Deception by Christopher Hale

Author:Christopher Hale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press

Müller and the other Sonderkommandos repainted ‘the walls of the four changing rooms and eight gas chambers …11

Elevators were installed in two of the crematoria to connect the gas chamber with the incineration room; another was equipped with new ventilation fans to accelerate the killing. Höß introduced other efficiencies. Müller describes how ‘day and night many hundreds of prisoners were busy laying railways tracks right up to crematoria 2 and 3’ and the construction of a ‘loading and unloading ramp complete with a three track railway system … to provide a direct link between the death factories, Auschwitz and the outside world.’ Müller understood that: ‘Quite obviously all these efforts were intended to put the places of extermination into peak condition to guarantee smooth, and continuous, operation.’

Müller observed the return of Höß to Auschwitz at the beginning of May, accompanied by another SS officer, Hauptscharführer Otto Moll. The arrival of the chubby-faced Moll, known to the prisoners as ‘Cyclops’ because he had a glass eye, filled Müller ‘with fear and foreboding’.12 In the meantime, Eichmann’s deputy in Berlin, Rolf Günther, began ordering supplies of Zyklon B from the manufacturer, Degesch. By the end of May, 990kg of the ‘Desinfektor’ had been supplied to the camp.

In their offices in Berlin, the heads of the SS-WVHA looked forward to reaping huge returns from the new ‘Große Aktion’. Whether they worked or were killed, the Hungarian Jews would be stripped of everything they possessed that had not been pocketed by the Hungarians. Yet, like the SS chief Himmler, they abhorred theft by others. At the camp, SS men were required to sign a statement of responsibility regarding their participation in the operation against Hungarian Jews. The statement demanded ‘unconditional confidentiality’ in the ‘swift and smooth’ execution of the tasks. ‘I am aware,’ the document read, ‘that should I acquire Jewish property of any sort through unauthorised means, I will be condemned to die.’13

By the time the SS men signed this document pledging to carry out mass murder efficiently and honestly, the death camp was ready.

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