KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps (145 page)

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Authors: Nikolaus Wachsmann

BOOK: KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps

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44
. Several historians have argued that sporadic murders of nonworking Silesian Jews had begun earlier, with small groups sent to Auschwitz for extermination from late 1941. Sybille Steinbacher has provided the most detailed account in her otherwise excellent study
of Auschwitz. Starting in late 1941, she argues, selections were carried out among Jews in forced labor camps run by SS Oberführer Schmelt (mostly in Upper Silesia); those selected as “unfit for work” were sent to Auschwitz and murdered in crematorium I (Steinbacher,
“Musterstadt,”
276–77; on the Schmelt camps, see ibid., 138–53). However, her sources do not fully bear out this conclusion. One
source refers to a transport to Auschwitz in late
1940
, another to small transports from
mid-1941
(BArchL, B 162/20513, Bl. 83: Vermerk, October 11, 1967; ibid., Bl. 47–54: Vernehmungsniederschrift Hirsch B., September 21, 1961). As for the assumed murder of a transport of Jews from Beuthen (Upper Silesia) on February 15, 1942, in crematorium I, this information is based on erroneous data in the
Auschwitz chronicle (Czech,
Kalendarium
, 174–75); there was no such transport at the time (Gottwaldt and Schulle, “
Judendeportationen,”
393).
Christopher Browning also dates the first gassings of Jews “no longer capable of work” in crematorium I to autumn 1941 (Browning,
Origins
, 357). In addition to Steinbacher’s work, Browning relies on another piece of evidence: the postwar account of
SS man Hans Stark. Testifying before German legal officials, Browning recounts, Stark stated that small groups of Jews were brought to Auschwitz on trucks in October 1941 and gassed there (Browning,
Origins
, 527, n. 211). Stark was among the accused of the first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, where he was sentenced to ten years in prison. In his first pretrial interrogation, Stark did indeed state
that he had participated in the gassing of small groups of Jewish men, women, and children, deported to Auschwitz for immediate extermination in crematorium I in autumn 1941 (
DAP
, Vernehmung H. Stark, April 23, 1959, 4537–50). However, in a subsequent interrogation Stark corrected himself, stating that the date he had given previously was wrong. He was unaware of any gassings in autumn 1941, he
now said, adding that the murders of Jewish men, women, and children he had described could only have occurred
after
he returned to Auschwitz in spring 1942 from a period of study leave (the Frankfurt court found that Stark had been on leave until March 15, 1942;
DAP
, 36765). Stark gained no advantage from changing these dates, as he still admitted his participation in the gassings. Most likely,
therefore, he corrected what he regarded as a genuine mistake (
DAP
, Vernehmung H. Stark, July 24, 1959, 4578–79). During his later trial testimony in 1964, Stark reiterated that the first transports of Jews gassed in crematorium I as “unfit for work” had arrived in April–May 1942. He also admitted to his participation in the gassing of a group of 150 to 200 Polish and Jewish men and women in October
1941. However, these victims had not been selected as “unfit for work” as part of the Nazi Final Solution. Rather, Stark testified, they had been sentenced to death by court martial (
DAP
, Aussage H. Stark, January 16, 1964, 4813–26). This seems plausible, given the practice of mass executions in Auschwitz in late 1941 at the behest of Summary Courts.

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