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Dan Snow's History Hit
A History of Auschwitz
00:58:31
On January 27th 1945, the Red Army liberated the concentration camp at Auschwitz unveiling its almost unspeakable horrors to the world.
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- [00:01]
Dan Snow
Hi, I'm Dan Snow and if you would like Dan Snow's History Hit ad free, get early access and bonus episodes. Sign up to History Hit With a History Hit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:29]
Nicholas Vaxman
Acast Powers the World's best Podcasts here's.
- [00:33]
Dan Snow
The show that we recommend.
- [00:36]
Nicholas Vaxman
Hi, I'm Pace Case. And I'm Bachelor Clues. We host Game of Roses, the world's best reality TV podcast. We're covering every show in reality TV at the highest level possible. We analyze the Bachelor, Love is Blind, Perfect Match, Vanderpump, and anything else you find yourself watching with wine and popcorn. We break down errors, highlight plays, MVPs and all the competitive elements that make reality TV a sport. And we interview superstar players like Bachelorette Kaitlyn Bristow and Big Brother champion Taylor Hale. If you want to know so much about reality TV, you can turn any casual conversation into a PhD level dissertation. You definitely want to check out Game of Roses. ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.
- [01:33]
Dan Snow
Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's history hit it was January 30th, 1933, that Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, and immediately his Nazi regime began dismantling what was left of German democracy. Opposition newspapers were shut down, political opponents were silenced, they were rounded up, and the Nazi regime instantly realized it needed somewhere to put them. Within weeks of Hitler becoming Chancellor, the first concentration camp had opened at Dachau, 10 miles northwest of Munich in southern Germany. It was the start of a vast system of imprisonment through which the Nazis extended their control over Germany and then occupied territories. As they invaded one neighbour after another, that system, already cruel, violent, morphed into something truly terrible, some of the most horrific places in the long and lamentable catalogue of human crimes. As the Second World War progressed, camps were built within that system that functioned as places of large scale industrial slaughter, of murder, of genocide, among them, famously, Auschwitz. At the end of January every year we mark Holocaust Awareness Day. The Red army liberated the site of auschwitz birkenau on the 27th of January 1945, 80 years ago this year we've got a series of podcasts looking at Auschwitz. In this episode we're going to be hearing harrowing details about how Auschwitz worked, what happened there. We're going to break it down. We're going to look at the process of murder from the moment people arrived through to their death in gas chambers, the disposal of their bodies, clothes and valuables. This is the story of Auschwitz. Needless to say, elements of this podcast will be deeply upsetting. Joining me on it, I've got one of the best historians working in this field, Nicholas Svaxman. He's a professor of Modern European History at Birkbeck University of London. He's the author of the absolutely brilliant Wolfson History Prize winning book, A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps. Every year we mark Holocaust Awareness Day and every year it seems to get that little bit more urgent. I know I'm always bothering you, but please feel free to share this podcast or any other Holocaust related material that you've come across over the last few days. Share it with people, share it with people who might not otherwise engage with it. In the meantime, on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is our history of that murder camp. Nicholas, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.
- [04:48]
Nicholas Vaxman
Thanks so much for having me. Dan.
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Dan Snow
Are concentration camps part of that original package? Are they, Are they part of the Nazi starter pack when the Nazi party takes control of Germany?
- [05:00]
Nicholas Vaxman
Yes. I mean, I think the first camps are set up almost as soon as the Nazis come to power. They are part of the attempt by the regime to establish that new dictatorship. And within the first weeks or months, hundreds of camps are set up all over Nazi Germany.
- [05:21]
Dan Snow
Camps to us mean something very precise. They probably are indelibly the final years of the war, the horrors of Belsen when it's liberated. Initially, a camp's just a Are they prisons? Are they internment facilities? What are they for?
- [05:35]
Nicholas Vaxman
One of the key points, I think is that there isn't a blueprint for these kind of camps as they emerge in 1933. The Nazis don't come to power and draw a clear plan out of some drawers, which they then implement. There isn't national coordination either. Instead there is plenty of improvisation. There's local initiative. And that means that there isn't a typical early camp. These camps come in all shapes and sizes and local and regional authorities use all kind of spaces, sites they can find, they can get their hands on to set up these early camps. So they use run down hotels, boats, pubs, old castles and derelict factories, like in the case of Dachau. So when the Nazis come to power, there isn't yet a Nazi concentration camp. And indeed the regime still has to invent what a concentration camp actually is and how it will operate.
- [06:37]
Dan Snow
Why do they discover they need them? Who are they putting in them? Who are they arresting?
- [06:41]
Nicholas Vaxman
Suddenly in Such large numbers, Bob, 1933 for the Nazis is in the first place about securing power. That means coordinating the state, it means coordinating Nazi society, and it also means destroying any potential political opposition. So there is a storm of political violence that sweeps the country in 1933, and estimated 200,000 men and women are dragged to camps and early prisons, most of them outside the law. And they are arrested and detained, not necessarily for what they've done, but more often than not for who they are. And that is suspected enemies of the political order, that new order that is emerging in Germany. The aim of these early camps, as different as they are, I've said before, they come in all shapes and sizes, but as different as they are, they share one overriding aim and that is to destroy the possibility of political opposition in Germany. And the great majority of these prisoners early on are left wing inmates, trade unionists, social democrats, and above all, German communists. And without these early camps, the regime would have never been able to establish itself as quickly as it does in 1933.
