Jews unable to work in Auschwitz

[Sergey Romanov]

Deniers are mostly liars or, sometimes, just stupid, it's a well-known fact. Thus, neo-Nazi denier Weber writes:

For example, it is often claimed that all Jews at Auschwitz who were unable to work were immediately killed. Jews who were too old, young, sick, or weak were supposedly gassed on arrival, and only those who could be worked to death were temporarily kept alive.

But the evidence shows that, in fact, a very high percentage of the Jewish inmates were not able to work, and were nevertheless not killed. For example, an internal German telex message dated Sept. 4, 1943, from the chief of the Labor Allocation department of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA), reported that of 25,000 Jewish inmates in Auschwitz, only 3,581 were able to work, and that all of the remaining Jewish inmates -- some 21,500, or about 86 percent -- were unable to work. (note 8)

This is also confirmed in a secret report dated April 5, 1944, on "security measures in Auschwitz" by Oswald Pohl, head of the SS concentration camp system, to SS chief Heinrich Himmler. Pohl reported that there was a total of 67,000 inmates in the entire Auschwitz camp complex, of whom 18,000 were hospitalized or disabled. In the Auschwitz II camp (Birkenau), supposedly the main extermination center, there were 36,000 inmates, mostly female, of whom "approximately 15,000 are unable to work." (note 9)

These two documents simply cannot be reconciled with the Auschwitz extermination story.

http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/auschwitz.shtml

The second claim's absurdity should be obvious immediately: not only Jews were prisoners of Auschwitz.

The first document is more interesting. Danuta Czech gives the following information for 09.09.42:

The Commandant's Office receives an order dated September 4, 1943, from the Office D-II in the WVHA commanding Hoess to explain why only 3,581 Jewish prisoners have been used in the armaments industry and what the other approximately 25,500 Jewish prisoners are doing

Deniers were caught in a lie once again. But there's more. According to http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/a ... 1:300354,1

For instance, at one point in the latter part of 1943, functionary asked for the number of Auschwitz Jews fit for reassignment to an armaments plant. On 29 August, Auschwitz replied that only 3,581 were available. Senior WVHA officer Gerhard Maurer knew from DII’s tracking that fully 25,000 Jews were available for work transfers
Four days later, Maurer dispatched a brash rejoinder to Auschwitz Camp Commandant Rudolf Hoess himself. ‘What are the remaining 21,500 Jews doing?’, Maurer demanded. ‘Something’s amiss here! Please again scrutinize this process and give a report.’

(Note that Czech got the number wrong, it's 21,500, not 25,500.)

Here is the document itself:


The image is too small and I don't know German, but perhaps someone will be able to read and translate it? (When the document is zoomed, it is in fact possible to read the words.)

This story is interesting. Why was Auschwitz administration "hiding" its Jews? How was the matter resolved? I will be grateful for any details.

[Sergey Romanov]

Holocaust deniers, Gerhard Maurer and Jews unfit for work in Auschwitz

[michael mills]

Sergey,

When the document is zoomed it is very blurry and difficult to read. I was able to make out enough of it to tell what it is about, although not all of it. In particular the dates are too blurred to read accurately, although the year is 1943.

Maurer is telling Hoess that he had asked Hauptsturmfuehrer Schwarz to give him the number of Jews held in Auschwitz who were fully capable of being deployed for work, since he intended to withdraw Jews from Auschwitz in order to deploy them in armament works in the Reich. He was told that of the 25,000 Jews held in Auschwitz only 3,581 were capable of work, and they were all employed in armament works and could not be released.

Obviously Hoess simply does not want to hand over to Maurer the 25,000 Jews who the latter believes are being held in Auschwitz. To my mind there are two possible explanations for Hoess' reluctance to hand any Jews over to Maurer.

One is that the 25,000 Jews really do exist, but Hoess wants to hang onto them for doing work around Auschwitz itself, or perhaps for hiring out for his own profit.

The other is that the 25,000 Jews do not exist. They may have existed at one time, but most of them died or will killed long ago, and Hoess has simply gone on drawing rations for them which he sells on the black market for a tidy sum. They were pretty corrupt, those KZ boys.

