Grabner

SS Second Lieutenant and Detective Secretary Maximilian Grabner was in charge of the Political Department of Concentration Camp Auschwitz from 1940 until November 1943. Grabner was an Austrian from Vienna. He was a professional forester. Before Austria’s annexation he was already very active in the illegal SS. He came to the Federal Police through the

Security Service. Grabner was appointed as head of the Politcal Department of Auschwitz when it was being built in Katowitz. Grabner did not understand concentration camps and knew even less what the Political Department was supposed to do. I really had a difficult time with him in the beginning. He was very nervous and sensitive. Whenever he made a mistake and it was pointed out to him, he always felt he was being picked on. At first he made so many mistakes that I requested he be transferred and someone else take his place. Dr. Schafer was the director of the Federal Police then; he told me he could not send me a better officer. So Grabner remained at Auschwitz. He gradually got used to the job because I was able to give him some help by adding some NCOs to his staff. These men had experience from other camps because they had worked in the political departments before.

Grabner was a hard-working person, but he was very absentminded and inconsistent. His greatest mistake was that he was too good-hearted to his comrades. Out of a false sense of camaraderie he often did not report the countless excesses and fights among the SS officers and men to protect them from punishment. Because he was so shortsighted, Grabner had to carry the blame for the excesses, which got out of hand. More than anyone, he was supposed to report all the violations of camp regulations and orders to the Kommandant. This was part of his job. But he only reported the rule breakers that he knew I already was investigating because he was afraid he would be reported for not doing his duty. Because he had been a detective before, he was smart enough not to get caught. He came running to me daily with little problems to show how well he was carrying out his job. And if I gave him a clue about some activity, he pursued it conscientiously and skillfully until he had the results. Grabner was well-informed and knew everything that was going on in the camp, but he could not report on a comrade unless there was no other choice and he was forced to.

In the beginning he was constantly at conflict with the camp officers. He never failed to stress the dominating role of his department as coming first, and he mixed this in with pure camp problems. But these differences were settled with his conwades during their drinking parties, which cemented the friendships all the stronger—much to the detriment of the camp Kommandant!

Although Grabner wanted to play an important role in the camp, I don’t think that he would take any unauthorized actions on important matters. He was too much of a policeman and too shrewd. Without help from others, he could not do anything and every accomplice was a threat to being discovered. Despite months of searching, the very smart FactFinding Committee of the High SS Court couldn’t pin a thing on him.

By the way, Grabner was especially eager to kill all the efforts of the committee. It is possible that Grabner was often negligent, but I don’t think he intentionally wanted to cause the deaths of the prisoners. I don’t think he was capable of that.

Because of liis dual assignments with the State Police Headquarters and with the camp Kommandants, his authority and his duties were not quite clear. The limits of his duties could not be defined and there was no real control over his activities. He would always flop from one to the other when justifying his activities. I absolutely did not concern myself with the interrogations and examinations of the Federal Police, which were ongoing activities in Auschwitz. Grabner often reported about these interrogations to me and also when each investigative committee arrived in Auschwitz. He always reported any special order from the Federal Police Headquarters if he could get ahold of me. These orders varied so much and were so numerous that Grabner was actually busier with Federal Police matters than with the camp itself. This was particularly true when it came to the resistance movement. Camp matters and Federal Police matters often mixed with each other so that you could never fmd a clear line of separation between the two. Grabner’s reports were always full of mysterious words which he chose to make it difficult to understand what he was trying to say. He was always saying how great his workload was and how diligently he was pursuing them to me and to his coworkers. He made sure to point out how important a person he was.

As the numbers of prisoners grew rapidly so did the problems in the Political Department. Like everyone else in the camp, Grabner had only a few competent coworkers.

As the workload increased continually Grabner received some SS men who were simply drawn from the troops. These were the men they wanted to get rid of. Most of them were not suited for this kind of work, and they joyfully let the prisoners do the work. They were used more and more for the less important work.

The work places were crawling with female Jewish prisoners, and Grabner assured me that they were doing only the less-important jobs. But the truth was that the leading prisoner groups in the camp became accurately informed about all the important matters occurring in the Political Department. Because there was an active connection between these groups and the resistance movement, many of the actions of the Federal Police became meaningless. The Jewish female “coworkers” were able to get decent-looking clothing for themselves, and when an SS soldier stubbornly blocked their path, they simply worked on him with their beautiful eyes until they got what they wanted. The Political Department had become too complex and too large for Grabner. The process of extermination required that a

Federal Police official be there. At Auschwitz-Birkenau we needed at least one commissioner and three secretaries. It was almost impossible to get a replacement for Grabner. The scarcity of personnel was even greater in the Federal Police than in the concentration camps.

Grabner was also responsible for the crematories and the strict adherence to all orders pertaining to them. But the NCOs who were on duty in the crematories let the Kapo and the prisoners do all the work. This gruesome duty affected the workers to such an extent that they usually drank themsleves into a stupor and the work became increasingly neglected. There could be no relief for them because the secrecy involved dictated that no others be assigned. Grabner was also responsible for carrying out the execution orders of Himmler, or the Security Service, or those ordered by the Summary Courts who had condemmed them to death. The daily contact with death and the overload of responsibility of this kind of work actually dulls the senses and would, in any case, have broken a stronger man than Grabner.

In the summer of 1943 Grabner had completely collapsed, but he didn’t want to admit it until an illness and the SS court brought him down.