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Dan Snow
You're physically removing the opposition, you're concentrating them into these detention facilities, just getting rid of them.
- [08:14]
Nicholas Vaxman
Yeah, but the plan isn't to hold them there forever or to murder them there, though there are deaths. But the main aim is to torment them, to torture them, to break them, and to intimidate all those outside who might still be thinking of opposition, that they better not rise up, they better not stand against the regime. The great majority of prisoners in these early camps are released again, but they're released broken and battered. And quite often these wounds are visible to their friends and their family when they come out.
- [08:48]
Dan Snow
Not unlike the tsarist and then communist so called gulag archipelago.
- [08:53]
Nicholas Vaxman
Yeah, I mean, I think sometimes, you know, there have been questions after the second World War where the idea of the camps comes from. But what happens in Germany is not that the Nazi rulers are looking elsewhere. These are very much homegrown camps which spring up in 1933. And actually it's not even clear at this point in time whether these camps are going to become a permanent part of the dictatorship or not. There are some leading Nazi officials who believe that once the opposition is broken, once the regime is securely in place, these early camps can be closed down. And it is, most of them are closed down. And these officials believe that some kind of authoritarian Nazi law, Nazi prisons are going to be enough to sustain and keep this regime in power. But what happens, of course, as we know, is something very different.
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Dan Snow
And I just wondered, does this system of camps bring its Own momentum and create its own logic. First of all, you build a mindset that accepts the existence of these places. But also do you create a generation of people who become veterans of these camps in terms of running them, who therefore start to no longer question their legitimacy, are in turn brutalized by their running of this system? I mean, does it develop its own energy?
- [10:20]
Nicholas Vaxman
Absolutely. I mean, a prisoner in Dachau. Dachau is the first SS concentration camp set up in March 1933 as part of this wave of early camps which are set up. A prisoner in Dachau in 33 would have not recognized Dachau in 1939 or in 1945. There was a huge dynamic process here, massive momentum. And what drives this increasing dynamic of violence in part are the core of ssman who are formed in these camps. Men like Rudolf Hess, the later commandant, the first commandant of Auschwitz. Hess joins the SS in Dachau and he goes through what can be called a school of violence in Dachau. This is where SS men learn to treat prisoners as enemies of the people, as subhuman. They have to crush these enemies without any mercy. And men like Hess learned to do this and they impress their superiors with displays of violence and thus can have a career in the campuses. Hess himself moves up the ranks, later is sent to Sachsenhausen, a new camp that is set up, and then becomes the first commandant of Auschwitz. I mean, this is one of the ways in which these early camps influence later camps set up during the war like Auschwitz.
- [11:54]
Dan Snow
And we've got a whole podcast devoted to the life and career of Huss coming up. As the 1930s goes on, the Nazis, you tell me, they slightly switch their gaze from political opponents, people who threaten their grip on the country, to their religious and if ethnic, want of a better word, religious and ethnic opponents, you know, Jews, Romani peoples, do they start to make up more and more of the prisoner population?
- [12:19]
Nicholas Vaxman
Yes, I think once it becomes clear in the mid-30s, very much with Hitler's backing, that the camps are going to be permanent parts of the Nazi dictatorship and under the SS and police apparatus, Once that becomes clear, the camps are coordinated and expanded. So in addition to political prisoners, the regime also forces thousands of social outsiders inside these camps. This is part of the drive by the regime to create its mythical national community. And amongst those who are dragged to the camps following massive Police raids in 37 and 38 are so called asocials. This is a catch all term for all those who are seen to be living on the edges, on the margins of society. Homeless beggars, prostitutes. And the regime also focuses on so called criminals. In reality, these are for the most part minor petty offenders. And thousands of these are dragged to camps in the second half of the 1930s, where they are joined by those persecuted for racial reasons as well. And this is above all German Jews. So in the initial period after the camps are set up, the number of those who are dragged to the camps as Jews is relatively small. This changes shortly before the Second World War breaks out in 1938. Above all after the November program in 1938, when some 26,000 Jewish men are dragged to camps in Buchenwald, in Dachau and Sachsenhausen. But the important thing I think here is that this isn't the start of the Holocaust. The aim of the regime at this point is to intimidate Jews, to make life for German Jews so intolerable that they will integrate. So the great majority of those Jewish men who had drive to the camps following the program are released again in the weeks after. But the camps are certainly changing in this period. And this isn't just true for the prisoner population, it's also true for the camps themselves. So I've mentioned these early camps which are set up in 1933. Almost all of them are closed down. The only early camp that remains throughout the existence of the Third Reich is Dachau, the first SS camp set up in spring. 33. Instead, the SS purpose builds a small number of large camps which can be extended at any time. For example, Sachsenhausen and others. And it is these camps where some 20,000 or so prisoners are held when the Second World War breaks out.
