The Commandant of Auschwitz by Volker Koop

Author:Volker Koop [Koop, Volker]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473886889
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2021-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

Kammler is believed to have died near Prague and was declared dead on 9 May 1945 by the district court in Berlin-Charlottenburg.

Karl Bischoff, SS Storm Command Leader, head of the central construction department31

Karl Bischoff worked from 1935 in the Central Office Administration for Construction of the Luftwaffe and after the beginning of the war was instrumental in building airfields in Belgium and northern France. When his superior, Hans Kammler, became head of the SS Central Office Finances and Constructions (SS-HHB), he offered Karl Bischoff a rapid rise to the rank of an SS Head Storm Leader. He then assigned him the leadership role in the special construction management (later central construction management), effective 1 October 1941, to set up a camp for prisoners of war at Auschwitz, which later became the extermination camp under the name Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Höß conceded that Bischoff was a good construction specialist, though ‘stubborn and wilful’:

He gave everything only from the viewpoint of a building specialist. He was a workhorse and demanded full commitment from all his subordinates, too. From a technical point of view Bischoff was equal to any situation. He was a great organiser, but even better at procuring building material of all kinds. What could be scraped up in the region of Germany and the occupied countries, Bischoff supplied. He had several buyers on the go all the time. Right from the beginning Bischoff recognised correctly the difficult situation of Auschwitz and also always threw his whole person into the fray, often to the limit, in order to spur on the Auschwitz construction projects.

There were repeated sharp disputes between Bischoff and me because he did not want to accept the necessity to change the sequence of the construction projects – to which I was often forced by newly emerging events – or because he saw the situation differently to me for technical reasons. Or he wanted to have the prisoners deployed at a different site, which I had to reject for security reasons. A further sore point between us was the allocation of the civilian workforce, without whom Bischoff thought he could not cope, but which I had to reject because of the high number and the related risk of confusion for the guard details. So there was always friction between us, which could often only be terminated by Kammler’s rebuke of Bischoff. Yet nevertheless Bischoff worked incessantly on the expansion of Auschwitz. For some time he was provisionally assigned to the setting up of Mittelbau [Central Block = sub-camp of Buchenwald] and he did not rest until he could return to Auschwitz, although he had great opportunities for advancement at Mittelbau.

As much as Bischoff organised legally, but most often illegally, in terms of building materials, and moved around in co-operation with I.G. Farben Industries, it was not enough to put an end to the Auschwitz calamities. All the offices cursed him because they thought that he put their offices last of all the construction. He was continually at war with everybody. He could

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