’ countries of origin as of September 2, 1941. Most of the men

were from Poland, and next came those deported from Hungary, France, Hol-

land, and Greece. In the women’s camp the deportees from Slovakia were in

fourth place after the Jewish women from Poland, France, and Greece.

Of other ethnic groups only the numerically strongest are mentioned. On

May 11, 1943, it was the Czechs with 5.9 percent; on August 22, 1944, the Rus-

sians with 9.4 percent. Most of the latter were in Birkenau; in the main camp

onthat day, the count of Russiansamounted tojust over 5 percent.Themarked

decrease in the number of Czechs—only 81 on September 2, 1944—was the

result of an order from the central administration to transfer the Czech pris-

oners to camps with better livingconditions.Theregimewas tryingto dampen

theunrest thatthe high death rate in Auschwitz had causedin Czechoslovakia.

For the same reason the transfer of French prisoners was ordered as well, but

this was not handled so rigorously, foron September 22, 1944, there still were

325 Frenchmen on the roll call in Auschwitz.The statistics of the last roll calls

in the main camp and the Birkenau men’s camp, held on January 17, 1945,

have also been preserved. On that day 2 percent of the inmates were French,

and the number of Czechs had decreased to 24 individuals. The percentage

of Poles (8) and Russians (3) had also declined greatly by that time; this was

the result of numerous transfers of these nationalities in the months before

the evacuation. Few of the Germans who had not been conscripted for the

52 n Introduction

Dirlewanger Unit had been transferred to other camps, for the camp admin-

istration did not regard them as dangerous and most of them were in what

seemed to be indispensable positions.Thus the percentage of Germans at the

last roll call had risen to 11, and as late as early December 1944 Germans were

transferred to Auschwitz from Mauthausen.

The countries of origin of the surviving prisoners are also indicated by a

compilation made after the liberation of Auschwitz. Eduard de Wind, a Dutch

physician who had stayed behind with the sick prisoners, published the na-

tionalities of 2,690 persons who had been interrogated by the Russianmedical

legal commission. Since the Jews were no longer compelled to identify them-

selves as such, they stated their nationality on the basis of the countries from

which they had been deported.Though this makes it impossible to determine

how many of these 2,690 were Jews, it is probably safe to describe most of

them as persons persecuted for ‘‘racial’’ reasons. Almost 28 percent of the

patients were Poles, and more than 22 percent stated that they were Hun-

garian or Romanian citizens (Jews from Siebenbürgen identiﬁed themselves

as citizens of Romania again). A little less than 13 percent were citizens of

France and barely 1 percent of Czechoslovakia. Almost 7 percent came from

the Soviet Union, less than 6 percent from Holland, and more than 5 percent

fromYugoslavia.The other patients gave Greece, Belgium, and other states as

their homelands.

Some information about the number of prisoners in the various Auschwitz

camps has been preserved. The main camp had the steadiest population—

18,437 on January 20, 1944, and 14,386 on July 1 of that year. By August 22,

1944, it had risen to 17,070 again. As I remember it, the population probably

ﬂuctuated between theseﬁgures in thesecond half of 1942 and in 1943 as well,

and it was to decline drastically because of transports of Poles just before the

evacuation.

The population of the Birkenau men’s camps (for a long time there were

several, in addition to the quarantine section and a section that housed the

inﬁrmary) ﬂuctuated between 22,061 (on January 20, 1944) and 15,000 (an ap-

proximate ﬁgure given by the camp administration on April 5, 1944). In July

and August of that year, ﬁgures in excess of 19,000 were mentioned. At the

last roll call on January 17, 1945, there were only 15,317 prisoners in the main

camp and the Birkenau men’s camp.

There were greater ﬂuctuations in the women’s camp.While the resistance

movement gave a population of 27,053 women on January 20, 1944, this num-

ber declined to 21,000 by April 5, 1944, and rose to 31,406 by July 12 and to

39,234 by August 22 of that year.

The Gypsy camp housed a total of 10,849 women and 10,094 men. The

Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum estimates that fewer than 3,000 of them

Numbers n 53