- [15:14]
Dan Snow
You mentioned the Nazis didn't have a blueprint at the beginning of their period of rule. But when they invade Poland in the autumn of 1939 and they discover they now have a very large population, both of Jews and of potential threats to the regime. Aristocrats, educated people, socialist, the whole works. They now do have a blueprint. They can just extend this camp network into occupied Poland.
- [15:37]
Nicholas Vaxman
Yes, the camp as it had developed in the last year, before the war, is extended then into Nazi occupied Europe. The regime, as it grabs more and more land in Europe, also extends the camp system into Europe. Before the war, the vast majority of prisoners are German men. During the war, more and more prisoners from occupied Europe are dragged into these camps. So that by 1944, 45 German prisoners only make up a small minority of the prisoner population. And more prisoners obviously means more camps as well. So the SS also starts building camps in occupied Europe. The first of these camps is Auschwitz. And the SS certainly brings everything it has learned about repression, about terror, about the organization, the internal bureaucracy of terror, about prisoner hierarchies, about prisoner routines, the uniforms, the prisoner classifications on these uniforms. All of that is, if you will, exported to new camps set up in the war, like Auschwitz.
- [16:55]
Dan Snow
Auschwitz set up primarily to deal with Polish prisoners. To what extent is a prisoner of war camp and what extent is it a camp for political prisoners, the elite of Poland sent there to be terrorized?
- [17:07]
Nicholas Vaxman
Yeah. The Germans invade Poland in autumn 1939, and the very clear aim is to crush, to destroy the Polish nation. So tens of thousands of Polish nationals are executed in the first months of the occupation and many more are dragged to prisons, to makeshift camps. And these sites are very soon overcrowded. So the SS starts to scout. They actually have a party of officials who's looking at different sites for what they call their first concentration camp in the East. And in the end they settle on the town of Oswienshim. This is in a part of East Upper Silesia that is incorporated into the German Reich after the occupation and is renamed by the Germans, Auschwitz. There are a number of reasons why they choose this particular site. Auschwitz has traditionally very good transport links. This is important for moving prisoners to the camp and out of the camp. It's also important for moving building materials and other goods to the camp. The early uniforms which are used in Auschwitz come from places like Dachau. Later on, of course, the belongings of murdered Jews are deported or transported out of Auschwitz. So transport links are important. And there is also, on the edge of town, an existing structure of buildings which have been used before the war by the Polish military. And the SS thinks it can quite easily and cheaply convert this site into a concentration camp by building fences around it and some watchtowers. And this is indeed what happens. And that's the birthplace, if you will, of the Auschwitz camp. This is what we call the main camp, where prisoners are then marched through the gate with the inscription Arbeit Macht Frei Work Liberates. Incidentally, Commandant Hess had first seen this inscription, of course, at the camp in Dachau and Sachsenhausen. So this is another import from the camps in the German Reich.
- [19:28]
Dan Snow
So no suggestion yet, though, that this would be an industrial murder factory?
- [19:33]
Nicholas Vaxman
No. Auschwitz is set up explicitly with the aim to destroy the Polish political opposition. The first prisoners, the first mass transport of prisoners in Auschwitz who arrive in June 1940 from the prison at Tarnow, are Polish political prisoners. For the most part, young men accused of resistance against the regime. And it is Polish political prisoners who make up the vast majority of of the prisoner population. For more than a year in Auschwitz, they suffer great humiliation, terror, torment, torture, abuse by the SS on a daily basis. Also hunger, overcrowding, illness and disease. But the camp in Auschwitz has not yet become a death camp. And Jewish prisoners in particular are still in a a relatively small number at this point.
- [20:33]
Dan Snow
Tell me how Operation Barbarossa changes everything and a gigantic German assault into the Soviet Union.
- [20:41]
Nicholas Vaxman
Well, it has an immediate, almost immediate impact on concentration camps like Auschwitz in two ways. First of all, the Nazi regime develops a program of systematic mass murder of those Soviet POWs who are seen as politically dangerous. And many thousands of them are taken to concentration camps, including to Auschwitz, and are executed there. At the same time, the SS Himmler also develops a gigantic plan to force vast numbers of POWs from the Soviet Union into slave labor in concentration camps, with the decided aim in Auschwitz to use them to what the SS calls make the East German. In other words, to push forward the German settlement of the occupied territories. So Himmler has these visions of vast armies of Soviet POWs arriving in Auschwitz. And this leads then to the plans for a new sub camp across the train tracks on the other side of the main camp in Birkenau to be built and set up. The first of these Soviet slave laborers arrive in October 1941. There's about 10,000. But what was expected to be many, many, many thousands of prisoners never arrive. And those 10,000 Soviet pedalbus who do arrive and have to start build this new camp in Birkenau, few of them survive for more than a few months. So out of the 10,000 or so within six months, less than 1,000 are still alive. And very few of them survive Auschwitz overall. But clearly Barbarossa and the invasion of the Soviet Union has an immense effect in this way on the camp. And also more generally, it has a huge effect on radicalizing what the Nazis call the Final Solution.