[steve248]

Michael,

Kindly explain "he intended to withdraw Jews from Auschwitz in order to deploy them in armament works in the Reich".
Since the document above is dated 1943 and Himmler had already issued instructions removing all Jews from the Reich KZs in 1942 and they had been removed to German camps established in Poland. Himmler would hardly want them back in Germany proper since he could and did use non-Jewish prisoner labour in the Reich armaments plants (male and female prisoners).
Most of the rest of your post is speculative nonsense.

[Sergey Romanov]

Michael, the opening post is from 2004. At the link I have posted recently (see above) you can find the full text of the document, the text of the preceding correspondence and the explanation of what it means.

[michael mills]

In his letter of 4 September 1943 to Hoess, Maurer wrote this:

Im KL Auschwitz sitzen zur Zeit rund 25.000 jüdische Häftlinge ein. Ich habe am 25.8.43 SS-Hauptsturmführer Schwarz gesagt, dass ich die Zahl der voll arbeits- und einsatzfähigen Juden wissen muss, da ich beabsichtige, Juden vom KL Auschwitz abzuziehen, um sie bei Rüstungsfertigungen im Reich einzusetzen.

We have to assume that Maurer's intention to transfer Jews fit for labour from Auschwitz to the Reich to work in armaments preparation was genuine, ie he was not trying to fool Hoess into handing over Jews for some other purpose.

It is also reasonable to assume that Maurer would not have formed that intention unless he had been given authorisation to do so by Himmler. The logical conclusion is that since 1942 Himmler had changed his mind, and had decided to let Jewish prisoners back into Germany to be used for forced labour.

The advantage of using Jews for forced labour was that they could be exploited to the absolute maximum, with no need to preserve their health.

What I find most interesting about the correspondence between Maurer and the Auschwitz camp staff is that he is the one who introduces the idea that there were 25,000 Jews being held in the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, and that only in his very last letter. Nowhere do the Auschwitz staff give any indication of the total number of Jews being held in the camp, only the number of German, French, Slovak, Czech, Croatian, Belgian, Norwegian and Greek Jews fit for labour, and the workplaces where they were deployed.

So the question is why Maurer thought 25,000 Jews were being held in Auschwitz in September 1943. I have speculated that he might have got that figure from requests for rations made by the Auschwitz administration; that is speculation, but I think it quite reasonable.

It should be noted that Sell did not give figures for the total number of German, French, Slovak etc Jews being held in the camp, only the number of each nationality who were fit for work at that time. There were probably Jews of those nationalities in the camp who were unfit for work, but their number cannot have been very great, since as we all know Jews who were or became unfit for work were quickly killed under the Sonderbehandlung 14f13 program, which in German eyes was a form of euthanasia. (Although by September 1943 Himmler had ordered an end to Sonderbehandlung 14f13, so it is possible that the number of Jews unfit for work held in the camp had increased, with their being sent to the camp hospital rather than straight to the gas chamber).

The difference between the 25,000 Jews claimed by Maurer and the 3,581 Jews stated by the Auschwitz staff to be fit for labour cannot be explained in terms of an assumed large number of Polish Jews, since Polish Jews were always a minority in Auschwitz, outnumbered by the Jews of the various other nationalities listed by Sell.

According to the Auschwitz Chronicle, as of the end of August 1943 close to 29,000 Jews had arrived in Auschwitz from places in occupied Poland and been registered, but they were not necessarily all Polish Jews since that number probably included Jews of other nationalities who had previously been deported to ghettos and camps in Poland. In addition, some 5,600 Jews from Silesia had been registered, making a total of some 34,600. However, not all of them would have been still alive in September 1943, since a considerable number would have died or been killed at some time after their arrival.

A comparison might be made with the Jews from Belgium; again according to the Auschwitz Chronicle, by the end of August 1943 8694 Jews from that country had been registered in Auschwitz, but according to Sell only 184 were still fit for work by September of that year. Or with Jews from France; according to the Auschwitz Chronicle some 27,200 Jews from France had been registered by the end of August 1943, but according to Sell only 700 were still fit for work in September 1943.

