Selection (concentration camp)

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Selection in Auschwitz-Birkenau on May 26, 1944 ( Auschwitz album )

The term selection refers to the period of National Socialism primarily due to the rejection of "non-work use enabled" deportees , forced laborers or concentration camp prisoners who were subsequently murdered. The term selection was probably not used in the contemporary parlance of the SS guards ; the process has been referred to as sorting out and scrapping .

Selection through action 14f13

As part of an "invalid or prisoner euthanasia" that Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler had arranged with Philipp Bouhler , sick, old and "no longer able to work" concentration camp prisoners were mainly between spring 1941 and March 1942, but in some cases until 1944 Killing facilities under the control of the T4 central office murdered by carbon monoxide gas.

The camp commanders had registration forms filled out for prisoners who appeared to be unable to work for a longer period or permanently, with which information on incurable physical ailments, war damage and previous crimes were recorded. An arriving medical commission, which consisted of relevant experienced T4 experts , prepared - initially based on visual inspection, later only based on the files - an expert opinion with a decision as to whether the prisoner should be referred to " Operation 14f13 ".

The first selections of this kind took place in Sachsenhausen concentration camp from April 1941 ; In the summer of 1941 prisoners from the Buchenwald and Auschwitz concentration camps were gassed in the Pirna-Sonnenstein killing center . Selected prisoners from the Mauthausen , Dachau and Flossenbürg concentration camps were murdered in the Hartheim killing center . "Retired" prisoners from Buchenwald and Ravensbrück concentration camps were murdered in the Sonnenstein and Bernburg killing centers . The total number of concentration camp prisoners killed by Operation 14f13 is given as 12,330 to 12,930.

Despite its limited scope, Aktion 14f13 was "of central importance to the history of selection": It established the principle of selection in the camps, which soon broke away from its pseudo-medical legitimation and was operated independently by the camp staff.

Stock selections

In winter, inmates at roll call in Sachsenhausen concentration camp

Camp selections were common in all concentration camps during the war years . Prisoners who looked frail or who were considered superfluous in the overcrowded camp were regularly singled out and killed.

Selections during roll call in the camp or in the " block " were ordered by the camp management. The block staff bolted the barracks doors and drove the prisoners into a chamber. The SS officer stood at the outer door, let everyone run through the room and, after a brief glance, decided between life and death.

SS doctors and paramedics or the Revierkapo were responsible for regular selections in the hospitals . The victims were killed by heart injections, locked in death blocks to starve, or taken to gas chambers for extermination . The territorial selections in Auschwitz reached their greatest numerical extent: in the months of August to December 1942 alone, 2,467 people were killed there with lethal injections, mostly phenol injections directly into the heart muscle.

In the extermination camps of Aktion Reinhardt - Belzec , Sobibor and Treblinka - those arriving were murdered almost without exception: only a few people were picked from the transport trains to supplement the prisoner work detail.

Selections in Auschwitz

Collection of walking aids (Auschwitz Memorial)

The Schmelt office , which had been organizing the labor deployment of Jews in Upper Silesia and the Sudetenland since October 15, 1940 , had forced laborers no longer usable for work selected for the first time at the end of 1941, in order to then transport them to Auschwitz and have them destroyed in the main camp. Friedrich Karl Kuczynski and, in another case, presumably the deputy director, Heinrich Lindner , were responsible for these selections, which were carried out before arrival in Auschwitz .

The selection on the arrival of a deportation train arriving in Auschwitz is first documented for a “family transport” on April 29, 1942 with 1054 Slovak Jews, 331 of whom were gassed in the crematorium of the main camp . On July 4, 1942 , a selection took place for the first time on a deportation train destined for Auschwitz-Birkenau : The Jews classified as “unfit for work” were murdered with Zyklon B in Bunker II at Auschwitz-Birkenau . Since then, such selections have taken place regularly and have become a "routine matter". Until May 1944, the selections for mass transports were carried out at the “Judenrampe” at the Auschwitz freight station 2.5 kilometers away.

Heinrich Himmler visited the Auschwitz concentration camp complex on July 17, 1942 and observed the selection of a transport that had just arrived and the gassing. Of the two deportation trains with 2000 Jews arriving from the Netherlands that day , 1251 men and 300 women were sent to the camp, the remaining 449 people murdered in gas chambers .

View of the train ramp in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, photo from 2006

On May 9, 1944, Rudolf Höß ordered the expansion of the ramp and the three-track railway connection within the fence around the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp to be completed more quickly. Doctors were always assigned to the "ramp service" and decided without detailed examination which of the inmates who had arrived by train would be sent to the gas chambers. After getting out of the car, the families were separated and two rows were formed: in one there were men and boys from the age of sixteen (from 1944 also fourteen year olds), in the other women and children. The victims were judged visually; sometimes they were asked a brief question about age or occupation.