- [22:54]
Dan Snow
Right, because in those freshly occupied territories there are vast populations of Jewish people.
- [23:01]
Nicholas Vaxman
Yes. So the regime sends in together with the Wehrmacht into the occupied Soviet Union's so called task forces. There's also police units who operate there. It may start the increasingly indiscriminate murder then of Jewish men, women and children. And this really is the point where Nazi policy towards Jews moves towards the systematic mass extermination of all European Jews during the Second World War. So this is a process in which policy radicalizes from summer 41 from the invasion, then to summer 1942. And a key stepping point in this process is the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, where leading German state and party officials come together in a Berlin suburb on the lake of Wannsee and effectively discuss ways of coordinating what they call the the Final Solution. And what they mean by this is that the European Jews will be deported to the occupied east and either worked to death there or murdered on arrival. And this very soon then also starts to change concentration camps. Above all, the concentration camp of Auschwitz.
- [24:32]
Dan Snow
You listen to Dan Snow's history at we're talking about Auschwitz. More coming up. This episode is sponsored by Rosetta Stone. One of the biggest regrets of my life is my French has slipped. I've let my second language go. And you have the opportunity, my child, of not making the mistake that I have made. As you look into 2025, you're thinking about New Year's resolutions. The only one worth thinking about is language. It enriches your life. It is the best thing ever. You need to do this and you need to get Rosetta Stone. It is the most trusted language learning program. It truly immerses you in the language you want to learn. I like the fact you get it on your desktop and your mobile. It's very clear when you're doing it. The whole system is designed for long term retention. It helped me set clear milestones in achieving my language goals. So start the new year off with a resolution you can reach today. Dan Snows history hit. Listeners can take advantage of this Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership. For 50% off, visit www.rosettastone.com dansnow. That's 50% off. Unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your Life. Redeem your 50% off at www.rosettastone.com dansnow today. So it's after Wannsee that Auschwitz becomes Auschwitz as as we remember and understand it today.
- [26:09]
Nicholas Vaxman
Well, Auschwitz is always a site with multiple missions, with multiple functions. So you have Auschwitz being set up, as I said, as a camp to destroy the Polish political opposition. And throughout the entire life of Auschwitz, political prisoners are dragged here from Poland, but also from elsewhere in Europe. You also have other prisoner groups who are sent here. More than 20,000 Sintian Roma. But from 1942, Auschwitz also becomes a death camp of the Holocaust round about the time of the Wannsee Conference. So January 1942, there are only a few hundred prisoners who are registered as Jews in Auschwitz out of maybe about 10,000. But that changes very quickly because ESS selects Auschwitz as a destination point for deportations of Jews from Poland, but also from Europe. And Auschwitz is the only death camp. There are several Holocaust death camps. Auschwitz is the only one where the SS sends deportation trains from all over Europe. And this really transforms the camp in 1942.
- [27:27]
Dan Snow
And we should maybe just briefly say here how the Holocaust changed in 1942 because the Holocaust was underway in the aftermath. The advancing units of the German army in Barbarossa there would be groups of men who would kill Jews, bury them, shoot them, club them, burn them. What is the death camp solution? What are they trying to achieve there?
- [27:50]
Nicholas Vaxman
Well, effectively what happens is that the SS starts to look for ways of mass murder, of mass extermination, which are less strenuous for the perpetrators. And one of the ways they come up with one of the methods they develop is the mass murder of, of victims by gas. This had already been pioneered in the so called euthanasia program in the early years of the war where over 70,000 men and women who are classed as mentally ill and disabled were murdered in specially set up gassing facilities. And the SS then moves towards in 1941, 42, the mass murder of Jews, the so called Final Solution, what we now call the Holocaust, by setting up specially dedicated death camps. Now there are a number of these death camps which are being established in occupied Poland. There is Chelmno near the Lodz ghetto. And then there are three death camps in the so called General government, of which Treblinka is the largest. These death camps only have a single function. That function is to murder as many Jews as quickly as possible. And this is what they do. In 1942, in these camps, the SS murders perhaps around 1.5 million victims. Auschwitz also becomes a death camp. But Auschwitz also always operates as a major concentration camp as well. And this is why you have the infamous selections at the platforms at the ramps in De Canal, because this is where the SS decides who will be murdered as supposedly unfit for work on arrival and who will be registered in the camp and worked to death.
- [29:56]
Dan Snow
Yes, and this is why you meet survivors of Auschwitz. We tend not to meet survivors of Treblinka. And Hilmo is, as you say it, the selection moment is such a profound one. When you talk to the Fivers, they deliberately disorientated, exhausted, broken, after long train journeys with no sanitary facilities and little food, little sleep and overcrowded and suddenly boom, into the daylight, you're on a platform and there are doctors, are they? And they're just saying go right, go left and that's the decision. Well, that was life or death.
