Monowitz Concentration Camp (also known as Monowitz-Buna , Buna and Auschwitz III , Auschwitz III ) is a concentration and labor camp run by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland from 1942 to 1945, during World War II and the Holocaust [1] . For most of its existence, Monowitz submitted to the Auschwitz concentration camp; since November 1943, he and other Nazi camps in the area were known under the general name Auschwitz III camp ( German KL Auschwitz III-Aussenlager ). In November 1944, the Germans renamed it to the Monowitz concentration camp [2] , after the name of the village of the same name, where it was built. SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Heinrich Schwartz was commandant from November 1943 to January 1945.
| Monowitz Concentration Camp | |
|---|---|
| him. KZ Auschwitz III Monowitz | |
 IG Factory | |
| Type of | Labor camp |
| Location | Monowice , Poland |
| Coordinates | |
| Operation period | 1942 - 1945 |
| Number of prisoners | ~ 12,000 |
| Guiding organization | SS |
Auschwitz 3 was a group of approximately 40 small camps set up at factories and mines around a common complex. The largest of these camps was Manowitz, taking its name from the Polish village located on its territory (now the village of Monowice is part of the city of Auschwitz ). It began operations in May 1942 and was assigned to IG Farben . Doctors regularly visited such camps and selected the weak and sick for the Birkenau gas chambers.
The SS organized the camp in October 1942 on behalf of the leaders of IG Farben (an association of the six largest chemical corporations in Germany - BASF , Bayer , Agfa , Hoechst , Weiler-ter-Meer and Griesheim-Elektron ). Camp IG Farben was built to provide slave labor for its industrial complex called Buna Werke ( German: Buna Werke ). The name Buna comes from synthetic rubber based on butadiene and the chemical symbol of sodium (Na), a synthetic rubber manufacturing process developed in Germany. And Werke is a factory. Other German industrial enterprises built factories with their own concentration sub-camps, such as the Bobreck sub-camp called Siemens-Schuckertwerke , near Monowitz, to profit from slave labor. The German arms manufacturer Krupp , led by SS member Alfried Krupp , also built its own production facilities near Monowitz [3] .
The Monowitz concentration camp contained about 12,000 prisoners, the vast majority of whom were Jews, in addition to the few non-Jewish criminals and political prisoners. The SS charged IG Farben three Reichsmarks (RM) per day for the use of unskilled workers, four Reichsmarks per hour for skilled workers and one and a half Reichsmarks for children. There was an “Arbeitsausbildungslager" (labor training camp) for non-Jewish prisoners who were deemed to be inconsistent with German work standards. The life expectancy of Jewish workers in Buna Verka was only three to four months, and for those who work in remote mines, only a month. Those prisoners who were considered unfit for work were gassed at Auschwitz II-Birkenau [4] [5] [6]
Levy Primo , the author of If It Is a Man (1947), survived the Monowitz concentration camp, as well as Eli Wiesel , the author (who won the Pulitzer Prize ) of The Night (1960), who was a minor prisoner with his father.
Content
History
The creation of the camp was the result of the initiative of the German chemical company IG Farben to build the third largest plant for the production of synthetic rubber and liquid fuel [7] . The camp was supposed to be located in Silesia , out of the reach of the Allied bombers. Among the sites proposed between December 1940 and January 1942, the site chosen was the plain between the eastern part of Auschwitz and the villages of Dvori and Monovice, which is justified by good geological conditions, access to transport routes, water supply and the availability of such raw materials as: coal from mines in Libya, Javiszowice and Jaworzno , limestone from Krzeszowice and salt from Wieliczka . However, the main reason for building an industrial complex in this place was immediate access to slave labor from nearby Auschwitz camps.
IG Farben reached an agreement with the Nazis from February to April 1941. The company bought the land from the treasury at a low price, after it was taken from the Polish owners without compensation, and their houses were vacated and demolished. Meanwhile, German authorities removed Jews from their homes in Auschwitz, placed them in Sosnowiec or Chrzanow and sold their houses to IG Farben as housing for company employees brought from Germany. This also happened to some local Polish residents. IG Farben officials agreed with the concentration camp commandant to hire prisoners at a rate of 3 to 4 marks a day for auxiliary and skilled workers.
From mid-April 1941, trucks began to bring the first concentration camp inmates to work at the plant’s construction site. Starting in May, workers were supposed to walk 6-7 km from the camp to the factory. At the end of July, when the number of workers exceeded one thousand, they began to take a train to the Dvori station. Their work included leveling the ground, digging drainage ditches, laying cables and building roads.
The prisoners returned to construction in May 1942 and worked there until July 21, when an outbreak of typhus in the main camp and Birkenau stopped their trips to work. Concerned about the loss of free slave power, the factory management decided to turn the barracks camp under construction in Monowice for civilians to accommodate prisoners. Due to delays in the supply of barbed wire, there were several delays in opening the camp. The first prisoners arrived on October 26, and by early November there were about two thousand prisoners.
