$39.95 cloth
ISBN 0-8078-2816-5

Published: Spring 2004

 Add to cart
 View cart
 Checkout

Copyright (c) 2004 by the University of North Carolina Press. All rights reserved.

Foreword
Henry Friedlander

The name Auschwitz has come to symbolize the criminality of Nazi Germany. It not only was Germany's largest concentration camp but also housed its largest killing center. In the end, combining assembly-line mass murder and the exploitation of slave labor, Auschwitz was the premier Nazi installation of the Holocaust.

But Auschwitz did not launch the wholesale extermination of people deemed undesirable by the regime. In September 1939, at the beginning of World War II, before Auschwitz even existed as a place of incarceration and murder, the German concentration camp system was already firmly established. The individual camps of that system—Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, and Ravensbrück—had become infamous.

After the conquest of Poland, the Germans needed a new concentration camp to hold the large number of Poles who had been arrested as potential opponents to German rule. The search for the best site focused on Auschwitz, whose Polish name was Oswiecim. Its location at the juncture of the Vistula and Sola rivers made possible a large measure of isolation from the outside world. In addition, it provided essential railroad connections, being situated at the crossroads of Silesia, the General Government of Poland, the incorporated Wartheland, and the former states of Czechoslovakia and Austria. In early May 1940, Auschwitz was officially designated a German concentration camp, and SS Captain Rudolf Höss, who had served on the SS staff at Dachau and Sachsenhausen, was appointed commandant. About 1,200 Poles whose dwellings were on or near the proposed camp site were relocated, and soon thirty prisoners, all ordinary German criminals, arrived from Sachsenhausen, receiving Auschwitz prisoner numbers 1 through 30. In June, the first Polish political prisoners, including Polish Jews, were received at Auschwitz and were given prisoner numbers 31 through 758.

During 1940 and early 1941, the Auschwitz camp held mostly Polish prisoners; the remainder were German. This camp would eventually become the center of a system of camps, while its inmate population would be augmented with prisoners from all countries occupied by Germany. Known as the "main camp," it would house the administration of the Auschwitz complex.

In January 1941, officials of IG Farben, the large German chemical concern, visited the Kattowitz region as the possible site for the production of a type of synthetic rubber known as buna. They took an interest in Auschwitz because the camp could provide cheap inmate labor. Eventually, inmate labor constructed the Buna Works at Monowitz, a short distance from the main camp. Other German industries followed, employing Auschwitz inmate labor in various subcamps. In March 1941, Reich Leader SS Heinrich Himmler ordered the construction of a large camp for 100,000 Soviet POWs at Birkenau, in close proximity to the main camp. Most of the Soviet prisoners were dead by the time Birkenau was reclassified as a concentration camp in March 1942.

With the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the Nazi regime moved to implement the so-called final solution, the murder of the European Jews and Gypsies. At first, SS killing squads shot their victims in mass executions, but soon the killings were moved to newly built extermination camps, where the victims were gassed with carbon monoxide.

Assembly-line mass murder in gas chambers started with the systematic execution of persons with disabilities under a program euphemistically called euthanasia. Starting in the winter of 1939-40, six killing centers on German soil, each with a gas chamber and a crematorium, put to death about 80,000 disabled patients in less than two years. Thereafter the killing of the disabled ran parallel to the murder of Jews and Gypsies. Since the overcrowded concentration camps did not yet have the means for rapidly killing large numbers of people, the facilities of the euthanasia program were utilized. Commissions of euthanasia and SS physicians selected inmates for shipment to the euthanasia centers. In July 1941, victims began to be selected in Auschwitz.

Sometime in the summer of 1941, Himmler informed Höss, the Auschwitz commandant, that he had chosen his camp as one of the sites where the final solution would be implemented. Although the SS in Auschwitz would eventually copy the euthanasia method of mass killing—with gas chambers, crematoria, and the stripping of gold teeth from corpses—it used hydrogen cyanide, known by the trade name Zyklon B, rather than carbon monoxide. As an experiment, the SS tried out Zyklon B, otherwise used as a pesticide in concentration camps, to kill Soviet POWs in August 1941.

In February 1942, the first transports of Jews arrived in Auschwitz; the victims were gassed in the Old Crematorium at the main camp. In March 1942, the killing operation was moved to Birkenau, utilizing two farm buildings for this purpose. During the period March-June 1943, the construction there of four large structures, each housing a gas chamber and a crematorium, was completed. Soon, massive gassings commenced, claiming altogether about 1.1 million victims.

