HHS15 by Lectures On The Holocaust 2nd Edition (2010)

Author:Lectures On The Holocaust 2nd Edition (2010)
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Ill. 118: Sauna in the hygiene building BW 5b in Auschwitz-Birkenau (Pressac 1989, p. 57).

R: What Nolte means here and Friedman confirms is the fact that human beings, whenever they are deprived of the sources of information usually available to them, tend to draw a complete picture of what is going on in the world based on the few facts available. The German concentration camps were no exception in this regard. These camps contained inmates from all over the world, that is, people from many different cultures. Many of them hardly understood the German language or not at all. They hardly knew where they were, nor were they familiar with German civilian or military customs. It is not surprising that many inmates took rumor or hearsay for pure fact. This fruitful soil for the preparation of rumors was of course heavily exploited by a variety of underground groups for the dissemination of Allied propaganda, as we shall see later.

At this point, as a classic example of a rumor which arose from uncertainty, linked with mistrust of the enemy, I would like to quote a short passage from the book Die Todesfabrik (The Death Factory), in which the author reports on the sauna built for the inmates at Auschwitz-Birkenau (Kraus/Kulka 1958, pp. 47f.; cf. Rademacher 2004):

“Even without specialist knowledge, anyone will recognize that the Nazi doctors constantly committed crimes against humanity in the concentration camps. We cannot forget the SS officer, a doctor, who resided in Birkenau at the beginning of 1943. His little hobby-horse was the ‘Finnish sauna.’

This bath, in Birkenau, consisted of two rooms, separated from each other which could be hermetically sealed off from each other by means of a door. The inmates had to undress in the corridor and give up their clothing and underclothing for delousing.

In the first room was a gigantic brick oven, in which large stones were brought to white heat over a period of several hours before the beginning of the bath. Against the wall opposite the oven was an extremely primitive bench, arranged in steps, reaching almost to the ceiling.

The naked inmates had to sit on these benches, as closely together as they could. One sat next to the other, the healthy ones pressed next to the sick ones, many of whom had infectious skin eruptions.

Then the heated stones were doused with water. As a result of the heat, the emaciated, sick, ruined bodies of the inmates began to sweat heavily. The new arrivals, who had to climb to the highest benches, sweated most of all. Sweat, mixed with dirt and pus from suppurating sores, ran down in streams. When a few had already begun to lose consciousness, the hermetically sealed door was opened to the second room, in which the naked inmates were driven under ice-cold showers with shouting and the blows of truncheons by the inmate trustees.”

L: A sauna as a torture chamber!

R: Exactly. Saunas were generally introduced in Germany during the war to strengthen the immune system, in Auschwitz as well, as may be seen here, for the benefit of the inmates (see Ill.

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