Extermination Camps Research Articles

“It was not the will to live that drove me...”: Escapees from Treblinka Death Camp Returning to the Warsaw Ghetto

Abstract This article examines a pivotal moment during the Holocaust among the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto—the return to Warsaw of eyewitness survivors who managed to escape from the Treblinka death camp during summer and autumn 1942. These individuals, who had personally witnessed the atrocities, were fueled by a profound sense of duty to attest to the horrors of the extermination camp, and thus they sought to inform and caution the remaining Jewish population. This article explores the dynamics of these escapees’ return and delves into the details of their testimonies, as well as how the ghetto population reacted to information about Treblinka. While many were eager to uncover the truth about the fate of the deportees, the harsh reality proved difficult to bear for many and escapees’ accounts often faced skepticism. The article also reveals that the urge to alert fellow Jews about the ongoing Holocaust heavily motivated those who fled Treblinka in this time. On a more general level, this case study broadly examines the process by which information transforms into knowledge.

Facing the Choice of Language in Esperanto Literature: Edwin de Kock, Hasegawa Teru and Julius Balbin between Emotion and Ideology

How far languages are politically connotative is a very sensitive question. In the course of their centuries long history, languages are associated with a variable imaginary, fluctuating with the place from where they are regarded. The cultural contribution of languages could not be reduced to the political experience of the respective states but they rarely escape ideological associations. The scope of this paper is to step aside and consider a language that since its origins in the 19th. Century has been regarded as neutral and independent from both the nation-states and the political spectrum. This paper takes into consideration the experience and discourse of four writers : the Japanese anti-imperialist female writer Hasegawa Teru (1912–1947), the Polish-born poet Julius Balbin (1917–2006), a former deportee to four extermination camps who settled in the US after 1951, and the South African Edwin de Kock (1930–2022) whose poetry is deeply marked by the experience of Apartheid and race division. To what extent is a transnational and anthropological narrative possible in the context of war? How do these authors deal with an affiliation to multiple communities? Why did all these authors choose to write in Esperanto and not in their own native languages? Can Esperanto be still regarded as a «neutral» language or is it the vehicle for a specific world view?

Want to Build a Death Camp? Call in the Lawyers: Obtaining Legal Title to the Land for the Killing Camp at Auschwitz

Abstract The massive expansion of the Auschwitz extermination camp in 1943 involved a panoply of German lawyers and public officials, who laboured diligently at the legal clearance of title to lands belonging to multiple Polish owners so that the German Reich would have complete, legal, and unchallengeable ownership of the death camp site. These bureaucratic actions in pursuit of unspeakable ends, presented here in a historical-political inquiry, reveal fundamental – and much contested – issues of justice and legality, law versus non-law.

Martin Heinrich Corten (1889-1962): Nazi victim or perpetrator?

At first glance, Martin Heinrich Corten's biography appears to be the classic story of a German physician persecuted by the Nazis. Because of his "Jewish descent," Corten lost his position as a pathologist in Berlin and later his license to practice medicine. Emigration failed. But Corten was not a typical Nazi victim. In 1933, he applied for membership in the Nazi Party, and during the last two years of the war he collaborated with the Gestapo as the Hamburg representative of the "Reich Association of Jews in Germany." Although he tried to provide basic welfare and health care for Hamburg's remaining Jewish population, he was heavily involved in the deportation of Jewish citizens to concentration and extermination camps. After the war, Corten thus came into conflict with the Jewish community and lost his position as medical director of the Jewish Hospital in Hamburg. He became a "double outcast" and was unable to re-establish himself in academia. His biography, however, is a vivid example of how the line between victim and perpetrator can be blurred.

Viable Cooperation or Unscrupulous Service? Motivations for Albert Bereczky’s Activity in Church Governance

Albert Bereczky is one of the controversial figures in the 20th-century history of the Hungarian Reformed Church. Bereczky was a genuine and authentic leader of those who fought for the inner spiritual renewal of the church between the two world wars, a church organizer, a well-known and respected preacher, who saved many by risking his life during the deportation of Hungarian Jews to extermination camps, for which he was posthumously awarded the honorary title “Righteous Among the Nations” from the Yad Vashem. However, the communist state apparatus established after World War II found in him the person who, by placing him at the head of the Reformed Church, could bring about a radical reduction of the public and social role of the Church almost without any resistance. So, the question arises: how and why could Bereczky, whose Christian commitment was hard to question, become the servant of the dictatorial state apparatus with its atheistic ideology? Our study attempts to record the possible intrinsic and extrinsic motivations that might explain this dilemma, while also providing a general insight into Albert Bereczky’s life. Keywords: Bishop Albert Bereczky, Zoltán Tildy, Church–state relationship, communist persecution of Christians, collaboration

