People in Auschwitz (Published in Association with the United States Holocaust Me) by Hermann Langbein

Author:Hermann Langbein [Langbein, Hermann]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2005-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

In the last chapter of the history of Auschwitz, the resistance movement was not able to play a decisive role.

In the fall of 1944 many members of the organization were assigned, in increasing numbers, to transports that were bound for other camps—even though the camp administration did not suspect that those involved belonged to the resistance movement, whose leadership was not identified until the very end. The isolated rebellion of part of the Sonderkommando meant an additional weakening. Finally the organization was, as Eugène Garnier put it, decapitated by the arrests on October 27. Then, too, the officer whom the Polish underground organization had sent to the Auschwitz area in order to keep up the contact with the organization in the camp fell into the hands of the Gestapo. He was carrying documents that gave the SS an outline of the illegal organization. A report from the commander of the security police in Kattowitz, dated December 18, 1944, describes the organization of the Polish underground movement; it indicates just how seriously the SS took this illegal activity. Here is an excerpt from the section headed “Inspector’s Office, Bielitz”:

The district commander’s office in Auschwitz plays a special role in this command. As some captured material indicates, the concentration camp in Auschwitz is also part of the AK (Armia Krajowa). The camp is serviced on behalf of the inspector’s office by the “military council of the camp,” the WRO (Wojskowa Rada Obozu). Contact with the camp is maintained by a number of persons, particularly the district commanders Danuta and the PPS man Kostka (PPS stands for Sozialistischen Partei Polens [Polish Socialist Party]). A certain “Rot” (cover name of Cyrankiewicz) was appointed as the AK commandant of the camp. He concerns himself particularly with making reports about the KL and transmits these to the area via a certain “Urban” (cover name of the Polish liaison officer who was captured by the SS). The reports about the Auschwitz camp contain information about the comings and goings of inmates, the structure of the camp, personnel, evaluation of SS leaders, the organization of the inmates, and plans for the future. Among the tasks of the WRO are preparations for the escape of inmates. Sending these on is the responsibility of the Bojowka organization, which was founded especially for this purpose and has connections with Cracow via various places of refuge.

Although the resistance organization no longer was at full strength in the final period, its spirit did not disappear, and it manifested itself in a declaration composed in the summer of 1944. Here is an excerpt: “Only an international collaboration based on solidarity and the fight for freedom give us the right to regard ourselves as comrades in arms struggling against the disaster that Hitler’s fascism has brought upon the world.” In keeping with this idea, the members of the Combat Group Auschwitz were active after the evacuation and transfer to other camps in the final phase, shortly before the liberation of those camps.

The results of the

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