Soon after the Soviets captured the
former German camps, both Auschwitz I
and Auschwitz II (Birkenau) were
used as POW camps, before the Soviets
shipped all the Germans prisoner held
there back to the Soviet Union.
Until 1949, four years after the war
supposedly ended, the Auschwitz-
Birkenau State Museum forced German POWs
to work there
The following is an extract from a book
I brought in the book shop in the
Auschwitz Visitor Centre:
In the first half of 1945 (no later than in April/May) the Soviet military authorities set up German POW transit camps on the sites of the former concentration camps of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau). By the autumn of that yeat they were deported en masse to the Soviet Union. Apart from prisoners of war, the Soviet authorities also interened civilians from Upper Silesia and the Bielsko-Biala region who were either volksdeutsch (registered German nationals) or just suspected of being ethnically German. On account of the fact that the internees included Polish citizens, the camps were also run by the Polish State Security Office. The transist camp on the site of Auschwitz I was closed down by the autumn of 1945 but the camp at Birkenau continued functioning until the spring of 1946.
Records from the Brzezinka Roman Catholic parish register show that from 20 April, 1945 to May 1946 a total of almost 150 (12 in 1946) people from Upper Silesia, Bielsko-Biala and Germany died in this Polish State Security Office run camp. The inhabitants of Oswiecim and the surrounding areas do not recall evidence or the inmates being grossly maltreated there. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Archives have photocopies of the personal diary of a German prisoner of war from Wehrmacht medical corps, Ernst Dittmar, who died in July 1945. The contents of document indicates that the prisoners were underfed, but there is nothing to imply that theu were being deliberately killed or even abused. Undoubtedly one should feel for those prisoners of war and ordinary civilians who died in the transit camps, however, one cannot compare their fate with that of the KL Auschwitz inmates.
In the years 1948—1949 the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum employed approximately 50 German prisoners of war and Polish civilians from the Central Forced Labour Camp in Jaworzno.
Strzelecki, Andrzej. Translated by
Witold Zbirohowski-Koscia. The
Evacuation, Dismantling and Liberation
of KL Auschwitz.
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. 2001.
Original edition 1982. pp.235-6
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ReplySee also the book "An eye for an eye" by jewish writer John Sack. Sack reports, that the camps in east silesia were filled arbitarily with germans by the bolshevik intelligence service UB.
ReplyMost of the UB officers were Jews. Sack says about 50.000 Germans were murdered and tortured in those camps.
The first german edition in 1994 was withdrawn before its publication by Piperverlag. They said, the do not want, that anyone could thinking
that they want to compare holocaust and the suffering of the german prisoners. The book was already printed and ready for distrubition. The whole edition was destroyed. The book also consists a list of leading polish-jewish intelligence officers including Marceli Reich a.k.a. Marcel Reich-Ranicki which is the most famous litarary critic in germany today.
See here: http://archive.org/details/AnEyeForAnEye
Please by patient with my english and keep continuing your good work, this is an incredible blog