‘Czy pani mowi po angielsku?’
‘Little yes.’
The bookshop, though small, seems extremely well stocked, with several hundred publications ranging from leaflets to extensive academic works.
‘Could you tell me what you have on Buna, or Monowitz, or IG Farben?’
She looks rather taken aback; this is obviously not a familiar enquiry. ‘Ah, there is not … we do not have – ah yes, maybe there is little in this book, a chapter, but in German only. One moment please.’
She goes to the back of the shop and rummages among some lower shelves. She comes back looking relieved:
‘There is in this book something – one part.’
She hands me Auschwitz Prisoner Labor and yes, there is indeed a four-page chapter titled ‘The Role of IG Farbenindustrie in the Economy of the Third Reich, and the Origins of the Firm’s Use of Prisoner Labor’ and ten references to ‘Monowitz (Buna)’ in the index. Four pages out of the hundreds of books in this shop.
‘So, nothing else? Just about Buna or Monowitz?’
‘Sorry, no.’
‘And is this the only bookshop? Is there another inside the museum?’
‘Yes, you may try, but …’ She shrugs her shoulders and looks doubtful. I buy the book and also the official Auschwitz-Birkenau guide. Just as we’re leaving she remembers something:
‘Moment please. Do you have a map?’
We lay the town plan over the counter.
‘I think there is monument at the Buna-werke. I haven’t been there, but I believe there is monument. Yes, there.’ She points to a minuscule black column on the map with no writing to identify it. We thank her and leave.
I try the little bookshop just inside the museum entrance – the young man just smiles and shakes his head, ‘Nothing, sorry.’
Outside again in the thin January sun, J. is looking at an enlarged aerial photograph taken at the end of the war. On this map three places are outlined in red – Auschwitz I (where we are), Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and Auschwitz III (Monowitz). I’m perplexed by the inverse relationship between the geographical extent of the three sites and their cultural and historical visibility. The Auschwitz that the million visitors a year pour intofn2 is the one we’re standing outside. This is where the gate bearing the words ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ can be seen. Though culturally this camp occupies a central place in our received imagery of the Holocaust, the historical reality is significantly different – Auschwitz I was primarily a camp for Polish prisoners and political opponents of the Nazis. And geographically it is surprisingly small, less than one square kilometre. Auschwitz-Birkenau, more than ten times larger, where the vast majority of the 1.2 million human beings were murdered, is visited by only a small proportion of those who arrive in their tour buses at the Auschwitz I museum complex. And Auschwitz III, which in geographical and economic terms was both far larger and strategically more important than either of the other camps, barely exists today in terms of memorialisation. It is hardly visited at all. And the official Auschwitz guide book of twenty-four pages contains only half a sentence on Auschwitz III/Monowitz:
and in 1942 the camp in Monowitz near Oświęcim – KL Auschwitz III – was established on the territory of the German chemical plant IG-Farbenindustrie.
We begin our walk from Auschwitz I to Auschwitz III, and as we walk we reflect on why this erasure has occured. Primo Levi will be our guide on this walk today. By the perimeter fence of Auschwitz I, looking into the grounds now dominated by snow-laden trees, I read his account of the train journey from Italy to Auschwitz, the train edging out of the Adige valley, how ‘we passed the Brenner at midday of the second day, and everyone stood up, but no one said a word … Among the forty-five people in my wagon only four saw their homes again; and it was by far the most fortunate wagon.’ Then the arrival in the town we were now standing in, the selection: ‘of our convoy no more than ninety-six men and twenty-nine women entered the respective camps of Monowitz-Buna and Birkenau … of all the others, more than five hundred in number, not one was living two days later.’ Levi arrives in Auschwitz in late February 1944, almost sixty years ago, and the number 174517 is immediately tattooed on his arm as recorded in the camp’s chroniclesfn3: ‘February 26th 1944: 650 Jewish man, women and children from the Fossoli camp arrive in an RSHA transport from Italy. After the selection, 95 men, given Nos. 174471–174565 and 29 women, given Nos. 75669–75697, are admitted to the camp. The remaining 526 people are killed in the gas chambers.’
It’s getting colder now, dipping well below freezing, and stopping to read, even for a few minutes, is difficult, we’re stamping our feet in the snow. We walk on, turning the corner of the perimeter fence, and starting to walk eastwards, surprised at what looks like an incongruous orchard inside the camp, but as fruit trees grow quickly we soon realise that probably none of these were there sixty years ago.
We arrive at the back entrance of the camp, and, without knowing why, I feel drawn in. Just in front of us is a kind of bunker with a grass roof, sloping down at each side. And then the stabbing realisation. This is the only complete gas chamber and crematorium which survives. Not purpose-built as the later four at Birkenau were, but an improvised killing centre, formerly a vegetable store from the days when the camp was a barracks for the Polish army. I’m astonished at its proximity to the road that we’ve walked along and other buildings – barely thirty yards away is an imposing block that I later discover was the SS hospital. The four other gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau were situated at much greater distance away from other buildings in the camp. Weren’t the authorities concerned at all about this proximity? About the screams that surely would have penetrated into the camp from here?
As we look up at the flat-roofed, grey concrete bunker with a tall brick chimney at the back, I remember that Filip Müller – a Czechoslovakian Jew, one of the few survivors of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando – describes what happened here, at this exact place, sixty-two years ago. He’d arrived at Auschwitz on 13 April 1942, on one of the earliest Holocaust transports from Slovakia with 1,076 fellow Jews.fn4 He is then forced to work with the other members of the Sonderkommando, undressing the bodies of the corpses in this, the first gas chamber used at Auschwitz, and then incinerating them in the crematorium’s two ovens next door. He witnesses with his own eyes how the techniques of the SS officers evolve to make the process of mass murder run ever more smoothly. Instead of using extreme violence to force people into the gas chamber, they realise that subtler methods are far more effective. He describes watching a group of several hundred Polish Jews being brought into the yard where we’re standing; they have no idea that they are only a few feet from the gas chamber where they will die in a matter of minutes. The psychological manipulation by the SS is devastating:
‘All at once the crowd fell silent. The gaze of several hundred pairs of eyes turned upwards to the flat roof of the crematorium.3 Up there, immediately above the entrance … stood Aumeier, flanked by Grabner and by Hossler … Aumeier spoke first … he talked persuasively to these frightened, alarmed and doubt-racked people. “You have come here”, he began, “to work in the same way as our soldiers who are fighting at the front. Anyone who is able and willing to work will be all right”. After Aumeier it was Grabner’s turn. He asked the people to get undressed because, in their own interest, they had to be disinfected. “First and foremost we shall have to see that you are healthy”, he said. “Therefore everyone will have to take a shower. Now when you’ve had your showers, there’ll be a bowl of soup waiting for you all”.