Auschwitz Survivor and Nobel Prize of Peace, Élie Wiesel as Theologian

Abstract This article examines the life and work of Elie Wiesel (1928–2016), a Francophone writer of Romanian origin, Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor, American citizen, Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 1986. It specifically explores Wiesel’s complex engagement with the divine and the faith, which remained a central concern throughout his life, following his return from the Nazi extermination camps. This is most evident in his seminal book, Night, where he recounts the experience of God’s death in the death camps. Despite such profound crisis of faith, Wiesel remained a deeply religious Jew till the end. On the 16 July 2006, Oprah Winfrey dedicated her Book Club to The Night and called it “one of the greatest books of the century”. More than 3 million copies were sold in a few weeks in the United States. This study proposes that Wiesel’s confrontation with the divine can be best understood through his response to mysticism, expressed as a spiritual song of a fervent yet torn soul. It further suggests that his rejection of Nietzsche’s proclamation of “God’s death” and his alignment with Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav’s idea of a “broken faith” underscores his profound spiritual resilience.

‘Ein Strudel der Selbstauflösung’: The Contested Role of Form in Poetry from the Concentration Camps

Abstract German-language concentration camp poetry has been frequently criticized for its formal failings, particularly its lack of innovation and overreliance on traditional forms. In this article, I undertake close readings of three formally conventional texts: Alfred Kittner’s ‘Molotschna’ (composed in Obodowka, a Transnistrian extermination camp, in 1943), Fritz Löhner-Beda’s ‘Sonett auf das Revier im KZ-Buchenwald’ (composed in Buchenwald in 1940) and Heinrich Steinitz’s ‘Wo bist Du, Gott?’ (composed in Buchenwald between 1938 and 1942). I will demonstrate how traditional forms provided stability in the midst of extremity through their regularity, structure and link to a more stable past and identity. Moreover, I will propose that they were not simply readily available containers for the poet’s suffering, but also enabled the poet to shape their individual depiction of the camps and therefore provide as valid an insight as those works which respond to extremity with fragmentation and innovation.

Стосунки вахманів з євреями у таборі смерті Белжець: за архівними матеріалами СБУ

The purpose of the article is to investigate the relationship between the Vakhman staff and Jews who ended up in the Belzec extermination camp, directly or indirectly: during the creation of this camp, during its main functioning, and at the time of the liquidation of this structure, using materials contained in branch archives of the SSU. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, systematicity and objectivity, induction, and deduction. The methods used should be considered the method of analysis and partially the chronological, geographical, and historical-genetic methods. The scientific novelty of the research results is attributable to the insufficient study of the problem in the previous period and to the introduction into scientific circulation and processing by the article's author of a complex of little-known archival materials. Conclusions. In the Belzec extermination camp, an established mechanism of execution was involved, in which the Vakhman staff and kapos took a direct part in all its stages. Kapos and workers from the brigades allowed the camp management to replace ordinary Vakhmans at some stages of the destruction of prisoners, the reason for which was a conflict of interests. There were different ways of killing Jews: by shooting, gassing, and physical beating. Considering the Jews as workers, we found out that they were not a homogeneous category, divided by gender – into men's and women's teams, by professional orientation – into team workers and narrowly qualified workers, by social stratum – into ordinary workers and «seniors» in the form of kapo and oberkapo. Relations between the Vakhmans and the Jews had an exclusively «functional» character. The files mentioned only one attempt at a joint action by the Vakhman staff and the prisoners against the German administration, which ended in failure. The result was the tragic end of the labor brigade, which could serve as an example and perhaps one of the reasons for the uprising in the Sobibor extermination camp. The biggest problem of studying the issue based on the archival files remains the statistical research directions and the event chronology because the evidence gives only approximate dates and data on the number of workers and those killed. Prospects for further research are possible due to the expansion of the source base by attracting new archival cases, as well as due to the method of comparative analysis of various extermination camps and an interdisciplinary approach in the study of psychological portraits of guards and prisoner-workers.