The conclusion must be that in September 1943 there was not a huge pool of Polish Jews held in Auschwitz that greatly outnumbered the total of Jews of other nationalities being held there. Maurer's 25,000 Jews seems to be a bit of a mystery.

[Sergey Romanov]

Michael, as a chief of WVHA DII it is not that surprising that Maurer would have an overview of the Auschwitz labor deployment situation, from whatever sources.

> The difference between the 25,000 Jews claimed by Maurer and the 3,581 Jews stated by the Auschwitz staff to be fit for labour cannot be explained in terms of an assumed large number of Polish Jews, since Polish Jews were always a minority in Auschwitz, outnumbered by the Jews of the various other nationalities listed by Sell.

You will have to provide evidence of this, given how many Polish Jews were deported to Auschwitz.

Oh and registered Jews are not the same as Jews in the camp at the moment.

For comparison purposes here is the data for 21.08.44:

Pol. Jews 23530
Hungarian Jews: 11821
Slov. J.: 898
Cz. J.: 1282
Croat. J.: 555
Holl. J.: 2563
Belg. J.: 1385
It.J.: 1841
Gr.J.: 1838
Fr.J.: 5822
Norw.J.: 2001

Now, if we ignore the Hungarian Jews, which were not there in 1943, the Polish Jews would have constituted 56% of all Jews in 1944. What makes you think it was different in 1943?

[michael mills]

Now, if we ignore the Hungarian Jews, which were not there in 1943, the Polish Jews would have constituted 56% of all Jews in 1944. What makes you think it was different in 1943?

According the Auschwitz Chronicle, a total of 143,093 Jews arrived at Auschwitz from places in Poland. That is not the full total, since the Chronicle was unable to give complete figures for the number of Jews deported from the Lodz Ghetto in August 1944.

Whatever was the full total of Jews deported to Auschwitz from places in Poland, 49,874 were registered in Auschwitz; of that number, 21,048 were registered after the beginning of September 1943.

The 23,530 Jews from places in Poland recorded as present in the Auschwitz camp complex on 21 August 1944 most probably consisted of:

1. The residue of the almost 29,000 Jews registered up to the end of August 1943; what the size of that residue was is hard to say, since a considerable number of the Jews from places in Poland registered in that period would have perished by August 1944.

2. The residue of the Jews registered between the beginning of September 1943 and 21 August 1944. Although a proportion of them would probably have perished during the intervening 12 months, their numbers would have been replenished by the large number of Jews from the Lodz Ghetto who were deported to Auschwitz in August 1944.

It is therefore a reasonable supposition that the great majority of Jews from places in Poland recorded as present in Auschwitz on 21 August 1944 had arrived there after the beginning of September 1943, and that a very large number had only just arrived from Lodz as a result of the liquidation of the ghetto there.

Another difference from the situation in 1943 is that by August 1944 large numbers of Jews arriving at Auschwitz were held unregistered as so-called "Depot Prisoners", pending their being sent onward to other camps and places of forced labour. Thus, it is quite possible that a certain proportion of the 23,539 Jews from places in Poland recorded on 21 August 1944 were recent arrivals who were being held unregistered.

A comparison may be made with the Jews from Hungary, of which only 11,821 were recorded as present in Auschwitz on 21 August 1944. We know that at least 100,000 Hungarian Jews were selected for labour and sent to other camps and places of forced labour, most without being registered at Auschwitz (according to the Auschwitz Chronicle, only 28, 291 Jews from Hungary were registered at Auschwitz). The most likely reason for the low number of Jews from Hungary recorded in Auschwitz on 21 August 1944, compared with the number of Jews from Poland, is that the Jews from Hungary had arrived earlier, between May and early July 1944, and the bulk of those who were not killed had already been transferred out of Auschwitz, whereas there had been a very recent influx of Jews from Poland, in particular from Lodz.

The bottom line is that it cannot be assumed from the fact that 23,530 Jews from Poland were present in Auschwitz on 21 August 1944, that a similar number was present in Auschwitz in early September 1943. The situation in August 1944 was different, in particular due to a very recent influx of Jews from Poland.

