Saving Lives in Auschwitz

Ewa K. Bacon

Description

In a 1941 Nazi roundup of educated Poles, Stefan Budziaszek-newly graduated from medical school in Krakow-was incarcerated in the Krakow Montelupich Prison and transferred to the Auschwitz concentration camp in February 1942. German big businesses brutally exploited the cheap labor of prisoners in the camp, and workers were dying. In 1943, Stefan, now a functionary prisoner, was put in charge of the on-site prisoner hospital, which at the time was more like an infirmary staffed by well-connected but untrained prisoners. Stefan transformed this facility from just two barracks into a working hospital and outpatient facility that employed more than 40 prisoner doctors and served a population of 10,000 slave laborers. Stefan and his staff developed the hospital by commandeering medication, surgical equipment, and even building materials, often from the so-called Canada warehouse filled with the effects of Holocaust victims. But where does seeking the cooperation of the Nazi concentration camp staff become collusion with Nazi genocide? How did physicians deal with debilitated patients who faced "selection" for transfer to the gas chambers? Auschwitz was a cauldron of competing agendas. Unexpectedly, ideological rivalry among prisoners themselves manifested itself as well. Prominent Holocaust witnesses Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi both sought treatment at this prisoner hospital. They, other patients, and hospital staff bear witness to the agency of prisoner doctors in an environment better known for death than survival.
Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1: 1939: Germanization

Chapter 2: Stefan's Arrest and Montelupich Prison, June 1941–February 1942: From New Doctor to Political Prisoner

Chapter 3: Concentration Camps, the New Enterprise Zone: Forced Labor, Slave Labor, and Prisoners

Chapter 4: Auschwitz Camps Develop: Social Strategies, Medicine, Allies, and Deadly Typhus

Chapter 5: The Jawischowitz Subcamp: Finding Sanctuary, Executions, Phenol Injections, SS Dr. Wirths, and Stefan's Transfer

Chapter 6: Auschwitz Labor Issues: Manpower Shortages, Prisoner Exhaustion, and Extermination Agendas

Chapter 7: Aspects of the Buna-Monowitz HKB, the Prisoners' Hospital

Chapter 8: Aspects of Survival in the Camp

Chapter 9: Five Men in the HKB: Their ExperiencesChapter 10: End Games: The Evacuation

Chapter 11: Coda: Addressing the Teleological Deception of Retrospect

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Appendix 1: Register of Physicians (in Different Time Periods) Active in the Prisoners' Hospital in Monowitz

Appendix 2: Development of the Buna-Monowitz Hospital Barracks

Appendix 3: Stefan Budziaszek's Deposition Regarding His Arrest, 1949

Biographical Note

Index

Sujets

• Holocaust
• Histoire
• The Holocaust
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Purdue University Press
• Date de parution: 15 juin 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781612494937
• Langue: English

