Arbeit macht frei: - Fredrick Töben

pretended that the sick were sent to the gas chambers. Dr Klein
simulated surprise. With a smile he said, ‘You don’t have to believe all
the silly things they say around here. Who spread this rumor?’ I
trembled. Only this morning I told this poor creature the truth.>At last the ‘Red Cross’ trucks would come and the sick would be
packed into them like sardines. Protests were useless. They were piled
one on top of another. The German responsible for the shipment
locked the door and took his place beside the driver. The truck started
its trip to the gas chamber. That was why we dreaded taking contagious
cases to the ‘hospital’.>The dissemination of ‘false news’ was forbidden by the Germans on
pain of death. But what was death? I did not even think of it.>In the beginning, those who were condemned to death at Birkenau
were either shot inn the forest of Braezinsky or gassed at the infamous
white house in the camp. The corpses were incinerated in a ‘deathpit.’
After 1941 four crematory ovens were put into service and the ‘output’
of this immense extermination plant was augmented vastly. At first, Jews
and non-Jews were sent to the crematory equally, without favor. After
June, 1943, the gas chamber and the crematory ovens were reserved
exclusively for Jews and Gypsies. Except for reprisal or by error, Aryans
were not sent there. But generally, Aryans were executed by shooting,
hanging, or by poison injection.>Of the four crematory units at Birkenau, two were huge and
consumed an enormous numbers of bodies. The other two were
smaller. Each unit consisted of an oven, a vast hall, and a gas chamber.
Above each rose a high chimney, which was usually fed by nine fires.
The four ovens at Birkenau were heated by a total of thirty fires. Each
oven had large openings. That is, there were 120 openings, into each of
which three corpses cold (sic) be placed at one time. That meant they
could dispose of 360 corpses per operation. That was only the beginning
of the Nazi ‘Production Schedule.’
Three hundred and sixty corpses every half hour, which was all the time
it took to reduce human flesh to ashes, made 720 per hour, or 17,280
corpses per twenty-four hour shift. And the ovens, with murderous
efficiency, functioned day and night.>Hwoever, one must also reckon the death pits, which could destroy
another 8,000 cadavers a day. In round numbers, about 24,000 corpses
were handled each day. An admirable production record–one that
speaks well for German industry.