- [30:26]
Nicholas Vaxman
Yes. And I mean, this is, like you said, a moment of complete confusion, of chaos, of fear and disar orientation. A lot of these transports also arrive at night, so there's also the blinding spotlights. Nobody really knows where they are. And they are rushed out of the train compartments, often after days inside, not having eaten, not having drunk anything. The air in these compartments is rank with excrement, with sweat. It's hot. And suddenly they find themselves outside. They do not know what is happening. They are ripped apart from their loved ones. And this is often the moment at the ramp where they see their husbands, their wives, their children for the very last time. The ss, of course, tries to keep some control here and spreads lies that these prisoners will be taken to a work camp, that they are here as laborers, as workers, and they are even told sometimes that families will meet again at weekends. And nobody suspects that the majority of those who arrive are going to be dead within a matter of hours.
- [31:43]
Dan Snow
I'm sure, like you, much of the research I've been able to do is the frustration that people feel. Among the many emotions at that exact moment, no one knew, so there was never any attempt to fight. If they'd known that this was a moment of existential peril, that they could at least have tried. It's the confusion, the sort of the bureaucracy of that moment that is such a regret for so many people who saw their lives, loved ones, last at that exact second.
- [32:08]
Nicholas Vaxman
That is a deliberate, of course, method which is used by the SS to disorientate those victims, to try and prevent any uprisings, any resistance. Nonetheless, prisoners do try and escape. Prisoners do sometimes attack the ss and there is a uprising of Jewish prisoners and towards the end of the existence of auschwitz in autumn 1944. But the very method of the SS is to try to again kill as many victims as they can as quickly as possible.
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Dan Snow
You mentioned those not selected for labour could be dead within hours. Just take me through the rest of that process. The elderly, the infirm or the very young would be led into a different section of the camp. Towards the gas chambers.
- [33:00]
Nicholas Vaxman
Yes. Early on in the existence of Birkenau, the platform where these trains arrive was some way outside of the camp itself. So what the SS often did is that they forced those Jews who were selected for the gas chambers, without them knowing, onto trucks which were going at quite high speed from this platform towards the gas chambers in Birkenau. There are some testimonies by survivors who describe this moment. They Describe how Somers Essman actually helped old people or children onto the trucks. And this led the others, those who looked on, to think that perhaps this camp wasn't going to be as bad as they thought. There was also a Red Cross van which followed the last of these trucks. And again that created the illusion that somehow this was a work camp, perhaps a camp where there would be some attention for the health of prisoners, for their well being. What the new arrivals did not know was that inside of this Red Cross van was the SS doctor who would supervise the gassing at the gas chambers and indeed also the cyclone B pellets which the SS poured into the gas chambers which then caused those inside to die a unimaginably dreadful death.
- [34:38]
Dan Snow
So how many people do we think might have been gassed and their bodies incinerated? Auschwitz?
- [34:44]
Nicholas Vaxman
Well, the estimated number of Jewish victims of Auschwitz is about 1 million. About 1 million Jews died in Auschwitz were murdered in Auschwitz. The vast majority of them in the gas chambers in Birkenau. And that makes Auschwitz the largest cemetery of the Holocaust. There's no other site anywhere in Nazi controlled Europe where no other single site where more Jews are murdered than in Auschwitz. Never does the SS murder more Jews in Auschwitz than in spring and summer 1944. What happens is that the Nazi regime occupies Hungary, its ally. And the Jews in Hungary had up to this point been mostly untouched by the Holocaust. The SS comes into Hungary. The SS killing and deportation experts enter led by Adolf Eichmann. And within a matter of weeks deportation plans are made. And in mid May mass deportations from Hungary to Auschwitz Birkenau begin In the space of about two months, from mid May to mid July, some 430,000 Jews are deported from Hungary to Birkenau. And the great majority of those are murdered on arrival. You've got to imagine that there are sometimes that there are single days where five trains arrive from Hungary. This will be more than 15,000 Jews, the population of a whole town which arrives. Sometimes trains arrive at the same time, so one has to wait for hours until all those on the other train have been forced out and the great majority have been murdered. So Auschwitz really in this period reaches the absolute height of destruction and mass murder. To the extent that the SS is murdering more Jews than they can burn in the new crematoria which have been built by prisoners and private companies in 1942 and 43. So they also forced prisoners to throw bodies into ditches which are dug on the edges of Birkenau. And this leads to the camp, especially when there's a wind blowing from the west, the camp being enveloped in the stench of death, the smoke blowing over from the crematoria chimney and from these open pits. And that smoke really comes into every corner of the camp. It suffuses the clothes of prisoners. They breathe in that air, they gag, they cough, they vomit. And even the ss, much as they would like to, can't escape the stench of death which they've created. So the SS quarters in Birkenau are also full of this smoke.
- [37:55]
Dan Snow
And we talked about some of the headline numbers and the big picture. Take me through an individual story, someone that you've documented well.
