Maurer

The office director of DII in headquarters was SS Colonel Gerhard Maurer.

Maurer was a businessman by profession and had been an old Party and SS member. He came from Saxony. Before 1933 he was chiefly occupied as the treasurer of his home garrison. In 1934 he came to Munich to work in the SS administration. Pohl put him in the auditing department. As an accountant he attracted Pohl’s attention. When the Central Administration of SS Commercial Enterprises was created they found a use for Maurer.

Later on Pohl made him inspector of SS Commercial Enterprises. It was then that Maurer became acquainted with the concentration camps and became quite interested in the prisoners working for SS enterprises. He saw the peculiarities of the Kommandants and the camp officers, and the negative attitude concerning these enterprises. Most of the older Kommandants and camp officers believed that the prisoners were being treated too well and that the managers of these factories learned too much from the prisoners about what went on in the camps. These old-timers played many a trick on these managers by suddenly pulling out the most capable and expert prisoners. They were instead put to work in the fields or were kept in the camp. In their place they sent completely incompetent workers. Maurer proceeded without mercy against these ploys and supplied Pohl with many useful reports. In order to stop this practice, Pohl took Maurer’s suggestion and appointed all camp Kommandants as directors of the SS factories in which their prisoners worked. They now received a large monthly increase in pay, depending on the size of their operation, and later they would receive a percentage of the net profits also. With this one move he made the Kommandants pay more attention to these war factories. They now watched their subordinates more closely and tried to convince them of the necessity of these factories. Maurer was also the one who convinced Pohl to reward the prisoners by introducing bonuses. Later in 1944, Maurer followed Pohl’s idea by creating a prisoner pay scale by which prisoners could earn a pay check according to the amount of work performed. However, the prisoner pay scale never was put into effect.

When the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps was merged with Economic Headquarters, Maurer became director of D II, Deployment of Prisoner Labor. Maurer now proceeded to completely reorganize this office. In every camp he established a work deployment office, which was responsible to him, and was instructed in detail to make certain the prisoners were deployed in the most important war factories. They also had to set up files and list all the civilian occupations of the prisoners. They had the strictest orders to make certain that each prisoner was working at what he was most capable. Most of the camp officers, duty officers, and Kom-mando leaders tried to sabotage what the work deployment officers were trying to do because, for their self-glorification, they wanted to be the ones to give the orders where prisoners should work. In the beginning there was a lot of friction but Maurer proceeded mercilessly when he learned about what was happening.

Maurer was very energetic, alert, and clearsighted. He immediately saw if something was out of order in the camps, and he either called this to the Kommandant’s attention or reported it to Pohl.

Maurer enjoyed Pohl’s complete confidence. While Glucks liked to cover up any unpleasantness, Maurer did the opposite and brought it to Pohl’s attention.

After Liebehenschel was transferred, Maurer became Gliicks’s deputy. By doing this, Glucks literally and figuratively gave Maurer the position of inspector of concentration camps. Glucks gradually relinquished almost all the important matters to Maurer. For appearances’ sake only did Glucks still call himself the inspector of the concentration camps. From then on everything was viewed from the standpoint of the prisoner deployment for war production, which was most important to Himmler. It was only natural that everything was geared to that.

I knew Maurer from Dachau and Sachsenhausen. But we didn't get to know each other well until my time as Kommandant of Auschwitz. We always understood each other and we worked well together. Through Maurer I was able to get a lot of information to Pohl, which I could never do through Glucks. We had the same opinion about almost all questions concerning the camp and the prisoners. We disagreed only about selecting the able-bodied Jews for work. Maurer wanted to have as many Jews as possible work, even those who were only there for a short time. I wanted to select only the best and the strongest because of all the reasons I have already mentioned. We never reached an agreement on these questions. Later, the consequences of Maurer’s viewpoints could clearly be seen, but he never wanted to admit it.

Maurer saw Auschwitz develop from the beginning and on each of his visits I pointed out the terrible conditions. He also saw them and he made sure Pohl knew about all of this; but it was no use.

Maurer always argued that the prisoners should be well-treated. When he inspected the arms factories, he often talked directly to the prisoners about their housing, food and how they were being treated. All of this actually harmed the prisoners rather than helped them because the Kapos always lurked in the background. Maurer was very busy with his main duty, which was prisoner deployment for the war effort. He didn’t rest and made no allowances when it came to that. He made a lot of official trips. In one place he straightened out the deployment of prisoners, in another he made sure that after a factory was started that it was running well. He straightened out the problems between the factory managers and the work Kommando leaders. In another place he took care of the complaints about the way prisoners worked or from the prisoners themselves as to how they were being treated by the management of the plant. He handled hundreds of things!

There were constant requests from the War Ministry and the Todt Organization for new prisoners. This was the eternal cry to Auschwitz: transport more Jews.

Maurer truly had his hands full with work, but it was never too much for him, and in spite of all his activities nothing disturbed his composure.

His constant requests to be sent to the front lines became a reality with Kammler’s help. He became administrative officer for Kammler’s “V” Division from January 1945 until April 1945. This later became an artillery corps.

During the air raids on the “V” factories near Buchenwald, Maurer lost his wife and four children when a direct hit destroyed the bunker

They were in at the SS settlement where they were living. Shortly before that his apartment in Berlin had also been destroyed by bombs.

Maurer always had a great understanding about prisoner problems even though he only looked at them from the point of view of work deployment. He would never admit that he decisively contributed to the deterioration of Auschwitz and the other camps by his overzealousness in selecting Jews for work. And yet, that’s the way it was!