So, here we are now in Auschwitz. Auschwitz is a separate story. First of all, it lasted longer. Second, because, It was the largest, it had the largest number of victims. The estimates, and these are just estimates, but 1.1 million victims. And the reason that we don't have clearer numbers is because the selection for labor, those who were selected for labor, they were counted, they were tattooed. But those who were killed right away, nobody kept a good number, a good records. So consequently the numbers are imprecise. But I think there is an agreement among the scholars who deal with this topic, that approximately 1.1 million people died. And the story of Auschwitz is that it already was established in 1940. But it was envisaged at the time that this would be a major killing center. First, they camped their Poles who they regarded as possibly dangerous. And they called it a transit camp where the Poles would be sent on to labor camps. And indeed, the famous sign which we know about Auschwitz which came to be such a cruel joke. Was labor make you free, arbeit macht frei, but actually was put there, at the time when this was not simply a joke. It came to be a very bad joke, but at the time, it was not yet. Now things changed, again with everything else in June 1941 with the attack of the Soviet Union. The attack on the Soviet Union where, arbeit macht frei, Soviet prisoners of war were delivered at Auschwitz. And the first victims at Auschwitz were Soviet prisoners of war. They were killed by injection into the heart, phenol injection into the heart. I can't truly envisage how this was, but even later when gassing started, the first victims in which the Nazis experimented were Soviet prisoners of war. So, Auschwitz, at the outset, had several different tasks. This Auschwitz, and Kulmhof, were the two camps which were not in the socalled general government, but in the Warthegau, which was meant to be incorporated into Germany. And Auschwitz was chosen because it was close to Krakow, it was in the confluence of river, and also because it had excellent railroad connections, excellent railroad connections not only for delivering human beings, but delivering raw material. Which would be very significant when Auschwitz came to be a major industrial center in which some of the most significant German companies participated. Auschwitz at the outset, this is before 1941, before the attack on the Soviet Union, was also envisaged as an agricultural station. That is, the idea was that we are going to make the Warthegau an area where Germans will settle. And here you see what kind of agriculture will be possible in this area. So what I am saying is Auschwitz at the outset was not envisaged what it ultimately came out to be, namely, the largest place for murdering human beings. This gradually developed and made Auschwitz the most significant and also lasted, by far, the longest. It is in late 1943 the other extermination camps, Treblinka, Sobibor, both of them after attempted outbreak, attempt of a riot were closed down. And ultimately, only Auschwitz was operated. The other camp, which was the smallest of them, Majdanek, I have not been talking about. But Majdanek was also a place where there was some labor performed. Majdanek also had the distinction that this was the first camp which the red army liberated in the summer of 1944 and revealed on the world what these camps were about. Now back to Auschwitz. Well, really, I'm sure you heard it several times from different sources, the fundamental distinction of the selection, that there sat a doctor and the most well known among the doctors was Josef Mengele. And he made the selection going to the right, then you were tattooed. Going to the left you went immediately to the gas chamber. You've heard this in several sources at separate time. These selections were made in the most haphazard manner. I mean that there was no shortage of people because people were delivered by the thousands every day, Mengele didn't care a great deal. It wasn't only Mengele who was doing this job, but Mengele came to be the best known. He was a scientist, an MD, who had been interested in eugenics before, he was wounded in the war and asked to be sent to Auschwitz, where he can perform those experiments, which he wanted to perform. And that takes me to the subject of medical experiments carried out in this particular camp. Now some, well, what kind of experiments were they? One was that the Nazis were interested what happens to pilots who's planes shot down and they have to evacuate into the cold water, the sea, how long can they survive, and so, the experiment was putting Jewish men into cold water, and see how long they will last. Now, from a scientific point of view, this was not valid science, inasmuch as by that time, the Jewish men who were experimented upon were not in physically good condition and consequently [COUGH] No seriously conclusions could be drawn. Mengele and the German scientists were also interested in twin studies, genetics, and were interested in human reproduction. And carrying out some experiments which were relevant, some which were half-baked, which could not be taken seriously. But again, what is striking here is the extraordinary cruelty. Mengele himself, when the camp was to be closed down, shot Gypsy and Hungarian Jewish children who had been subject of his experiment. The specialty of Auschwitz is because it was a labor camp, it was not limited to Jews. That is, in Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec, only Jews. In Auschwitz there were several nationalities who were there and then hierarchy developed. Germans who were sent to Auschwitz were at the top of the hierarchy, and Western Europeans under, and so on and so forth. In the case of Auschwitz, the Germans also brought in prisoners from German prisons. That is, social misfits, criminals who were brought to Auschwitz in a supervisory capacity. And made the job easier. Well, I may have to return to some of these topics because here I must stop.