- [38:05]
Nicholas Vaxman
One of the prisoners I've been reading a lot about is a Polish Jew called Zalmen Grudowski, who's deported with most of his family in December 1942 from one of the ghettos which the Nazis set up and are now clearing as they are emptying the ghettos and merging the great majority of Jews inside. Gradowski arrives in Birkenau, I think, on the 8th of December, 1942. Most of those on board of the train with him are murdered on arrival. This includes his wife, his mother, I think two of his sisters. Gorodowski himself is amongst the smaller number of Jews who are selected by the SS for slave labor. And he is put into what is called the Sonderkommando. And these are the prisoners who are forced by the SS to assist in the mass murder of others. In other words, those who have to work at the gas chambers and at the crematoria, these pits. Gradowski, before the deportation, had been a clerk in a shop, in an office. But his real ambition was to write. And he brings what he has learned about writing and his literary sensibilities to writing about the Holocaust, writing under the shadow of the crematoria chimney. And what he wants to do is leave some kind of testament for future generations to help them, he says, form an image of this hell in Birkenau, Auschwitz. So Gradowski is one of a number of men in the Sonderkommando who write about their experiences, write about the daily carnage at the gas chambers, at the crematoria, write about their own emotions and feelings as they see these processions of the doomed enter the gas chambers. And some of these notes are buried on the grounds of the crematoria, and a few of them have been found after the war. And this includes manuscripts written by Gradowski. So they survive, and they are amongst the most invaluable documents which we have about the Holocaust. Gradowski himself does not survive. He perishes during the Sonderkommando uprising in the autumn of 1944.
- [40:45]
Dan Snow
If you could quickly give me a praise of that, because it's an extraordinary moment.
- [40:49]
Nicholas Vaxman
So the SS forces hundreds of prisoners into the Sonderkommando. And these prisoners know that the SS will sooner or later come for them because they know more about the perpetrators and about mass extermination in Auschwitz than any other inmates. And the danger to the prisoners lives becomes greater and greater as the Red army advances towards Auschwitz. And the closer the Red army comes, the more these prisoners fear that the SS will kill them. So there are a number of plans which they make for a possible mass uprising and mass escape. They have to be postponed several times until on the 7th of October 1944, the uprising does break out. And it's really two separate uprisings, if you will. The SS appears around lunchtime at one of the crematoria, this is crematorium four, to lead away about 300 men from the Sonderkommando. The SS claims that they will be taken to another camp, but all of these men know that this is camouflage, this is a lie, and they will be murdered. So several of these men do not come forward and then start to attack the SS with sticks, with stones, which whatever they can find. The SS is initially surprised and beaten back. Several SS men are injured, but reinforcements soon appear and the vast majority of the men at Crematorium four are executed. Not before, however, they manage to burn part of the crematorium 4. When prisoners at crematorium 2, which is a few hundred yards away, see smoke rising. An uprising breaks out here as well. And the prisoners at crematorium two manage to cut through the fence. And up to 100 of them managed to escape from the grounds of Birkenau, but none of them survived. The SS sends reinforcements to hunt them down. The men from the Sonderkommando stood no chance. They were barely armed. They tried to rise up in broad daylight. They didn't have a clear plan and could not really develop a clear plan. And they were up against heavily armed SS men who could draw on reinforcements and, as I say, kill the great majority of the Sonderkommando within a few hours.
- [43:26]
Dan Snow
So Gradowski is killed in that. But thankfully, some of his writing survives. What was known outside the camps, what was known in Moscow, in London, in Washington, about Auschwitz.
- [43:42]
Nicholas Vaxman
Well, the knowledge about Auschwitz grows and grows as the war progresses. There are secret Notes and information which arrives in the west from the Polish Underground, which partly draws on information which comes from inside the camp. There are prisoners who escape, who write reports which then circulate in the West. The British also decrypt SS telecommunications and gain more insight into what is happening inside the camps. In this way, in 1944, as the Allies get closer, the camps, or camps like Auschwitz are also in reach of Allied airplanes. So there are aerial photographs of the camp, sometimes extremely detailed photographs. I mean, if you look at them, you can see tracks of prisoners marching. We can see smoke coming from these. These pits where Jewish victims are being burned. So all of this information together does, over time, create a increasingly clear picture of what is happening in Auschwitz. Birth canal. More, of course, is known in the immediate vicinity of Auschwitz. I mean, local Germans who move into this area, civilian workers who work for German industry, like IG Farben, which sets up a huge factory drawing in part on forced labor, slave labor from Auschwitz. These officials, these workers who often live there with their families, of course, also hear rumors, and sometimes it is more than rumors. There is a memoir, an unpublished memoir by a female German teacher who moves to Auschwitz to teach German kids in what is to become a German city in the East. And she describes how she comes home on time from school and finds that her desk is covered in some kind of fine dust which has flown in through the windows. And her landlady tells her that this is human ash which has blown over from the concentration camp. So there is even more known about Auschwitz in the immediate vicinity. And those local Germans who lived here had a general idea, at least, of what was going on inside the camp.
- [46:12]
Dan Snow
You listen to Dan Snow's history here. We're talking about Auschwitz. More coming up. Was it too difficult to intervene? I mean, Churchill talks about his decision not to just bomb the camp. How has the debate sort of developed since the war on what the Allies could or could not have done earlier?