ОТРАЖЕНИЕ ДУХОВНОГО СОПРОТИВЛЕНИЯ ЖЕРТВ ХОЛОКОСТА В СВИДЕТЕЛЬСТВАХ ЧЛЕНОВ ЗОНДЕРКОММАНДО АУШВИЦА

Among the numerous crimes of Nazi Germany and its accomplices during the Second Word War, they attempted the mass extermination of the Jewish people. Those events entered word history under the name Holocaust, in Hebrew – “Shoa” (disaster, catastrophe). Even though the literature on various aspects of the life and death of Jews in Holocaust period in general and in the extermination camps in particular is quite extensive, there is no particular analysis of the spiritual resistance of prisoners. The article analyzes the reflection of Sondercommando members’ spiritual resistance in the Auschwitz death camp, which became an ominous symbol of the atrocities committed by the Nazis and their collaborators, as presented in their testimonies, called “Scrolls from the Ashes”. The composition of Sondercommando members and their “position” were studied. The authorship issues of the “Scrolls” and the motives for their creation are considered. It gives surviving witnesses’ and descendants’ assessments are given to their activities. The analyzed sources indicate that despite the inhuman conditions and constant threat of immediate destruction, the members of the Sondercommando not only retained their moral spirit, but also demonstrated the will to resist. A striking example of which is the uprising that broke out on October 7th, 1944, near the ovens of Auschwitz-Birkenau crematorium.

Analysis of causes of damage to masonry walls in the historic barrack No. B-115 in the former KL Auschwitz II – Birkenau camp

The brick barracks in the former German Nazi Concentration and Extermination camp KL Auschwitz II-Birkenau hold historical importance and are protected by law through their inclusion in the register of historical monuments. They are also inscribed on the World Heritage List. One of these barracks is known as B-115. It was originally constructed as a temporary building during the autumn and winter of 1941 and 1942. The materials used for its construction were obtained from dismantled houses in nearby villages. The walls of barrack B-115 have sustained damage in several areas. The exterior walls have experienced corrosion due to exposure to environmental factors. Inside the barrack, there are cracks and areas where the walls are breaking apart. The most severe damage is seen in the gable walls, which have become deformed and detached from the lateral walls. Additionally, there are extensive damages in the connections between the lateral walls and external longitudinal walls. The partition walls have also cracked, and concentrated forces have caused further cracks in certain areas. By analysing the documented types of damage and their causes, the repair plans aim to address and eliminate the identified sources of damage. The renovation is designed to minimize intervention in the historical layers of the barrack while preserving its documentary value. It will also ensure that visitors have safe access to the site.

Classification and Significance of Material Culture from Archaeological Research of Section BIb of the Former KL Auschwitz II - Birkenau

This article discusses the analysis of material discovered during archaeological excavations conducted in the areas of former concentration camps, based on the results of work carried out on the site of the former German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz II-Birkenau. The specificity of the sites from the 20th century forces the development of new research methods and procedures, slightly different from those traditionally used in archaeology. One of the significant problems is the mass nature of the discovered artefacts. These items were substantially made of decay-resistant materials such as plastic, glass or metal alloys. In addition to the amount of acquired items, difficulties are also caused due to the way they are classified and processed. The classifications used in traditional archaeology, focusing primarily on the type of raw material used to produce the artefact, have proven to be unsuitable.

Archaeological Research on the Former KL Auschwitz I and KL Auschwitz II-Birkenau Site

For many years Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum has been conducting excavation works on the site of the former German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz II-Birkenau, related to the implementation of projects to preserve the authenticity and other ad hoc maintenance works, as well as those related to the extension of the necessary infrastructure network in the area of the former camp. These works, carried out in various parts of the former Birkenau, are subject to obligatory archaeological research. Over the years, a large number of reports on archaeological works have been collected. Researchers faced the challenge of accumulating dispersed archaeological information, mainly about the location of archaeological research sites and about the findings that were noted during the works. The chosen solution was the use of GIS software. Initially, this was QGIS, which is to be replaced by ArcGIS Pro over time. This makes it possible to place excavation sites in a generalised form on a map (contemporary or historical) or on a properly prepared aerial photo (for any year from the years available: 1944-2022). The outline of the excavation in the above-mentioned programs is interactive with the user. The description of the findings from a given place is added to it. The set of data thus prepared can then be filtered and selected, like in a popular spreadsheet. The amount of information on one map can be enhanced with underground infrastructure networks (as information about possible collisions) and road and construction infrastructure of the camp area which enables better orientation in the surroundings. Introduction of the possibilities of deeper analytics of large data sets is the main basis for outlining the possibilities of Geographic Information Systems.