The total number of Jews from Western and Central Europe (excluding Hungary) who arrived at Auschwitz was considerably greater than the number of Jews from places in Poland. The Auschwitz Chronicle gives these figures:

Belgium:.......................................22,122 (registered 8,694)
Bohemia/Moravia:...........................48,862 (registered 23,696)
France:........................................69,976 (registered 30,279)
Germany/Austria:...........................36,573 (registered 11,138)
Greece:.......................................55,577 (registered 12,996)
Netherlands:.................................59,566 (registered 20,705)
Italy:...........................................6,544 (registered 1,729)
Norway:..........................................741 (registered 216)
Slovakia:.....................................26,720 (registered 14,150)
Yugoslavia:....................................2,597 (registered 692)

TOTAL:.....................................332,378 (registered 121,295)

The 121,295 non-Polish Jews registered (or 149,586 if the registered Jews from Hungary are included) are double the 56,243 registered Jews from Poland and Silesia.

[Sergey Romanov]

> According the Auschwitz Chronicle, a total of 143,093 Jews arrived at Auschwitz from places in Poland. That is not the full total, since the Chronicle was unable to give complete figures for the number of Jews deported from the Lodz Ghetto in August 1944.

Exactly, not full (and one cannot rely on the Chronicle to derive the complete figures). Hilberg, for one, estimates that about 300000 Polish Jews *died* in Auschwitz.

> Whatever was the full total of Jews deported to Auschwitz from places in Poland, 49,874 were registered in Auschwitz; of that number, 21,048 were registered after the beginning of September 1943.

Source? Or have you just summed up the Czech entries?

In any case, even acc. to your calculations there is a pool of 28826 potential Polish Jews for Aug-Sep 1943, some of whom would have died before that, some of whom would have been transferred, but this could also be balanced out by the number of non-Polish Jews temporarily unable to work *in addition* to all the Pol. Jews omitted by Sell. Sell, after all, reported only the "Westjuden" able to work, thus an unknown number of such could have been recuperating at the moment. One has to show that the 21400 Jews not reported by Sell cannot be accounted for in this manner.

> Thus, it is quite possible that a certain proportion of the 23,539 Jews from places in Poland recorded on 21 August 1944 were recent arrivals who were being held unregistered.

Is there any evidence of non-Hungarian Durchgangsjuden?

> The bottom line is that it cannot be assumed from the fact that 23,530 Jews from Poland were present in Auschwitz on 21 August 1944, that a similar number was present in Auschwitz in early September 1943.

It cannot be assumed but it still illustrates the proportions better than merely saying that the Polish Jews were always a minority. Anyway, your claim was that the Polish Jews were always a minority, but this claim has to be demonstrated, and merely furnishing the proportions of those registered does not do the trick since it doesn't necessarily tell us anything about the Jews currently being held in the camp on any given day.

[michael mills]

Source? Or have you just summed up the Czech entries?

I have summed the entries in the Auschwitz Chronicle.

One has to show that the 21400 Jews not reported by Sell cannot be accounted for in this manner.

Exactly. The number of Westjuden reported by Sell as fit for work and employed in the Auschwitz complex in September 1943 was very small compared with the number who had been registered by that date. One explanation for that difference could be that the great majority of the registered Westjuden had already died or been killed because they had become unfit for labour.

However, the fact that Maurer believed that a total of 25,000 Jews were being held in the Auschwitz complex suggests that not all the registered Jews who had become unfit for work had been killed off, and that a relatively large number were being held in the expectation that they would recover and become usable.

According to the Auschwitz Chronicle (my summation of the daily entries therein) by the end of August 1943 a cumulative total of 115,333 Jews from all sources had arrived in Auschwitz. According to Maurer, of that total only some 25,000 remained as of the beginning of September, or 22%. The rest must have died, or been killed, or transferred.

If we make the reasonable assumption that the attrition rate of the Jews arriving from places in Poland was the same as the aggregate rate, then 22% of the 28,826 Jews from those places who had been registered would still have been present at the time of Maurer's enquiry, ie 6,248.

On this basis, Maurer's figure of 25,000 Jews held in Auschwitz would consist of 6,250 Jews from Poland and 18,750 from other sources such as France etc.