Wolfgang Sofsky points out that the selection practice was less geared to professional skills, physical strength or age, but was more geared to current labor requirements and storage capacity. According to the judgment of the historian Jan Erik Schulte , there was a maximum margin of discretion in selections, which allowed a “ultimately only superficially utilitarian motivated selection process”.

In Auschwitz-Birkenau, the location doctor Eduard Wirths, as their superior, was responsible for assigning camp doctors to the selection process and managing the selections . The on-site doctor was a subordinate of the camp commandant and in the hierarchy of orders for the inspection of the concentration camps (ICL) subordinated to the chief doctor of the ICL. As the only camp doctor, Hans Münch is said to have refused to take part in selections on the ramp.

The situation at the ramp did not allow any resistance from the victims; they were appeased or intimidated and left in the hope that it was a labor assignment or relocation. Firearms were "almost never" used there.

See also

Web links

literature

  • Wolfgang Sofsky: The order of terror: The concentration camp. Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-596-13427-7 , pp. 276-295: The selection.
  • Leny Yāhîl: The Shoah. Struggle for survival and extermination of the European Jews. Luchterhand, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-453-02978-X .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The procedure: The Auschwitz concentration camp. The 1st Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial , p. 37244 (see sheet 595a-41, p. 421) ISBN 3-89853-501-0 (CD-ROM)
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Sofsky: The order of terror: The concentration camp. Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-596-13427-7 , p. 277.
  3. ↑ Detlef Garbe: The concentration camps as sites of mass murder. In: Günther Morsch, Bertrand Perz: New studies on National Socialist mass killings by poison gas. Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-940938-99-2 , p. 328.
  4. ^ Wolfgang Sofsky: The order of terror ... Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-596-13427-7 , p. 277.
  5. ^ Wolfgang Sofsky: The order of terror ... Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-596-13427-7 , p. 277 f.
  6. ^ Wolfgang Sofsky: The order of terror ... Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-596-13427-7 , p. 279 f.
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Sofsky: The order of terror ... Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-596-13427-7 , p. 283.
  8. ^ Wolfgang Sofsky: The order of terror ... Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-596-13427-7 , pp. 286/287.
  9. ^ Jan Erik Schulte: The Wannsee Conference and Auschwitz . In: Norbert Kampe, Peter Klein (ed.): The Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942 ... , Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-412-21070-0 , p. 235.
  10. ^ Rainer Fröbe: Building and Destroying. The central site management Auschwitz and the final solution. In: Christian Gerlach: "Average offender" - action and motivation. Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-922611-84-2 , p. 160 with note 25. - These victims were gassed in the crematorium of the main camp.
  11. ^ Danuta Czech: Calendar of the events in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp 1939–1945 . Reinbek near Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-498-00884-6 , pp. 241-242.
  12. ↑ Israel Gutman and Bella Gutterman: The Auschwitz Album. The story of a transport . 2. revised Edition Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-89244-911-9 , p. 37.
  13. ↑ Wolfgang Sofsky: The Order of Terror ... Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-596-13427-7 , p. 88.
  14. ↑ Hans Mommsen: Auschwitz, July 17, 1942 - The Road to the European “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”. dtv Munich 2002, ISBN 3-423-30605-X , p. 7f / Danuta Czech: Calendar of events in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp 1939–1945. Reinbek bei Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-498-00884-6 , p. 250/251 formulated: “He is present when unloading, selecting those unfit for work, killing by gas in bunker no. 2 and clearing the bunker . “ / Peter Longerich: Heinrich Himmler: Biography. Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-88680-859-5 , p. 591 formulated: “... and took this opportunity to demonstrate the murder of people in a gas chamber. "
  15. ^ Danuta Czech: Calendar of the events in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp 1939–1945. Reinbek near Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-498-00884-6 , p. 250f; Jan Erik Schulte: The Wannsee Conference and Auschwitz . In: Norbert Kampe, Peter Klein (Ed.): The Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942 ... , Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-412-21070-0 , p. 237.
  16. ^ Danuta Czech: Calendar of the events in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp 1939–1945 . Reinbek near Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-498-00884-6 , p. 769.
  17. ↑ Israel Gutman and Bella Gutterman: The Auschwitz Album. The story of a transport . 2. revised Edition Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-89244-911-9 , p. 37/38.
  18. ↑ Wolfgang Sofsky: The Order of Terror ... Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-596-13427-7 , p. 289.
  19. ^ Jan Erik Schulte: The Wannsee Conference and Auschwitz . In: Norbert Kampe, Peter Klein (Ed.): The Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942 ... , Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-412-21070-0 , p. 237.
  20. ↑ Wolfgang Sofsky: The order of terror ... Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-596-13427-7 , p. 293.