A Liechtenstein Nazi's eyewitness statement about Auschwitz, given to Liechtenstein police, 1/7/1945

[Sid Guttridge]

https://www.e-archiv.li/textDetail.aspx ... 1946&eID=1

"In May 1944, around 100 men from our security team received orders to pick up a transport of 2,000 Jews from the Auschwitz concentration camp. Since the transport was not yet ready, we had to wait 8 days. Our stay was in the outlying quarters of the camp in barracks. It was here that I first came across what was going on in these camps. Until now I hadn't known much about it and nobody in the German public knew about it. On the first day we noticed the smell of burning meat and this smell lasted more or less the whole 8 days of our stay. We couldn't explain that this burning smell was coming from the incinerators and even though we were told that Jews were being burned there, we didn't believe it. We invited a member of a so-called Sonderkommando to drink schnapps and took the opportunity to question him. As he informed us, the members of this Sonderkommando were mostly Russian SS volunteers. When I asked about the work of this Sonderkommando, he explained the following to me:

The special command is the burning of the Jews. First the Jews would come into a shower room; Small, big, old, young, women and men and everyone would have to strip naked. After or during the shower, gas balls would be thrown into the shower room, which then killed or anesthetized the occupants. Then they would be burned in the furnace.

All of our workforce was morally affected by this announcement. Because at the beginning of the story we didn't believe this, but since we had noticed this smell for the whole 8 days, we had to believe it. During our stay we lived in the barracks of the camp barely 300 meters from the stove."

Sid.

[michael mills]

Did the witness say where the 2000 Jews from Auschwitz were being taken to?

The witness says that this occurred in May 1944, ie at the beginning of the deportation of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz. At that time, an unknown number of the Jews arriving on the transports were held unregistered in the camp as so-called Depot-Prisoners, awaiting onward transport to other places for labour deployment. Presumably the 2000 Jews referred to were Depot-Prisoners, although it is equally possible that they were registered prisoners who had arrived on earlier transports and been selected as fit for labour.

In any case, this testimony is a significant piece of data about the transfer of Jews from Auschwitz to other places in 1944, the year of arrival of almost half of the Jews who were transported to that camp.

PS: After reading the linked article, I see that Walser was a member of the guard battalion at Neuengamme Concentration Camp, so it is probable that the 2000 Jews were being transferred to that camp for labour deployment.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the likely general context.

Sid

[wm]

Obviously, the Jews were sent to work in a place in the vicinity of Liechtenstein.
That nicely illustrates the inefficiency of the German war economy - if they needed to transfer a small group of workers so far away.
But the most interesting part of it is:

Until now I hadn't known much about it and nobody in the German public knew about it.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

There is no indication that the Jews were sent to the vicinity of Liechtenstein. The witness just happened to be a Liechtensteiner who had volunteered for Germany.

The interesting things about his testimony are that (1) he was an eye witness, (2) he was interviewed very soon after the end of the war and (3) he was interviewed in a neutral country outside the Allied war crimes process.

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

Yes, that's true but the point was it was madness to send a bunch of workers to a place thousand kilometers away from Auschwitz - itself part of one of the largest industrial regions in Europe, a region suffering at that time from severe labor shortages.

And what do you mean by it was interesting because he was an eyewitness.
Estimated 200,000 people survived Auschwitz. That's an entire city of eyewitnesses, people who frequently spent years in the camp - not merely visited it for a day or two and randomly saw this or that.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

You post, "Estimated 200,000 people survived Auschwitz." Perhaps, but how many eyewitness statements come from members of the German security forces within weeks of the end of the war and outside the Allied war crimes process? Can you name any others?

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

Like Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss - the commandant of Auschwitz who testified shortly after the war?
Or SS-Unterscharführer Pery Broad, one of the camp's interrogators, who wrote his account in 1945?

So what he made his statement "within weeks of the end of the war" if nobody ever saw it.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

Both Hoss and Broad apparently testified as part of the Allied war crimes investigations.

The significance, such as it is, of Walser's testimony is that it was made outside the pressures of Allied war crimes investigations in a neutral state and was independent in a way that Hoss's and Broad's testimonies presumably weren't.

I ask again, do you know of any other such statements volunteered by ex-members of the German security forces outside the war crimes processes?

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

He wasn't a member of the German security forces he was a clerk. He didn't volunteer he was summoned by the Vaduz police.

And since when are testimonies of victims of lesser value than a testimony of a random person recounting (historically inaccurate) story heard in a pub.
Yes, maybe he was first but it was like the first testimony of a bald person with a tooth missing.

Btw In 1943 Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, a high-ranking member of the Abwehr disseminated his findings about Auschwitz among his friends and anti-Nazi resistance members.

Since 1943 the Allies had so accurate and complete information about Auschwitz that in 1944 the BBC transmitted radio broadcasts directed personally (i.e., by name) at the SS-men working there asking them to mend their ways (and they actually did).

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

However one looks at it, Walser was a voluntary part of the German security apparatus and his testimony from within it is both unusually early and unusually independent.

Your BBC story looks suspect. Where did you get it from?

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

It's from "Reminiscences of Pery Broad" and memoirs of a few Polish prisoners.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

What, specifically do they say and where precisely?

This story is unlikely and so requires an unusual level of evidence to stand up. You are being a bit vague.

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

Why is the story unlikely?
The Polish Underground delivered reliable information about the camp basically constantly from the beginning (according to "Auschwitz, the Allies and Censorship of the Holocaust") so nothing strange that the information sometimes was used.
Such warning broadcasts were sent in 1942 and 1943 - directed at Germany and occupied Poland (but not to be disseminated domestically.)

According to Perry the broadcast (and the leaflet distributed over Germany - "The Camp of Death") resulted in the mandated by Himmler investigation which in turn led to the downfall of the infamous Maximilian Grabner.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

You are not getting us any closer to a usable source.

Cheers,

Sid.