Administration and title
For most of its existence, Monowitz was a sub-camp of the Auschwitz concentration camp. After the administrative restructuring of the SS in November 1943, he became the third among the three main camps in the Auschwitz complex: Auschwitz I-Stammlager concentration camp (Auschwitz I main camp); Auschwitz II-Birkenau; and Auschwitz III-Aussenlager concentration camp (Auschwitz III-camp). In November 1944, another reorganization took place: Auschwitz II became part of the main camp, and Auschwitz III was renamed the Monowitz concentration camp [2] [8] .
Buna Verke
The new Bun Verke plant (Monowitz Buna-Werke) was located on the outskirts of Auschwitz. The construction of the plant was entrusted to the Italian state, which is interested in importing nitrile rubber (Buna-N) from IG Farben after the fall of its own production of synthetic oil. The 29-page contract, signed by Confederazione Fascista degli Industriali and printed on March 2, 1942, ensured the arrival of 8,636 workers from Italy, who were tasked with building installations with investments of 700 million Reichsmarks (equivalent to 2 billion euros at 2009 prices) for IG Farben. Farben was the manufacturer of almost all explosives for the German army at that time, and its subsidiary also produced Zyklon-B, used to kill prisoners [9] . Synthetic rubber was to be produced almost free of charge in occupied Poland using slave labor from Auschwitz prisoners and raw materials from former Polish coal deposits. By 1944, about 80,000 slaves worked at the Bun factory [10] .
According to Joseph Borkin, in his book entitled Crimes and Punishments of IG Farben, firms IG Farben was the largest financier of the Auschwitz III concentration camp, which housed a rubber wood production site. Borkin mistakenly wrote that the Italian Jewish chemist Primo Levy was one of the top specialists at the Buna plant and was able to support some prisoners with the help of his colleagues, who allegedly did not produce Buna rubber at the right speed [11] [12] . In fact, Levy was only a prisoner there, who in the last two months of his captivity was sent to a chemical laboratory thanks to his past studies as a chemist. Buna Rubber was later named BASF AG, and until 1988 Buna remained a trademark of nitrile rubber owned by BASF .
Auschwitz III concentration camp
By 1942, the new complex of labor camps occupied about half of the projected area, the expansion was mainly completed in the summer of 1943. The last four barracks were built another year later. The population of the labor camp grew from 3,500 in December 1942 to more than 6,000 by the first half of 1943. By July 1944, the number of prisoners was more than 11,000, the vast majority of whom were Jews. Despite the rising death rate from slave labor, famine, executions and other forms of killings, the demand for labor grew and more prisoners were introduced. Since the factory management insisted on removing the sick and emaciated prisoners from Monowice, people unable to continue their work were put to death [13] . The company claimed that it did not spend large sums of money on building barracks for non-working prisoners [13] .
Notes
- ↑ Auschwitz III-Monowitz . Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum.
- ↑ 1 2 Lasik, Aleksander. Organizational Structure of Auschwitz Concentration Camp // Auschwitz, 1940–1945. Central Issues in the History of the Camp. Volume I: The Establishment and Organization of the Camp. - Oświęcim: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2000. - P. (145–279), 151–152.
- ↑ Synthetic Rubber: A Project That Had to Succeed (Contributions in Economics and Economic History) by Vernon Herbert & Attilio Bisio. Publisher: Greenwood Press (11 December 1985) Language: English ISBN 978-0313246340
- ↑ Anatomy of the Auschwitz death camp by Yisrael Gutman, Michael Berenbaum. Indiana University Press (1998). ISBN 025320884X , ISBN 978-0253208842
- ↑ Night by Elie Wiesel. Bantam (March 1, 1982). ISBN 0553272535 , ISBN 978-0553272536
- ↑ The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by Robert Jay Lifton. Basic Books (August 2000). ISBN 0465049052 , ISBN 978-0465049059
- ↑ Auschwitz III (Monowitz) (unopened (unavailable link) . Krakow 3D. Date of treatment December 11, 2012. Archived December 10, 2010.
- ↑ Administration of the Auschwitz Camp Complex . encyclopedia.ushmm.org . Date of appeal December 25, 2018.
- ↑ John F. Ptak. Hermann Goering, IG Farben and Zyklon-B . Ptak Science Books (September 23, 2008). Date of treatment July 18, 2014.
- ↑ John F. Ptak. Distinguishing Oświęcim (town), Auschwitz I, II, & III, and the Buna Werke . Ptak Science Books (September 23, 2008). Date of treatment July 18, 2014.
- ↑ Borkin, Joseph. The Crime and Punishment of IG Farben. - Free Press, 1 June 1978. - P. 250. - ISBN 978-0029046302 .
- ↑ IG Farbenindustrie AG Trial, aka The United States of America vs. Carl Krauch, et al.
- ↑ 1 2 Editorial board (2017), Living conditions and number of victims , Memorial and museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp , < http://auschwitz.org/en/history/auschwitz-iii/living- conditions-and-number-of-victims >