Lecture 19: Dissolution, Liberation and the Perpetrators

1. Announcements
   • Q4 later on
   • Q5 and final exam study guide next Thursday
     Q5 will be a sample ID question, the name of a concentration camp we've discussed, but not Dachau.
   • Hist 199RA, 2 units: Project with Nina Morecki next quarter
2. The "final phase" of the concentration camps
   • 1943: gassing program centralized in Auschwitz-Birkenau
   • Explosive growth of "subcamp system" ("extermination through work")
   • Spring-Sept. 1944 "Operation Höss:" gassing of Hungarian Jews
     July 1944: liberation of Maidanek (see text in Abzug!); 20 July assassination attempt
   • August 1944: liberation of Natzweiler (France); extermination of Gypsies in Auschwitz BIIe
   • November 1944: last gassings in Auschwitz, dismantling and destruction begins
   • 27 January 1945: liberation of Auschwitz (Primo Levi: Last 10 Days)
   • Evacuation "death" march phase
     Mar. 1, 1945 telegram from Belsen commandant to Berlin SS central office

Kommandant Kramer of Belsen:
You informed me by telegram of 23rd February, 1945, that I was to receive 2,500 female detainees as a first consignment from Ravensbrück. I have assured accommodation for this number. The reception of further consignments is impossible, not only from the point of view of accommodation due to lack of space, but particularly on account of the feeding question. .... [I]t was decided that the camp could not hold more than 35,000 detainees. In the meantime this number has been exceeded by 7,000 and a further 6,200 are now on their way. As a result all barracks are overcrowded by at least 30%. ... In addition to this question, a spotted fever and typhus epidemic has now begun, which is spreading every day. The daily mortality rate, which was still in the vicinity of 60-70 at the beginning of February, has now attained a daily average of 250-300 and will increase further in light of the prevailing conditions.

• Liberation of Belsen on Apr. 10; Buchenwald on Apr. 12; Dachau on Apr. 29, 1945

3. Film (5 mins.) liberation of Dachau, shot by George Stevens (filmed "Diary of Anne Frank")
   • US and Soviet armies meet at Torgau on the Elbe
   • SS and Capos beaten by prisoners, shot by US soldiers; survivor identification
   • national flags, religious service

1941 letter home from a German policeman in an Einsatzkommando (textbook p. 189)
"We men of the new Germany must be strict with ourselves even if it means a long period of separation from our family. For we must finish matters once and for all and finally settle accounts with the war criminals, in order to create a better and eternal Germany for our heirs. We are not sleeping here. There are three or four operations a week. Sometimes Gypsies, another time Jews, partisans and all sorts of trash. … We are not carrying on a lawless regime here, but when an action requires immediate atonement we contact the SD and justice takes its course. If the official judicial system were operating, it would be impossible to exterminate a whole family when only the father is guilty."