- [46:42]
Nicholas Vaxman
I think by summer 1944 or so, Birkenau was certainly in reach of Allied planes. And there are voices in the US of Jewish organizations who try to push the Allies or persuade the Allies into bombing the train tracks. In the end, these calls are not heeded because the primary focus of the military is on winning the war. That, incidentally, does not mean that no bombs ever fall on Auschwitz. There are several raids by US bombers, but they do not target the facilities, the infrastructure of the Holocaust. They target the huge IG farm factory in Monowitz, where the Germans want to produce synthetic fuel and rubber and this is seen as a prime target for the Allies. So there are bombing raids, big bombing raids in August and then September 1944, where some stray bombs fall on parts of the camp itself and kill a number of prisoners. Had some of these bombs strayed just a little bit further, the casualties would have been much, much, much higher. What that shows, of course, is that in an age where you do not have precision bombing, the risks for the prisoner population also were incredibly high.
- [48:19]
Dan Snow
In the end, Auschwitz would be liberated by the advancing Red Army. But there was more horrors in store for the prisoner population there, even after the crematoria were turned off, weren't there? I mean, as the Soviets approached, what happened to the inmates?
- [48:36]
Nicholas Vaxman
Well, for the prisoners, this is a time of almost unbearable tension because the closer the Allies come, the closer the Soviet army moves towards Auschwitz. And prisoners know at least broadly about what is happening. They hear rumors. Some prisoners are able to look at Nazi newspapers lying around in the camps. Some overhear conversations by or they listen into German radio. So there is general knowledge of how the front is moving. And the closer the Red army comes, the more nervous the prisoners become because they don't know what will happen. Are they going to be liberated in the camps? Is the SS going to kill them all? There are rumors that the SS is going to murder all the prisoners. Or is the SS going to move all of them away? None of this is clear. At the same time, the SS is beginning to start thinking and planning and then implementing the evacuation of Auschwitz. Auschwitz is the biggest SS camp. And the SS is determined that nothing of value, nothing that could be of use, is going to be left behind. So they start forcing prisoners to dismantle buildings, to destroy buildings. Right at the end, just before the Soviets arrive, they burn the huge warehouses where the remaining belongings of murdered Jews are stored. Documents are burned. There's a whole bonfire of evidence. The great majority of prisoner photographs of mugshots are burned. This goes on for weeks in advance of the actual liberation. The SS also forces prisoners from the Sonderkommade to dig up some of these pits filled with ashes and other human remains to scatter them in a nearby river and thus somehow try to cover up the evidence of mass murder. The SS also tries to salvage whatever it can still find. SS men officially cannot say that the war is going to be lost. And they have to at least publicly convince the belief that somehow Germany is going to turn around the war. So anything that could still be of use is being shipped or the SS tries to ship it to other camps and other sites. This includes building materials, it includes clothing, it includes the X ray machine that had been used in sterilization experiments, and it includes parts of the crematorium and the gastroma and bird canal. So some parts of these are dismantled as prisoners do this, they find valuables which the doomed had hidden in the gas chambers just before the SS through the cyclone, B pellets inside. And these parts then of the gas chambers and crematori are packed up and shipped to a secret site near the Mauthausen concentration camp. And the aim is to rebuild, at least I think, two of those crematoria here. So goods are shipped out, buildings are destroyed or dismantled, and prisoners are also taken out of the camp, sent elsewhere. And this already starts in the second half of 1944. Tens of thousands of Auschwitz prisoners are moved out in the second half of 1944, in autumn 1944. One of these is Anne Frank. She'd been deported with her family on the last major deportation train from the Netherlands to auschwitz Birkenau in September 1944, and is then sent to Bergen Belsen on these trains going out of Birkenau in November 1944. You've got to imagine that for the greatest part at least, of the life of Birkenau, this is a place where prisoners are arriving and never leave. And now in the second half of 1944, tens of thousands of prisoners are moved out of Birkenau to other concentration camps. And the climax of this then comes in January 45. The Soviet troops are only a couple of weeks away from arriving in Auschwitz. And in, in mid January 45, the SS begins to move. The great majority of prisoners outside forces them on death marches, on seemingly endless marches through the frozen fields and streets of occupied Poland. And thousands of prisoners die during these marches, either from the cold, from hunger, from disease. Anybody who cannot keep up with a column is shot by the SS and dumped on the side of the road. Those who survive these endless marches are then often forced into open freight trains and transported through the wintry landscape of what is left of Nazi Germany into remaining concentration camps like Buchenwald, like Mauthausen, like Ravensbruck.
- [54:10]
Dan Snow
What does Auschwitz look like when the Soviets capture it, when the Soviets liberate it in late January 1945?
- [54:19]
Nicholas Vaxman
Well, nothing like it would have done just a few months earlier. As I said, a lot of the infrastructure of the camp has been destroyed or dismantled, and there's only a very small proportion of prisoners left as well. In summer 1944, there are more than 100,000 prisoners in the Auschwitz complex. When the Soviet troops arrive on 27 January 1945, less than 10,000 survivors are still in Auschwitz. And a number of them are liberated only to then die within the first days or weeks after. I found, recently found, or looked at a ledger kept of surviving prisoners at the time. You have their names there and their dates of birth, and often you also have their date of death in there. It is heartbreaking to see that they only survived the SS and the camps for a few days or a few weeks at best.
