How many prisoners in buna in 1944

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Sterilization Experiment. During work prisoners were maltreated, hit in the face and kicked…. The greatest crimes were committed by the so-called Kapos…, who were in fact prisoners who had been placed in charge of other inmates. The prisoners were given an evening meal consisting of murky soup, bread and small portions of margarine, cottage cheese or marmalade. These provisions were also supposed to cover breakfast, but most prisoners ate everything at once. There was g of sausage, g of marmalade, about 50 g of cheese.

For lunch we received a litre of thin soup. There was around one litre of thick soup for dinner. As a result of insufficient food, and in the winter because of insufficient clothing and the poor state of their shoes, prisoners lost their strength and fell ill.

The weak and sick were sent to the camp hospital, where every two or three weeks the camp doctor carried out selections and those in worse physical condition were sent to KZ Auschwitz II — Birkenau, where most underwent re-selection and ended up in the gas chambers.

He was about 28 years old, 1. The reasons for this were frostbite, emaciation and dysentery. In the middle of November , I went to the hospital as a paramedic, and at the beginning of January I became block senior in a special block for patients with frostbite. Since the frostbite wounds healed very badly, in March Dr. Thilo carried out a selection and about one hundred prisoners with second and third degree frostbite were sent to KZ Auschwitz II — Birkenau.

During my stay in Monowitz, 4, prisoners were sent to Birkenau following a selection. The selection was always carried out by the camp physicians. Conditions in the hospital were fairly reasonable, although there was a shortage of medication at times. The patients received milk soup and white bread to eat. In the Monowitz camp, as in other Nazi cocnentration camps, there was an extensive system of penalties imposed for various offenses recorded by the SS.

The basic sentences were: standing cell from 4 to 10 nights , penal labour for 10 consecutive Sundays, exercises and flogging with sticks.

The offences committed in the camp or at work were the result of the terrible conditions in which prisoners lived and worked. The SS authorities tried to counteract this using different methods.

After an escape, the date of this event, unfortunately I do not remember, after work, all the prisoners were gathered in the square…. Every tenth prisoner was pulled out of the line. These prisoners were separated and then transported on trucks to the camp at Birkenau. It was said that these prisoners were taken there to be exterminated. A few times I witnessed the spectacle of public executions by hanging.

During my stay at the camp Monowitz there were about eight such executions. Unfortunately, I do not remember the exact date nor the names of the prisoners … these executions took place in the square, in the presence of all of the prisoners.

In the Monowitz camp there was no crematorium. Dead prisoners or the sickest and weakest prisoners were transported to Auschwitz I or Auschwitz II-Birkenau to be killed and cremated. In the summer of on the square located at the rear of the camp hospital a portable crematory oven was set up.

This detail is stuck firmly in my mind because as an employee of the smithy, I was involved in the transportation of the furnace on rollers from the gate area to the area of the sickbay barracks. The transport of this was very hard. Of course, the news of the arrival of the crematorium oven spread through the camp. Moreover, this was not surprising, because the connotation with the crematorium furnace was not the most pleasing. The existence of the furnace started to cause a furore and therefore we began to speak to the block leaders — German prisoners.

In conversations with the SS men it was explained that it would be better to get rid of the furnace from the site of the camp, … it was located next to the sickbay barracks, for maybe months — but it was not active. Finally came the command to move the oven from outside the sickbay back outside the gate of the camp … After it was removed the whole camp felt generally more relaxed. In addition to the Monowitz concentration camp there existed a myriad of labour camps around the I.

These included camps for civilians, slave labourers and a camp for British prisoners of war. All worked at the IG Farben plant. The number of British prisoners of war reached 1, The British prisoners of war worked with the prisoners from the Monowitz in the I. Farben plant and witnessed their condition and the brutal treatment they received from the SS guards and civilian overseers. One could hardly walk through the different parts of the factory without witnessing some inmate dropping to the ground.

Those that did were often beaten and kicked and told to get back to work. It was pitiful to see them struggle to their feet and try to stand up straight because of the fear that they would be declared unfit for work.

Because of the size and nature of the Buna camp, later designated Monowitz and which also housed the independent concentration camp Auschwitz III which controlled the industrial sub camps, the bureaucracy required to control it was extensive. Originally, with the building of the Buna-Werke in Monowice and after the formation of the new Buna sub camp, a new sub camp guard unit, was established in , named Wachkompanie Monowitz Monowitz Guard Company.

So during the time Buna was a sub camp, as well as in the first stage of the existence of Auschwitz III-Monowitz, guards were assigned from Monowitz to the sub camps, subordinated to Auschwitz II-Monowitz. As a result of the reorganization the following guard companies were created which were assigned to Monowitz and the other Auschwitz III-Monowitz sub camps:.