In November 1943, the expansion of the killing operation, of industrial activities, and of the inmate population at Auschwitz led to a reorganization of the camp structure, resulting in three camps, each with its own commandant: the main camp (Auschwitz I), Birkenau (Auschwitz II), and Monowitz (Auschwitz III). Auschwitz I did, however, retain some overall control. The commandant of the main camp served as post senior, and various central offices, especially the Political Department and the post physician's administration, were still located in the main camp.

The most intense period of killings at Auschwitz began in 1944 with the murder of Hungarian Jews, whose transports started to arrive in May. Jews continued to be brought from other European countries and were also destroyed en masse, as were the Jews from the so-called Theresienstadt family camp, established in Birkenau in September 1943, and the Gypsies held in the Birkenau Gypsy camp since February 1943.

In the fall of 1944, as the Red Army moved closer to Upper Silesia, the SS prepared for a possible withdrawal. Rumors soon spread that they would kill all inmates who knew too much, and first on the list were the Jewish inmates who had been forced to work in the Sonderkommando of the crematoria. On October 7, 1944, the Sonderkommando staged an unsuccessful uprising, damaging one of the crematoria. The gassings continued but at a reduced rate. Finally, as the front drew closer to Auschwitz, Himmler ordered a halt to the gassings, and in November 1944 the SS destroyed the crematoria. On January 17, 1945, the SS conducted the last roll call in Auschwitz. A day later, the camp was evacuated, and its inmates started on the death marches and death transports toward the interior of Germany. Only very sick inmates were left behind. On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz camp complex.

The final defeat of Germany revealed for the first time the extent of the Nazi regime's massive crimes. Pictures of the liberated camps and their surviving inmates appeared in the newspapers and cinema newsreels of the nations that had defeated Germany. But because the extermination camps had been located in the East and liberated by the Soviets, the pictures seen in the West were primarily of the camps whose inmates were liberated by the Western Allies. The best-known images came from Bergen-Belsen, liberated by British troops. The landscape of death there was shocking, but Bergen-Belsen had not been a killing center.

In the early postwar years, the public in the West did not distinguish between the extermination camps in the East and the concentration camps in the West. Usually, the term "death camp" was applied to both, a usage that has persisted. This began to change only in the 1970s, as greater public interest focused on the Holocaust and the extermination camps. But camps like Treblinka had disappeared, totally destroyed by the Germans. This was not true of Auschwitz, which had been far too large to eradicate. True, Monowitz and the subcamps had disappeared; only the factories constructed by the Germans survived. The main camp, however, remained almost intact and drew growing numbers of visitors. At Birkenau, which was difficult to maintain and preserve, the barracks were mostly gone; rapidly growing weeds covered virtually everything. Even so, today, the barbed wire is still there, as are the railroad tracks that led to the siding where the SS selected from the arriving transports those destined for the gas chambers. Despite the disappearance of the barracks, their chimneys stand here and there, creating an eerie landscape for the visitor viewing the camp from the lookout at the front gate.

Although we now have considerable information about Auschwitz and Birkenau, it comes mainly from archival sources and trial records. In the English-speaking world, the principal sources for Auschwitz are the memoirs of survivors. Most were written by lower-level inmates, whose perspective stemmed from their own experiences and the events in their immediate surroundings. The best of the Jewish memoirs undoubtedly is Primo Levi's If This Is a Man, and the best Polish memoir probably is Wieslaw Kielar's Anus Mundi.

Hermann Langbein's People in Auschwitz is a very different kind of memoir. Langbein occupied a crucial position as clerk to the SS post physician at Auschwitz; as an inmate functionary, he could see and know things not visible to the common inmate. And, as a member of the Auschwitz resistance, he had access to information not available to others. Langbein's account, which deals with the SS as well as the inmates, intertwines his own experiences with quotations from other inmates, derived from official sources as well as personal interviews, and from SS personnel, drawn from statements made in detention and at trial. Written in an objective, sober style, Langbein's book presents us with a narrative few others could have provided.

Hermann Langbein was born in Vienna in 1912 into an Austrian middle-class family; his father was a white-collar employee. His mother was Catholic; his father was Jewish but converted to Protestantism when he married. Langbein's mother died in 1924 and his father ten years later. Hermann attended a Vienna Gymnasium, an essential stepping stone for university attendance, receiving his diploma in 1931. He wanted to become an actor and therefore did not follow his older brother, Otto, into the university. Instead, he started his training at the Deutsche Volkstheater.