- [55:23]
Dan Snow
Yes. And sometimes they ate food that their system was incapable of digesting at that point, and such was their state of weariness and degeneration and that food would kill them. The stories I get told by the survivors, that's some of the most tragic episodes, chapters of the stories you're told, aren't they?
- [55:41]
Nicholas Vaxman
Yes, and I think it's worth bearing this in mind. I mean, you know, sometimes there is a temptation maybe to see this as some kind of happy end to a terrible story. And it is not that these survivors, even those few overall prisoners who survive, of course, carry the trauma, the marks of a camp with them for the rest of their lives. Those who survive are far more likely to survive after months and months of suffering in other camps than in Auschwitz itself. More Auschwitz prisoners survive Auschwitz elsewhere. In other words, the end of Auschwitz isn't the end of suffering and it isn't the end of the concentration camps. In early April 1945, you still have more than 500,000 prisoners in SS concentration camps and the remaining camps, like Dachau, like Buchenwald, like Mauthausen. And a good number of them are survivors of Auschwitz. They survived the camp, they survived the death marches and the transports, and very often they then perished in these remaining camps. Elie Wiesel writes about the death of his father Shlomo in Buchenwald only days after they made it to Buchenwald following the death march and the train transport. So this isn't a story that somehow ends with the liberation of Auschwitz. It is really only the victory of the Allies and the total defeat of Germany that puts an end to the killings and the camps and the suffering.
- [57:19]
Dan Snow
As you lay out in your excellent prize winning book, KL A History of the Nazi Concentration camps. Nicholas Vaxman, thank you very much indeed for coming on the podcast on this important anniversary.
- [57:34]
Nicholas Vaxman
Thanks so much, Dan.
- [57:41]
Dan Snow
Well, thank you very much for listening to that podcast, folks. Thank you very much. In particular to my guest, Nicholas Vaxman. I hope this episode has helped you understand a little bit better how these atrocities were carried out. But one thing that just remains an enduring mystery is how ordinary people could have taken part in such horror, knowing full well what was happening. These are the people that oversaw and facilitated and participated and planned the murder of millions of people, men and women, who lived otherwise ordinary lives whose existence that point had been unremarkable, people like you and me. In the podcast he's listened to, you heard mention of Rudolf Huss, who was the commandant of Auschwitz. He oversaw the deaths of over 3 million people at the Nazi killing complex. It's been calculated that he is, as a result, one of the most, if not the most prolific mass murderer in human history. In our episode on Friday, we will be hearing his story and we'll learn about the concept, the idea articulated by the philosopher Hannah Arendt. We'll talk about the banality of evil. As you listen to this. I am in Poland for Holocaust Memorial Day, visiting Auschwitz on the day 80 years on on which it was liberated by the Red Army. And I'm also going to be getting special access to the house where Hus lived, where he enjoyed what was described as idyllic family life with his children, his wife, sprawling gardens. He read to his kids. They ate well. It was a happy time for them, just over the wall from Auschwitz, from the camp where he oversaw the gassing of hundreds of thousands of people. And then after a day's work, he went home for dinner with his wife and kids. This is the first time visitors are allowed into the house, which is being opened by the Counter Extremism Project. And they've just bought the property and they'll be turning it into a space for exhibitions about fighting extremism. But before they make any changes, history Hit has been invited to the Cedar House, which is remarkably, as you'll hear, it's still very much as it was when Hus and his family lived there. There are artifacts from the Holocaust period found in hidden spaces in the house just weeks ago. So join me on Friday to learn more about Hus and his house where evil resided. But it looked like any other happy family. And we're also going to learn a little bit about what's being done to fight extremism in the present day. Just hit Follow follow in your podcast player to get Friday's episode. See you then.
- [61:14]
Nicholas Vaxman
Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.
- [61:21]
Dan Snow
Hello.
- [61:22]
Nicholas Vaxman
Welcome to we signed an NDA, our.
- [61:24]
Dan Snow
Podcast where we talk about the people who sign NDAs.
- [61:26]
Nicholas Vaxman
If Hollywood is the North Pole and the celebrities are Santa, this is a show all about the elves, so please.
- [61:32]
Dan Snow
Don'T sue us, Santa.
- [61:33]
Nicholas Vaxman
My name is Amanda Lifford. If my voice sounds at all familiar, it's probably from the Vile Files podcast. And my name is Ann Maddox.
- [61:41]
Dan Snow
You may have seen me on Vanderpump.
- [61:43]
Nicholas Vaxman
Le Rules getting fired on national television by Tom Sandoval. The Glasgow Willy Wonka Experience.
- [61:49]
Dan Snow
One of the worst jobs in history.
- [61:51]
Nicholas Vaxman
Kirsty, you're on the right podcast.
- [61:53]
Dan Snow
I was wearing snow pants lying under Stephen Colbert.
- [61:57]
Nicholas Vaxman
Welcome. I've heard of Vanderpump Rules. I don't know what it is, so listen to we signed an NDA. Wherever you listen to podcasts, ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.
- [62:15]
Dan Snow
Com.