Eastern Auxiliary Guards at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Spring 1943

Abstract

To solve insurmountable manpower shortages in its concentration camp guard forces, the Nazi ss turned in early 1943 to an untapped, highly experienced and brutal source. Former Soviet prisoners of war recruited in 1941 and 1942 and trained at the Trawniki training camp in Poland, had effectuated the mass murder of over one million Jews in the three Operation “Reinhard” killing centers in about 9 months. By early 1943, however, some of those guards had come to doubt the wisdom of their collaboration with the Nazis, and deserted to the partisans. ss authorities decided to solve manning shortages in concentration camps by transferring 150 Trawniki guards to Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in March 1943. By failing to accommodate the foreign auxiliaries’ discontent, Auschwitz’s commandant faced his own mass desertion three months later. Berlin’s response to events at Auschwitz fundamentally reconfigured the relationship between the ss and its eastern guards in the Reich’s entire concentration camp system. About 1,500 Trawniki-trained guards eventually entered the camp system and served loyally until the Reich’s end. In coming to know their Slavic clients, the “new Soviet men,” the Nazis abandoned collaboration and turned to hierarchical discipline and integration with their own German guards.