Hist 33D, L 8: Auschwitz, 1913-1942
by Prof. H. Marcuse, UCSB, Oct. 16, 2003

How/why did Auschwitz become the most infamous death factory in human history?
(Can applying the EIEIO model help?)

• Admin: comments; Tue: Q2 on Höss and Fest
• Reactions and discussion (10 mins. each)
• Euthanasia & films in Selling Murder
• Auschwitz builders in Nazi Designers
• biographical story Maus
• Auschwitz: features and history

Journal comments

• Triumph of the Will: not soldiers, but workers!
  entries on course materials: harder to get 4 points
• Proposals: too much denial!
• plural vs. possessive
  • PLURAL: one Nazi, two Nazis
    POSSES.: that Nazi's gun, those Nazis' guns
  • RULE: apostrophe ONLY for possessive
    EXCEPT: his, hers, its (it's=it is, it has)

Reactions and Questions

• Selling Murder
  films: animals, lecture, crazies, courtroom
• middle 2 films destroyed
  lecture=recreation today
  crazies=script plus raw footage (post-1990 find)
  script: "… patient liberated by death …"
• "Lebensunwertes Leben"
  'Life unworthy of life'
• Did "T4" euthanasia program end?
  Why or why not? (how do we decide?)
  (Bishop Franz v. Galen in lecture on resistance)

Discussion: Euthanasia

• Why did doctors murder?
• What were their (pushing) motivations?
• What were their (pulling) goals?
• What conditions enabled them to do it?

Discussion: Nazi Designers

• Your questions, reactions, comments?
• Why did engineers build death factories?
• Conditions? (situation)
• Motivations? (force, "push")
• Goals? (desires, "pull")

Discussion: Maus

• Your questions and comments
• What is it about? (main/multiple themes)
• Why did Art Spiegelman write it?
• preconditions
• "push"
• "pull"

Oral history: Maus vol. II, p. 68

Auschwitz: define & distinguish

• Auschwitz vs. Dachau; Ausch. I, II, III

Auschwitz location: border between Austria/Czechoslovakia, Poland and Germany

Auschwitz dates

• founded 1270 by Germans
• 1772 Austrian
• 1890s: migrant labor for industrializing west
• 1914: 27 brick barracks for 3000, 90 wood barracks for 9000
• 1919 (Versailles treaty): became Polish, used for refugees
• 1939, Sept.: conquered by Germany
• 1940, May 1: Höss and 30 pris. from Sachs.
• 1940, June 14: 728 Poles
  design: crematory with 2 "muffles" (70 corpses in 24 hours)
• 1941, March: Himmler's visit
  plans for camp at Birkenau
  "ethnic cleansing" of region
• 1941, June 22: Operation Barbarossa (POWs)
• labor to prepare infrastructure
• 500->744 per barrack (=portable horse stables)
• 1941, Sept.: test gassing with Prussic acid
  6 muffles for 400 corpses/day