Extrait

SAVING LIVES IN
AUSCHWITZ
The Prisoners’ Hospital in Buna-Monowitz
Ewa K. Bacon
SAVING LIVES IN
AUSCHWITZ
The Prisoners’ Hospital in Buna-Monowitz
Ewa K. Bacon
Purdue University Press West Lafayette, Indiana
© Copyright 2017 by Purdue University Press. First printing in hardback, 2018.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-55753-824-6
The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier paperback edition as follows:
Names: Bacon, Ewa K., author.
Title: Saving Lives in Auschwitz: The Prisoners’ Hospital in Buna-Monowitz / Ewa K. Bacon.
Description: West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, [2017] | Series: Shofar Supplements in Jewish Studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers:
LCCN 2017012197
ISBN 9781557537799 (pbk.: alk. paper)
ISBN 9781612494920 (epdf)
ISBN 9781612494937 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Budziaszek, Stefan. | Auschwitz (Concentration camp) | Jewish physicians—Medical care. | Concentration camp inmates—Medical care. | World War, 1939–1945—Prisoners and prisons, Polish. | Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)
Classification: LCC D806 .B33 2017 | DDC 940.53/18092 [B] —dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017012197
Cover: The image used on the cover is a never-before-published artifact from within the prison, taken from a hand-drawn gift card, a name-day card, given to Stefan by a fellow prisoner. As only art can and with the candor of dark prison humor, it speaks to the complex double-bind of doing no harm, while assisting the SS and saving lives in Auschwitz. The full image appears and is discussed here publicly for the first time.
To Stefan’s great-grandchildren :
Evelyn, Charlotte, Eleanor, and Katherine ,
the fourth generation.
CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction
1 1939: Germanization
2 Stefan’s Arrest and Montelupich Prison
3 Concentration Camps, the New Enterprise Zone
4 Auschwitz Camps Develop
5 The Jawischowitz Subcamp
6 Slave Labor Issues
7 The Buna-Monowitz HKB, the Prisoners’ Hospital
8 Survival in the Camp
9 Patients Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Others
10 The Evacuation
11 Hindsight Bias
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
APPENDIXES
1 Register of Physicians
2 Development of Hospital Barracks
3 Stefan Budziaszek’s 1949 Arrest
Biographical Note
Index
PREFACE
My father had a tattoo. It was a faint blue line on his left forearm, 20526. Growing up in Germany, I saw that many adults around me also had a tattoo. My parents and I were displaced persons stranded outside of Poland in the British occupation zone of Germany. I spoke Polish at home and German in school. I knew the term “DP” (“Displaced Persons”) and I knew that we weren’t really “home,” that we lived, as the Poles would say, “outside the border.” Many DPs were scattering, moving away from Germany. I was not at all aware of the difference between those DPs with tattoos who were Roman Catholic and those with tattoos who were Jewish.
My father, Stefan Budziaszek, was a doctor and my mother, Ewa Irena, was a nurse. They met and married in the chaos of postwar Germany in 1945 and their marriage had disintegrated by 1954. It was perhaps not an uncommon event, but it represented an enormous break in my life. Both parents immediately remarried and my mother and I and my step-father, Jerzy Kujawski, left Germany for Sweden and three years later, in 1957, for the United States. My father married a German Jewish woman, had a son, Stevie, and stayed in Germany. I didn’t see him again or meet his new family until I was 19, a student at Stanford University, and traveling back to Germany for the first time.
He still had the tattoo and I now knew that meant he had been a prisoner in a concentration camp. It was accepted and not a matter for discussion, even in the family. Neither he nor his friends talked about those years. It was much like other veterans of other wars: it was better not to bring it up. It was not until 2002, some eight years after my father’s death in 1994, when I received a large carton of documents from Germany, that I had access to any information about those war years. By now I was a historian. Since I am a native speaker of both Polish and German, I specialized in Central European history. But I had no research agenda that dwelled on Auschwitz. In the United States, when I mentioned the tattoo and Auschwitz, I had to repeatedly explain that yes, my father had been in Auschwitz, and, no, he didn’t die there. No, we were not Jews, and yes, many other non-Jews were also in the concentration camps.
The terms “Holocaust” and “genocide” were now in wide currency. The enormity of the Jewish Shoah became the subject of intense study. Scholars listened to Holocaust survivors and documented their stories. There was not, however, a collective noun for non-Jewish survivors or victims. There still is not. Those Holocaust survivors who formed families raised children who were identified as “second generation” victims, as in Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel, Maus. I also belong to a second generation, but I do not share in the level of trauma of the Jewish cohort. Non-Jewish victims of Nazi atrocities are only labeled by their nation: Poles, Dutch, French, and so on, and thus were subsumed by a political identity.
I found a deeply fascinating document among my father’s papers: a transcript of his oral testimony to the museum and research center established in Auschwitz after the war. This was the first time that I had access to a coherent narrative of his war experiences, and I found it startling and exciting on many levels. First, it was part of my family history and formed the subtext to my upbringing. Second, it was a primary historical document, a rare and valuable source to a working historian. Third, it was like nothing that I could have imagined. Here was the full story of political intrigue, of arrests and beatings, of transfer to the notorious death site, Auschwitz, of some place called “Buna,” of improbable achievements, and finally of rescue and survival. I was determined to translate this Polish document into English, a language that my children could read, so they could share this story.
I am thus writing for the third generation of survivors. As a historian I am familiar with the context of the war and its perpetrators and understand the rise of Nazis in Germany and the vast cast of characters involved. But I quickly realized that my third generation children and their compatriots do not have any great familiarity with this information. The names and places and details of my father Stefan’s story needed a context.
Who were these Nazis and why did they attack Poland? What was their attitude toward Slavs? Why did they arrest educated people? Why would a world-famous German company decide to build a factory near Auschwitz? Who were the Auschwitz inmates? Who were the jailors? Who were the prisoners? How was Auschwitz managed? Why did conditions in Auschwitz change? What is the difference between a labor camp and an extermination camp? How was Auschwitz different for Jewish inmates? How was it possible to survive what more than one survivor called the anus mundi ? Fundamentally, was Stefan’s story verifiable? Who could substantiate his narrative?
Many of my stereotypical assumptions about Auschwitz were shattered as I assimilated Stefan’s story. Fundamentally, Auschwitz was a political prison and a labor camp. It was not planned with gas chambers and crematoria; those instruments of genocide developed over time. Stefan and his fellow long-term prisoners were distinct from the vast multitude of Jewish families swept up across Europe and shipped to Auschwitz to be exterminated. Prison laborers, both gentile and Jewish, had to deal with quotidian details: food, shelter, clothing, health, fellow prisoners, and jobs. Skills mattered, giving working prisoners a level of agency in a brutal system. Nazis used prisoners who were carpenters or electricians to build the camps. They also used prisoners who were doctors to deal with injuries and diseases.
Only one piece of paper survived from my father’s long imprisonment in Auschwitz. I found it in the green file folder labeled “20526,” his Auschwitz number. It is a small, stiff piece of paper, a hand-lettered greeting card from the camp carpenters, to honor Stefan’s name-day celebration. It is the equivalent of a “Hallmark” production. In Auschwitz? In the death camp? I realized that I had a lot to learn about what it meant to be a long-term prisoner. Who were these carpenters and why were they sending Stefan a card? Who had the time, energy and supplies to provide this card? Was there a party?
The story of the prisoner hospital in the third large camp built in Auschwitz, the Buna camp, exists within a complex history. Prisoners not only managed to survive enormous privations in Auschwitz, but they also exhibited vigorous agency to protect one another. My children and grandchildren and others who might venture to read this story are not likely to be historians. I hope that I have provided them, the third and fourth generation, with enough detail that they can understand the forces which disrupted so many lives in the middle of the twentieth century.
INTRODUCTION
Some seventy years have passed since the collapse of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. Allied soldi