The first people sentenced to Auschwitz concentration camp

They were still on the train. A dozen or so hours earlier, they had been in prison in Tarnów. Perhaps the thought occurred to them that they were going to another prison? Perhaps a camp? They couldn't know what awaited them soon. They couldn't foresee the future any further – it was especially difficult in wartime. But they were heading towards a destination. One they hadn't chosen. The Germans had. Kazimierz Albin [born 07.06.1920; camp number: 118] recalled that moment: " The train slowly made a large curve and braked suddenly ." First impressions were what mattered: " From the train windows, we saw a large building surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and guardhouses ," recalled Jerzy Bogusz [27.09.1921; 61]. " On the road leading to us stood two rows of strangely dressed men. They wore striped trousers and blouses, and held sticks in their hands ." Stanisław Kobylański [03.05.1923; 575] reacted differently – this strange outfit seemed like pajamas to him. He continued: " They brought us to a hospital or a madhouse. The latter thought seemed more plausible to me because before the war, lunatics wore precisely this kind of blue-and-white striped clothing in hospitals ." The train of prisoners stopped just outside Auschwitz. Barbed wire separated them from the buildings of the former military barracks and crossed by the railway tracks leading to the buildings. Perhaps fears and anxieties were born in the minds of the condemned: the uncertainty of the present coupled with the uncertainty of the future. Perhaps they subconsciously sensed their justification. They reached the camp...

Did they have to? In the occupier's view, they posed a threat to the "German order" being enforced on Polish soil. They were called "political prisoners." Was this right? Most of them were young people. They had only a dozen or so years of life behind them. Some had just finished school and were gaining professional qualifications. They hadn't yet reached adulthood. " In terms of social background, education, and professions ," recalled one of them, Bogumił Antoniewicz [10/06/1915; 517], " we were a heterogeneous group ." Some were neighbors. Others knew each other from their backyards, the suburbs of small towns, or nearby villages in Lesser Poland. There were a few Jews in this transport. Like Sack Naftali: " He took his final exams together with me ," recalled Jerzy Korczowski [20/11/1920; 166], " He was on the same list as Poles, his schoolmates ." Regardless of how many differences these people had, they certainly had one thing in common: Polish citizenship.

The "action" began to gather pace, and the space filled with German screams, amplified by profanity. Kazimierz Tokarz [12/11/1920; 282] remembered his first words: " Cursed Poles. Bandits. Swine dogs. Everyone out! " Alarmed by the pace of events, Jerzy Bielecki [28/03/1921; 243] stated: " All hell has broken loose. There's no other way to describe it ." [12; 206-207] These people in strange costumes, who had been in a kind of lethargy moments before, awoke and, with the support of the SS men, moved towards the disembarking prisoners. Wiesław Kielar [12/08/1919; 290] recalled these moments: " Quickly, their shirts and trousers turned into rags soaked in sweat and blood ."

There was supposed to be order. Everyone in ranks. At attention: listen to the speech of the camp director, SS man Karl Fritzsch. Its content left no doubt: " You have arrived here not to a sanatorium, but to a German concentration camp, from which there is no other way out but through the chimney. If anyone doesn't like it, they can go straight to the wires. If there are Jews in the transport, they have the right to live no longer than two weeks, priests a month, the rest three months ." [11;44-77] After the "roll call," the prisoners were stripped of all their property, shaved, and registered. Their age ceased to matter. Names and surnames replaced numbers. They could no longer create their own history. They became human material, surviving (as the near future showed—temporarily) in the most criminal German concentration and extermination camp on Polish soil: KL Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Particularly intense activity began in the spring of 1940. The first to arrive were the so-called SS experts. They were tasked with assessing the site's value and the feasibility of establishing a camp there. They determined that the buildings that had once housed military barracks were in ruins, and the nearby riverside land was marshy. Ultimately, however, the location—near railway junctions and the appropriate distance from the city—gave the site a special value: they concealed its true role. In early April, work began on adapting the grounds to serve as a concentration camp. The first supervisors—fifteen SS men—also arrived. Shortly thereafter, in early May, the first forty Polish prisoners were transported from Dachau to Auschwitz. Temporarily, as slave labor, they erected barbed wire fences surrounding the barracks buildings. In the third quarter of that month, thirty Germans joined the ranks: criminals previously held in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. Prepared, they awaited the first transport of prisoners. Polish. Ultimately, they were supposed to be the proof and justification for the functions assigned to German criminals. At the same time, they were an extension of the power of the camp SS men: " They identified their attitude with that of the SS men, which led to the abandonment of all moral scruples towards their subordinate prisoners ." [6;12] This was proven on June 14, 1940, when the Polish prisoners arrived. That day, the Poles, who were supposed to return to Dachau concentration camp, thought: would it be worth staying with their own people? This enthusiasm was quickly cooled by the SS officer supervising them, who predicted the future of that place: " This camp will be hell on earth ." [6;15]

