The second-largest group, who were supposed to build a POW camp at Birkenau, were the Russian prisoners of war. They came from the army POW camp in Lamsdorf [presently Lambinowice] in Upper Silesia and were in a very run-down physical condition. They arrived in Auschwitz after long weeks of marching with very little food supplied to them on route. During the breaks in their march they were simply led into nearby fields and told to “graze” like cattle on everything that was edible. Camp Lamsdorf reportedly held approximately 200,000 Russian POWs. The camp was simply a square area of land where most of the Russians huddled together in huts made from the earth which they had built themselves. Food distribution to the camp was irregular and totally inadequate. The prisoners cooked for themselves in fire pits in the ground. Most of them gobbled up their food raw as soon as they could get their hands on it. One could not call what they did eating.
The army was not prepared for the masses of prisoners captured in 1941. The entire bureaucracy handling POWs was much too rigid and immovable and could not improvise quickly to meet the situation. By the way, the German POWs did not fare any better during the collapse in May 1945. The Allies also were not prepared for this mass influx. The prisoners were simply herded together on suitable terrain, surrounded by barbed wire, and then left to themselves. The German POWs suffered the same way as the Russians did.
I was supposed to build the POW camp at Birkenau with these prisoners, who barely had enough energy to stand up. According to Himmler’s orders, only the strong and able-bodied Russian POWs were transferred. The officers accompanying the Russians said that these were the best available in Lamsdorf. They were perfectly willing to work but were unable to accomplish anything because of their weakened condition. I remember precisely that we continued to increase their food rations when they were still housed in the original camp, but without any results. Their emaciated bodies could not digest any food. The entire body organism was finished
And could no longer function. They died like flies because of their weakened physical condition or from the slightest illness, which their bodies could no longer fight off. I saw countless Russians die as they were swallowing turnips and potatoes. For a period of time 1 had detailed approximately five thousand Russians almost daily to unload the turnip trains. The entire railway complex was jammed because the turnips lay like a mountain on top of the railroad tracks. It was almost an impossible task because the Russians simply could no longer do any physical labor. They walked around aimlessly in a daze, or they crawled anywhere into a protected area to swallow something edible that they found. They tried to force it down their throats, or they just simply, quietly found a place to die. The situation really became terrible during the muddy period in the winter of 194142. They could bear the cold, but not the dampness and wearing clothes which were always wet. This together with the primitive, haif-fmished, hastily thrown-together barracks at the start of Camp Birkenau caused the death rate to steadily climb. Even those who in the beginning had shown some physical strength became fewer and fewer as the days passed. Extra rations no longer helped. They gulped down whatever they could get their hands on, but their hunger could not be satisfied.
Once I witnessed a column of several hundred Russian prisoners on the road between Auschwitz and Birkenau suddenly charge into nearby piles of potatoes stored next to the street on the other side of the railroad tracks. All in unison, they completely surprised the guards and ran right over them. The guards didn’t know what to do. Luckily I just happened to be driving by and was able to restore order. The Russians threw themselves into the piles of potatoes. It was almost impossible to tear them away. Some of them died while digging into the pile; others died while still chewing, their hands full of potatoes. They no longer exercised the slightest restraint toward each other. The most flagrant desire for self-preservation didn’t allow for any human feelings.
Cases of cannibalism happened quite often in Birkenau. Once I found the body of a Russian lying between two piles of bricks. The body had been ripped open with a dull instrument. The liver was missing. They beat each other to death just to get something to eat.
One day while riding on my horse outside the barbed wire fence, I spotted a Russian huddled behind a pile of stones chewing on a piece of bread. Another Russian struck him with a brick so that he could grab the bread away. The victim was already dead behind the pile of stones by the time I got through the entrance to the scene of the action; his head was caved in. I could not find the killer among the swarm of Russians.
During the leveling of the land and the trench-digging in the first section of Birkenau [B I], the men discovered several corpses of Russians apparently beaten to death and partially eaten. They had been dumped there and hidden in the mud. The puzzling disappearance of many Russians came to be explained with these discoveries. From the window of my house, one day I saw a Russian busily scratching around in his food bucket, then dragging it between the block [probably Block 12] and the Administration Building. Suddenly another Russian came around the comer, then, after a moment of surprise, pounced on the man with the bucket, pushed him into the electrified barbed wire and disappeared with the bucket. The guard in the tower had also witnessed this but was unable to get the mnning man in his gunsight. I immediately called up the block leader of the day and had him turn off the electricity in that section; I then went into the camp to find the attacker. The Russian who was pushed into the wire was dead; the other could not be found.
They were no longer human. They had become animals who looked for only one thing, food. Of the ten thousand Russian prisoners of war who were supposed to be the main labor force for the construction of the POW camp at Birkenau, only a few hundred were alive by the summer of 1942. This renmant became the elite. They worked with distinction and were employed as mobile work Konunandos wherever something had to be done quickly. But I never lost the impression that these survivors made it through only at the expense of their fellow prisoners because they were more mthless, more unscmpulous, and were basically tougher.
In the summer of 1942,1 believe this remnant achieved a mass breakout. A large number were shot in the attempt, but many managed to escape. Those who were recaptured explained that they ran because of the fear of being gassed, which they expected when the announcement was made that they would be transferred to a newly built section of the camp. They assumed that this transfer was just a trick.* There never was any intention to gas these Russians. It was certain that they knew about the killing of the Russian politruks and commissars, so they feared they would also suffer the same fate. This is how a mass psychosis develops, and these are the results.
1. Rumors and information spread all over the camp, so that certain key phrases were known by prisoners to have specific results. “Transferred to another camp" usually meant selected to be killed. It did happen that some prisoners were transferred to other camps or other sections of the camp.
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