At this time, Langbein's general political outlook was leftist, but he did not yet have any party ties. He was definitely opposed to the German Nazis and the Austro-Fascists. He did a great deal of reading during this period, mostly works by progressive authors; in a later interview, he mentioned Upton Sinclair. His brother Otto, who influenced him greatly, joined the Communist Party in 1932, and Hermann followed him in January 1933. Langbein's term at the Volkstheater ended in 1933, and he subsequently appeared in a number of plays in various theaters. Arrested in 1935, he was jailed until 1937 by the Austrian fascist regime. After the Anschluss in 1938, Langbein fled to Switzerland with his girlfriend Gretl, also a member of the party. They made their way to Paris, where they met Otto and various communist friends. Langbein soon crossed into Spain to join the fight against Franco as a member of the International Brigade, while Otto, who was ill, and Gretl stayed in Paris.

By the time Langbein entered Spain, the war had already been lost by the republican side. Still, he was involved in bitter battles. Of course, everyone was looking toward the future, as Langbein's letters to Paris show. Gretl decided to emigrate to Australia; Langbein was less enthusiastic about going so far from Europe. Nevertheless, he studied English, thought about a future as an actor in Sydney, and even talked about marriage. Late in 1938, Gretl left for Australia while Langbein was still in Spain; world history separated them.

In April 1939, Langbein finally was permitted to cross the French border, only to find himself interned, as were most of the other members of the International Brigade. He was first in Saint-Cyprien, then in Gurs, and finally in Le Vernet. After the defeat of France, the Vichy regime handed the members of the International Brigade over to the Germans, and thus Langbein entered the world of the German concentration camps. The first one was Dachau. Following several weeks at hard labor, Langbein was assigned to the inmate infirmary, since he knew both shorthand and Latin. There he served as clerk for several SS physicians, including Dr. Eduard Wirths. In August 1942, Langbein was transferred to Auschwitz.

Being from Austria, which had been absorbed into the Reich, Langbein was classified in the concentration camp as a German, the most privileged type of prisoner. That privileged status was enhanced in Auschwitz because there the percentage of German inmates was even smaller than in camps such as Dachau and Buchenwald. Under the German racial laws, however, he should have been classified as a Jew. When he was registered in Dachau and asked about his lineage, he prevaricated, telling the clerk that his father was partly Jewish, a so-called Mischling, but that he did not know exactly to what degree, except that it would not usually classify him as a Jew. Surprisingly, no one ever followed up, and therefore he was also registered in Auschwitz as not being Jewish.

Langbein was transferred to Auschwitz because of the need there for extra personnel to assist in the battle against epidemics; he was assigned to the inmate infirmary in the main camp as a nurse. Within a short time, Dr. Wirths was transferred to Auschwitz as the post physician. He recognized Langbein and picked him as his clerk. As this book illustrates, in that position Langbein not only was privy to much confidential information, including the statistics of inmates killed and transports gassed, but also was able to influence Wirths to improve conditions for his fellow inmates. That privileged vantage point, plus his activities as a member of the resistance cell in the camp, gave him a feel for how Auschwitz functioned, a sense that few others could match.

In August 1944, Langbein was transferred to the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg and then to various subcamps of Neuengamme. During the period of death marches and death transports, he fled from a transport. Shortly thereafter, provided with a pass by the U.S. Army, he returned to Vienna by bicycle.

Langbein proceeded to work for the Austrian Communist Party, organizing and directing party schools in various Austrian provinces. At this time, he met his future wife, Loisi, a journalist and party member; they were married in 1950 and had two children, Lisa and Kurt.

Slowly, Langbein became dissatisfied with life within the Communist Party and began to stray from the strict party line—reading, for example, Hemingway's novel about the Spanish civil war, For Whom the Bell Tolls, even though it lacked the party's stamp of approval. He always had been someone who spoke his mind; he did not easily compromise his convictions. Caught up in intraparty conflicts, he eventually became their victim. He was removed from his position in party education and was forced in 1953 to move to Budapest to take charge of the Austrian program on Hungarian radio. His disaffection increased as he saw the shocking reality of life in a Stalinist people's democracy. After about a year, he returned to Vienna to join the staff of one of the party papers. There he began to suffer under censorship that he found to be absurd. When the newspaper closed in 1955, Langbein earned his living as secretary of the International Auschwitz Committee and of the Austrian Concentration Camp Association, both dominated by communists.