In September , there were 1, SS men in these guard companies, of which served in the Monowitz sub camp. The SS guards serving in the sub camp Monowitz were initially accommodated in barracks map references 53, 55 and In the summer of the SS moved to two new barracks, where there were rooms with sanitary facilities and rooms for patients.

In the second half of , two more barracks were built, and in the Autumn of at the southern corner of the camp a large man concrete air raid shelter was erected. Despite the approaching front, work in the I. Farben plant continued uninterrupted until mid-January Only then, with the imminent arrival of Red Army troops there began a hasty evacuation.

On the 17 January the official number of prisoners in Monowitz was 10, Although dozens of inmates managed to escape and take refuge in the homes of local Poles, most escapes were thwarted.

The SS guards killed anyone who tried to flee, as well as those exhausted prisoners no longer able to go on. On January 20, the Monowitz prisoners arrived in Gliwice. There, they spent two nights at the former subcamps of Gleiwitz I and II. They were then loaded onto freight wagons, and transported to the concentration camps of Mittelbau-Dora, Buchenwald and Mauthausen.

I recall that we were in a precarious position, open wagons, — open-topped rail trucks. This happened during snowy, cold winter. If I remember correctly, throughout this period only once did they hand us a piece of bread. The train dragged on a few days.

The situation became day by day increasingly desperate. Initially the wagons were crowded, there was no space, but with the passage of time prisoners became weaker,…. Those who lost their strength just slid helplessly to the bottom of the wagon, covered with a layer of falling snow. Apart from the terrible cold and hunger, thirst bothered us. Only two times during the journey did we get water. It happened this way, the train slowly rolled along the tracks to the projection device for filling the tanks of the locomotive and a high-pressure stream of icy water flowed.

Only those prisoners who had some sort of container such as a tin can could take the blessings of collecting the water. There was obviously no question of quenching your thirst with a sip of water after dozens of hands reached out.

This way we were able to provide water, unfortunately, this also had negative consequences: the prisoners were wet through and froze even quicker.

Along the route every morning the train stopped and the dead were taken out, and then loaded into a separate, initially empty wagon, which was at the end of the train. This work had to be done by prisoners from each individual wagon. I had to do this two times. For the exhausted prisoners and deprived of strength it was very hard work.

The frozen corpses simply dropped from the wagons and with a terrifying rumble hit the ground….. But soon the wagon was completely filled with corpses, which began to protrude over the side.

This bizarre huge pile of tangled corpses looked so macabre that it shocked people at the passing train stations, especially the inhabitants of Czechoslovakia. Watching us, people wrung their hands, sometimes even crying, taking pity on our fate.

To hide the contents of the wagon from the people, the corpses were covered with a tarpaulin. Soon it was necessary to devote a second wagon for this. Riding in the cars every day became more terrible, and the wagons were full of the fallen bodies of prisoners who had lost their strength.

After about twelve days, finally the train went through the station of Nordhausen and stopped on the siding of the Nazi concentration camp Mittelbau-Dora. We walked all night during storms until At around 3. We arrived in Gliwice, which is more or less 20 km away, at approx.

In my opinion, about prisoners were shot during this march. He was about 26 years old, 1. He demanded frequent selections, he was very strict and sent more of the emaciated and sick prisoners to Birkenau than the previous doctors, although he knew full well that the gas chambers awaited them there.

Around 7,, people were in that camp. Apart from the prisoners from Monowitz, there were also prisoners from various branches of this camp, and about women as well. Our camp was in Gliwice for three days. The second transport, in which I found myself, was directed to Mauthausen, near Linz Austria , and from there, because of overcrowding in the camp, we were directed to KZ Mittelbau near Nordhausen in Thuringia.

The transport to Buchenwald left at about The loading took about three to four hours. We were traveling in open freight wagons, in which there were people. Shortly before the trip, the SS men searched the camp to find any prisoners hiding there.

When I was in the wagon, I heard a lot of shots and from eyewitnesses I know that many people died there. He is a German national and was a political prisoner, [as I know] because he wore a red triangle. Later, the directors of new sub-camps opened at industrial facilities in Silesia and Bohemia answered to him. It consisted of seven companies, who were on duty in the following sub-camps:. In September , a total of 1, SS men served in these companies.

The of them who made up 1 Company were stationed at Monowice, and included not only guards but also the staffs of the offices and stores that saw to the needs of the remaining sub-camps. Images from www. Their use must not tarnish the good reputation of the victims of KL Auschwitz. Any interference in the integrity of the images — including cropping or graphic processing — is prohibited.