Alfonso Flauto

3 September 1941 | Following the information from the Gestapo about the transfer to Auschwitz of a large transport of Soviet prisoners of war—officers and political commissars previously selected in POW camps by special Gestapo units—the SS camp authorities decided to kill them using Zyklon B gas in the basement of Block 11. This became the first large-scale execution using this pesticide in this German Nazi camp. It was also decided to take this opportunity to kill bedridden prisoners, patients of the camp hospital. SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr. Siegfried Schwela ordered a selection in the hospital, during which about 250 Polish prisoners were chosen. After some time, orderlies were told to lead them—or carry some on stretchers—into the basement of Block 11. There they were crammed into several cells. About 600 Soviet POWs were then also driven into the cells. The SS men threw Zyklon B into the cells, then closed and sealed the doors. The basement windows were covered with earth. The action took place late in the evening, after the camp command had announced a ban on prisoners leaving the blocks and moving around the camp (the so-called Lagersperre). The following afternoon, after confirming that all the people were dead, all doors were opened and the window seals removed in order to ventilate the rooms from the remaining gas. After the evening roll call, another Lagersperre was declared. At night, Rapportführer Gerhard Palitzsch summoned 20 prisoners from the penal company, all the orderlies from the hospital blocks, and two prisoners—Eugeniusz Obojski and Teofil Banasiuk—who worked as corpse carriers to the mortuary and transporters of corpses to the crematorium. They were brought to the courtyard of Block 11. They had previously been told they were being assigned to “special work” and were forbidden under penalty of death from speaking to anyone about what they would see. At the same time, they were promised an increased food ration after completing the task. The prisoners were divided into four groups. One group, wearing gas masks, carried the bodies to the ground floor; the second stripped them; the third carried them to the courtyard of Block 11; and the fourth loaded them onto handcarts. The bodies of the prisoners selected in the camp hospital were dressed in underwear, while the bodies of the POWs were in uniforms, in the pockets of which were found documents, family photographs, money, cigarettes, and various small items. Camp dentists, under SS supervision, extracted dental gold from the mouths of the dead. The handcarts loaded with corpses were then pulled to the crematorium by prisoners harnessed to them. This took two consecutive nights. Watch a short video about Block 11 where this execution took place: youtu.be/3hjDCsqgGY0 After this mass execution, the SS decided to create the first permanent gas chamber of Auschwitz in the morgue located by the crematorium of the camp. Learn about this building: youtu.be/wZmBSRVYLoE