Two events in 1956 led to Langbein's break with the Communist Party: the suppression of the Hungarian uprising and Nikita Khrushchev's speech to the Twentieth Party Congress in the Soviet Union. More and more, Langbein acted on his convictions even if they clashed with the party line. In 1957, his brother Otto left the party, but Hermann refused to drop out quietly. The most public of his activities was the organization of a telegram protesting the trial and conviction of Imre Nagy. As he likely knew it would, this led to his public expulsion from the party in 1958. Although the International Auschwitz Committee and the Austrian Concentration Camp Association were not communist bodies, he was soon pushed out of them and lost his entire income.

After 1958, Langbein turned to writing to make a living. Through connections, he received a contract from the publisher Europa Verlag and wrote a few books on politics. But his greatest interest lay in the Nazi past. After all, his opposition to Nazism and fascism had originally led him into the Communist Party. In the Auschwitz resistance, he had worked with both communists and noncommunists. Following the war, he wanted to talk about the experiences of the camps and was angered when he found that none of the party leaders cared to find out what had happened in Auschwitz. In 1947-48, he wrote an account of his experiences but had difficulty publishing it. The book appeared under the title Die Stärkeren: Ein Bericht (The stronger: A report) in 1949.

While still secretary of the International Auschwitz Committee, Langbein had become involved in the effort to bring the Auschwitz criminals to justice. The first case in which he participated concerned the obstetrician and gynecologist Carl Clauberg, who had conducted sterilization experiments on Jewish female inmates at Auschwitz. Sentenced by the Soviets to hard labor, he was released to West Germany through a deal made by Konrad Adenauer. In the name of the International Auschwitz Committee, Langbein filed an accusation against Clauberg, who was arrested and died in jail awaiting trial. He later filed an accusation against Josef Mengele, providing the names of witnesses for the West German prosecutors, but Mengele disappeared from Argentina before he could be extradited. Even after he had lost his position with the camp committees, Langbein continued to provide help in the prosecution of war criminals, later as secretary of the noncommunist Comité International des Camps.

In 1958, Langbein filed an accusation against Wilhelm Boger, a former member of the Political Department at Auschwitz. This eventually led to the first big Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt, which opened on December 20, 1963, and ended on August 20, 1965. Langbein attended most of the court's sessions and, shortly after the verdict was announced, published a two-volume documentary account of the trial.

Langbein used the next four to five years to write a clear-eyed study of Auschwitz, drawing on his own experiences, as well as testimony at trials, and the accounts of fellow inmates. The book was published by Europa Verlag in 1972 as Menschen in Auschwitz (People in Auschwitz). As he told the Austrian political scientist Anton Pelinka, the use of the word Menschen, that is, "human beings," was meant to show that he tried his best to be objective, not to demonize even the SS. He did this in contrast to Benedict Kautsky, who in 1946 used the title Teufel und Verdammte (Devils and the damned) for his memoir of life in the concentration camps.

Until his death in Vienna in 1995, Langbein continued to write, participate in conferences, serve as secretary of the Comité, and speak to school classes as a witness. Wherever he appeared, he never indulged in self-dramatization. He would point out that his own condition as a political prisoner, who arrived in Auschwitz without kin, differed substantially from that of Jewish prisoners who arrived there with their families and soon realized that those dearest to them had been killed. He was always sure to discuss in his presentations about racial mass murder the fate not only of Jews but also of Gypsies.

I first met Hermann Langbein in 1987 at a conference in Hamburg. Later I also met him at a conference in Cologne and a few more times in Vienna. He always treated me like a comrade, insisting that we use first names and informal address. His attitude was probably due to the fact that he considered me a fellow Auschwitz survivor, although my three months in Birkenau could hardly match his experience. Still, I do remember enough to attest to the accuracy with which Langbein's book delineates the texture of life and of death there. As a fellow historian, I also can attest to the accuracy of his interpretation, which I share. I do not believe that one can explain Auschwitz as a horrible chapter in Jewish history alone; an explanation also must take into full account Gypsies and other victims. In the larger context, Auschwitz epitomized a total negation of the values of Western civilization. Langbein's skilled mixture of personal observations and historical knowledge have made his book unique among Holocaust memoirs. I am therefore very happy that an English-language translation of Menschen in Auschwitz finally is being published. All those, especially students, interested in the dark planet that was Auschwitz will profit from reading People in Auschwitz.