Musical Borrowings in Songs about the Holocaust by the Jews of Greece


 
 
 This article deals with songs about the Holocaust. Most of these songs have remained almost unknown until today, and this article aims to bring them out and to highlight the fact that they serve as evidence to the sufferings of the Greek people during World War II. All songs were written in Greece, and the practice of contrafactum (borrowing melodies and changing the lyrics) was applied to all of them. The borrowed melodies originate from Western music (e.g., operas), Western and Greek popular songs of the time, and from Greek folk and urban folk music. The variety of musical borrowings reveals cultural interactions between the ethnic and religious groups of the Greek land. It is also indicative of the increasing role of the mass media (radio, cinema) at that time. The lyrics of the songs are usually written in Greek and, in some cases, in Ladino (Judeo-Spanish of the Eastern Mediterranean area). Apart from having musicological interest, the songs are also important from the historical point of view. They were written either before the transportations to the extermination camps, or in the camps, or after the Holocaust. Their lyrics depict aspects of the living conditions of Jews during World War II. Moreover, these songs acted as a way of expressing feelings and thoughts.
 
 

Citing the Architecture of the Holocaust as a Method of Critique in Contemporary Artistic Practices: Zbigniew Libera, Zoran Dimovski, and the Use of Scale Models

This paper presents how visual contemporary art can form intertextual relations to the architecture of the Holocaust. For that purpose, two works are used as examples and analyzed in more detail: Lego. Concentration Camp by Zbigniew Libera (1996) and Diamond Dust by Zoran Dimovski (2021). This paper shows how these artists cite architecture of the Holocaust by scale-modelling and additional elements that give their works complex semantic layers. This paper also includes discussion about invisibility and visibility of concentration and extermination camps, as well as the segment that explains the difference between the use of architectural scale models by the Third Reich propaganda and by contemporary artists. This paper concludes how, when cited in works of contemporary art, architecture becomes a complex sign shifted from one discourse into another and from one historic period to the present, a phenomenon embraced by artists to criticize the socio-political context of its creation, but also to criticize the alarming phenomena of today’s era.

Slaughtered like animals. Revealing the atrocities committed by the Nazis on captives at Treblinka I by skeletal trauma analysis

The infamous Treblinka camp was one of numerous extermination camps throughout Poland, where Germans carried out mass killings of Jews. There were two camps in Treblinka, AL Treblinka I, a forced labor camp, and KL Treblinka II, the site of the extermination camp. Treblinka I held captives of various origins and ethnic backgrounds who were serving their sentences by working in a pre-existing gravel pit. Many of those prisoners perished in the camp, and it was believed that the principal causes of their death were attributed to the horrific sanitary conditions in the camp as well as the strenuous hard work of daily life. In 2019, archaeologists uncovered a clandestine mass burial pit that contained commingled human skeleton remains at the Execution Site of the former Treblinka I camp. It was estimated that there were a minimum of forty-nine people in the pit. Within months, an anthropologist performed biological profile assessments and detailed trauma analysis on the recovered skeletal parts. The main goal was to study perimortem trauma patterns to infer the cause and manner of death of the victims. We hypothesized that the victims did not die solely because of the camps’ conditions but were brutally slaughtered by the camp guards. Our results were later compared with the survivors’ written testimonies. As a result of our research, we were able to show that the Treblinka I captives’ death was extremely brutal and that the killing methods were varied. This led us to conclude that multiple assailants were involved in the killing spree. All of our results were consistent with the written witness testimonies, which concurs with our skeletal material analysis that proves the atrocities committed by the Nazis on their civilian prisoners during the war took place.

The Holocaust in Polish and American culture. Deliberations, politics and watershed moments.