Of the calculated total of 18,750 non-Polish Jews, only 3,581 were reported by Sell as fit for labour, or 19%. Applying that percentage to the calculated total of Polish Jews remaining in Auschwitz at the time of Maurer's enquiry yields 1,194 Polish Jews fit for work.

Based on the assumptions made in my calculation, the 25,000 Jews held in Auschwitz according to Maurer would have been made up as follows:

Western Jews fit for labour:..............................3,581
Western Jews unfit for labour:.........................15,169
Polish Jews fit for labour:................................1,194
Polish Jews unfit for labour:.............................5,056

Those numbers are of course speculative and highly sensitive to the assumptions I have made, which could be erroneous. For example, the attrition rate for Polish Jews might have been lower than for the Western Jews, with the result that Polish Jews made up a larger proportion of the 25,000; but it is difficult to see why that would have been the case.

[Sergey Romanov]

> Those numbers are of course speculative and highly sensitive to the assumptions I have made, which could be erroneous.

Exactly. Those are basically numbers out of thin air.

[michael mills]

Sergey,

Of the numbers used by me, two are not out of thin air, namely the cumulative total of 115,333 Jews registered at Auschwitz as of the end of August 1943, and the cumulative total of 28,826 Jews from Poland had been registered as of the same date. They are not out of thin air since they derive from the Auschwitz Chronicle.

Subtracting the hard figure of registered Jews from Poland from the hard figure of total registered Jews yields a figure of 86,507, which must represent the number of registered non-Polish Jews, and must also be a hard figure.

If the 25,000 Jews Maurer thought were being held in Auschwitz in September 1943 consisted mainly of Polish Jews, it would mean that the great majority if the almost 29,000 Polish Jews who had been registered by that date were still alive, whereas the great majority of the 86,507 non-Polish Jews who had been registered were no longer present in Auschwitz, and must be assumed to have perished, given that there is no evidence of such a large number of prisoners having been transferred out of Auschwitz as of September 1943.

If the great majority of registered Polish Jews were still alive in September 1943 whereas the great majority of registered non-Polish Jews had already perished, it would mean that the Polish Jews had a much lower attrition rate than the non-Polish Jews.

Sergey, do you know of any explanation for that anomaly? Particularly as the Germans disliked Polish Jews more than they disliked Western Jews.

[siwiec]

According to the Auschwitz Chronicle (my summation of the daily entries therein) by the end of August 1943 a cumulative total of 115,333 Jews from all sources had arrived in Auschwitz.

You may have made a mistake somewhere, as according to this calculation, which also is based on the Chronicle, figures for 1942 alone go way beyond that.

http://holocaustcontroversies.yuku.com/ ... KqvC1Xc7IV

[sandeepmukherjee196]

Michael,

Kindly explain "he intended to withdraw Jews from Auschwitz in order to deploy them in armament works in the Reich".
Since the document above is dated 1943 and Himmler had already issued instructions removing all Jews from the Reich KZs in 1942 and they had been removed to German camps established in Poland. Himmler would hardly want them back in Germany proper since he could and did use non-Jewish prisoner labour in the Reich armaments plants (male and female prisoners).
Most of the rest of your post is speculative nonsense.

What is the basis of your labelling this reasonable explanation as speculative nonsense..in the absence of a more plausible reasoning, as far as I can see ? The numbers are simply not tallying. There is no remote reason to suppose that the camp administration had noble motives. It is known that individuals in the SS genocide programme were venal and corrupt.

There may be some other explanation after all. But till we find the same, this speculation is definitely not nonsense.

[steve248]

The speculation I was drawing attention to, and not mentioned in any of the following posts was this:

"One is that the 25,000 Jews really do exist, but Hoess wants to hang onto them for doing work around Auschwitz itself, or perhaps for hiring out for his own profit.

The other is that the 25,000 Jews do not exist. They may have existed at one time, but most of them died or will killed long ago, and Hoess has simply gone on drawing rations for them which he sells on the black market for a tidy sum. They were pretty corrupt, those KZ boys."

What is the evidence that Hoess hired prisoners out for personal profit or sold rations on the black market? Two operations that "corruption" investigators such as Konrad Morgen would have found ample evidence, but did not; instead he investigated "illegal killings".