There was another group of people in Oświęcim – Jews. In the late 1930s, they constituted at least half of its inhabitants. From September 4, 1939 (the entry of German troops and the takeover of the city) until April 9, 1941 (the forced deportation of the last Jews), this population was repressed, starting with slave labor (several hundred people were deported to camps in Germany; from April to June 1940, " SS men took 100-200 Jewish men to work on renovating barracks ") [5], through internal displacement and the plunder of property, to physical and psychological abuse of the defenseless (" SS men ordered the Jews to kneel, put their beards on bricks and cut them off. They beat and kicked them in the process ") [4]. Although the outbreak of the war saw a constant movement of people in general, especially Jews – aware of the Nazi threat – seeking refuge in territories under the Soviet Union, their numbers did not change significantly. The places of those who left Oświęcim were taken by Jews from nearby, smaller towns. The future of those who had "always been in the city" and of the "wartime" newcomers was characterized by a temporary nature. Initially, when the idea of ​​creating a camp was becoming reality, the Germans ordered Jews to leave the suburb, the so-called Zasole. A year later, in April 1941, all Oświęcim Jews were deported to centers in Upper Silesia. [1-5] Paweł Gliksman, who lived in Oświęcim at the time, wrote: " On April 9, Oświęcim was Judenrein ." [5] Tauba Grunn was one of the last to leave the city. Years later she recalled: " It was hard for us to leave our family home and go on a wandering journey, but at the same time a certain feeling of relief came over everyone when the train left the terrible city, to which some returned, but only after death ." [1]

The "political" prisoners, the first transported to Auschwitz on June 14th, were supposed to be aware from the outset why they had been brought there. They received a foretaste within the first few days. Subjected to the authority of the Germans – SS men and kapos – they had to obey orders: "get down," "stand up," "jump frog," "crawl" (referred to as "sport"), learn German marching songs, the forms of reporting and reporting out, and how to put on and take off caps on command. [6;16] Violence was a means of mobilizing obedience. Work was to be the basis of their continued existence: " It serves to teach you order and absolute discipline ," announced Karl Fritzsch. " There are no sick people here; they are either alive or dead ." [11;50] After the so-called quarantine, the prisoners were sent to the camp proper. Above the entrance gate, they saw a sign: "Arbeit macht frei." How deceptive, mocking, and false this slogan was was demonstrated by the ruthless treatment of prisoners. For it was not work, but the terror inflicted upon them, that served from the very beginning to break the capacity for resistance. [8;217. Also: 9;230-233] Although in modern times Auschwitz concentration camp is one of the symbols of the Holocaust, it was originally established with the intention of combating the disobedience of the defeated: citizens of the defeated Second Polish Republic…

Dr. Paweł Wieczorek

Sources and bibliography:

1. AŻIH, 301/289. Tauba Grunn's accounts;

2. AŻIH, 301/2442. Accounts of Ewa Neiger;

3. AŻIH, 301/2489. Accounts by Anna Honig;

4. AŻIH, 301/2490. Accounts of Sylwia Bachner;

5. AŻIH, 301/3489. Accounts by Paweł Gliksman;

6. D. Czech, Calendar of events in KL Auschwitz, Oświęcim 1992;

7. S. Friedlander, Time of Extermination. Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939–1945, Warsaw 2010;

8. W. Sofsky, The Regime of Terror: Concentration Camp, Warsaw 2016;

9. N. Wachsmann, History of Nazi Concentration Camps, Warsaw 2016;

10. L. Smith, The Holocaust: True Stories of Survivors, Warsaw 2017;

11. P. MA Cywiński, The beginnings of Auschwitz in the memory of the first transport of Polish political prisoners, Oświęcim 2018;

12. L. Rees, The Holocaust. A New History, Warsaw 2018.

Also: http://www.auschwitz.org/ , http://chsro.pl/

Prepared by Anna Kilian

Paweł Wieczorek – PhD in Humanities. Specialization: contemporary history. Collaborations: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the Jewish Historical Institute, and the Jewish Social and Cultural Association in Poland. Winner of the Jewish Historical Institute's M. Bałaban competition for the best doctoral dissertation (2014). Participant in the international research project "Pogroms against Jews in Polish Lands in the 19th and 20th Centuries" (2013-2016). Author of articles and books. Research interests: Polish-Jewish relations after 1945, Jewish social and political movements, national and ethnic minorities in Poland, the Cold War, totalitarianism.

Photo: Tarnów railway station, June 14, 1940 (public domain)