This article addresses issues related to Holocaust education in two emblematic sites: the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (A-BSM) and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, DC. Every year, these institutions are visited by millions of people, which contributes to their enormous impact on the memories of future generations. Their method of education, however, cannot be understood outside its historical, cultural and political context. Auschwitz contains the history of a former concentration and extermination camp, and the institution itself is also linked to the history of another totalitarian regime. In the United States, the National Holocaust Museum underwent years of deliberation over why the country should nationally commemorate Jewish victims, and why a memorial should stand on the National Mall in Washington, a place associated with American democracy. A broad view of the subject, as outlined in the article, not only allows for an awareness of what these centres are and how they educate, but it allows for an understanding of their perspective, excluding numerous criticisms that would seek to invalidate their discourse, while favouring criticism based on historical facts.

Alain Badiou, the Communist Horizon Beyond Violence. An Exploratory Look at the 21st Century

This research paper examines the work of philosopher Alain Badiou and his analysis of 20th-century violence. The author argues that the last century was marked by violence and destruction, from world wars to extermination camps and state crimes. Badiou claims that this violence stems from a passion for the real, a quest to transform existing reality and create a new world. However, this passion clashes with reality itself, creating an irreducible difference between the real and constructed reality. This difference is what allows us to understand the phenomenon of violence. The passion for the real seeks to purify it and unmask the superficiality of reality, but it can never fully achieve its goal. Furthermore, this passion for the real creates constant mistrust of semblances, leading to suspicion and persecution. The totalitarian violence of the 20th century arises from this infinite suspicion directed towards semblances. The article explores in detail the relationship between the passion for the real, violence, and the distance between the real and semblances.

Checkmate: Chess Artifacts and Artworks Made and Played in Extremis

Abstract A game of war, chess was played and pictured in a time of war by men and women, Jews and non-Jews in hiding, in the ghettos, and even behind the barbed wire of the transit, concentration, and extermination camps across Nazi-occupied Europe. Throughout the Second World War, instead of “throwing the game” and giving up, victims of National Socialism devised ingenious ways to improvise chess sets out of found materials and detritus—carved wood, folded paper, etched tin, and modeled bread. They also drew and painted chess games to document and allegorize their lives in extremis. Through a close reading of chess artifacts and artworks, this article reveals how access to materials and time, status within camp hierarchies, ethnic and national identities, and wartime experiences impacted the various ways these groups used the game of chess under difficult playing conditions. Insisting upon the central role of creativity and play, it argues that both material artifacts and artwork inform our knowledge of how individuals living under Nazi oppression thought and felt.

German Extermination Camps on WWII Reconnaissance Photographs. Orthorectification Process for Archival Aerial Images of Cultural Heritage Sites

Aerial photographs taken over the past 80 years are often the only record of topography and events that have been destroyed or obliterated. However, the lack of camera certificates for many historical photographs, and their physical degradation, often makes it challenging to correct them geometrically. In this paper, we present the process of orthorectifying archival Luftwaffe aerial photographs of the area of the Treblinka extermination camp from May 1944, based on a computer vision-based process and preprocessing techniques. Low-cost and easily accessible software was used, which allowed for the generation of a fully metric orthophotomap in a repeatable and accurate way. This process can be repeated for archival aerial photographs from other dates (for the Treblinka camp) and other extermination camps (Belzec and Sobibor).

Gatekeepers of Extermination: SS Camp Physicians and Their Scope of Action.

The role of camp physicians of the Waffen-SS ("Armed SS," military branch of the Nazi Party's Schutzstaffel) in the implementation of the Holocaust has been the subject of limited research, even though they occupied a key position in the extermination process. From 1943 and 1944 onward, SS camp physicians made the individual medical decisions on whether each prisoner was fit for work or was immediately subjected to extermination, not only at the Auschwitz labor and extermination camp but also in pure labor camps like Buchenwald and Dachau. This was due to a functional change in the concentration camp system during World War II, where the selection of prisoners, which had previously been carried out by nonmedical SS camp staff, became a main task of the medical camp staff. The initiative to transfer sole responsibility for the selections came from the physicians themselves and was influenced by structural racism, sociobiologically oriented medical expertise, and pure economic rationality. It can be seen as a further radicalization of the decision making practiced until then in the murder of the sick. However, there was a far-reaching scope of action within the hierarchical structures of the Waffen-SS medical service on both the macro and micro levels. But what can this teach us for medical practice today? The historical experience of the Holocaust and Nazi medicine can provide a moral compass for physicians to be sensitive to the potential for abuse of power and ethical dilemmas inherent in medicine. Thus, the lessons from the Holocaust could be a starting point for reflecting on the value of human life in the modern economized and highly hierarchical medical sector.