127-457: Klarsfeld is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: Beate Klarsfeld (born 1939), French-German journalist Serge Klarsfeld (born 1935), French activist and Nazi hunter [REDACTED] Surname list This page lists people with the surname Klarsfeld . If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding
254-572: A prisoner-of-war camp . The initial transport of political detainees to Auschwitz consisted almost solely of Poles (for whom the camp was initially established). For the first two years, the majority of inmates were Polish. In May 1940, German criminals brought to the camp as functionaries established the camp's reputation for sadism. Prisoners were beaten, tortured, and executed for the most trivial of reasons. The first gassings —of Soviet and Polish prisoners—took place in block 11 of Auschwitz I around August 1941. Construction of Auschwitz II began
381-408: A 1-year custodial sentence in an accelerated hearing, but due to her dual citizenship she was not actually incarcerated. Her defense attorney was Horst Mahler . The judge justified the scale of the penalty – it was the strictest penalty possible under an accelerated procedure – on the grounds that political beliefs should not be demonstrated with violence, and stated that he had not been influenced by
508-660: A German government crisis in October and November 1966, and while the Klarsfelds were in Paris, Kurt Georg Kiesinger (CDU member) was chosen as the new German chancellor, supported by a coalition of the political parties CDU and SPD . In an article published on 14 January 1967 in the French newspaper Combat , Beate Klarsfeld, at the time a foreign member of the SPD, came out against Kiesinger occupying
635-595: A campaign with various public gestures. It was revealed that Kiesinger had registered as a member of the Nazi Party in late February 1933 and by 1940 had risen to be deputy head of the political broadcasting department at the Foreign Ministry, a unit responsible for influencing foreign broadcasts. Kiesinger was in charge of liaison with the Reich Propaganda Ministry . Beate Klarsfeld accused Kiesinger of being
762-565: A car with a Red Cross symbol that carried the Zyklon B, as well as an SS doctor in case officers were poisoned by mistake. Inmates arriving at night, or who were too weak to walk, were taken by truck. Work on a new railway line and ramp (right) between sectors BI and BII in Auschwitz II, was completed in May 1944 for the arrival of Hungarian Jews between May and early July 1944. The rails led directly to
889-614: A concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers ; Auschwitz III-Monowitz , a labour camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben ; and dozens of subcamps . The camps became a major site of the Nazis' Final Solution to the Jewish question . After Germany initiated World War II by invading Poland in September 1939, the Schutzstaffel (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into
1016-561: A finger into the water of the washbasin. Under the first is written: " So bist du rein " (like this you are clean), and under the second, " So gehst du ein " (like this you come to a bad end); and lower down, in doubtful French but in Gothic script: " La propreté, c'est la santé " [cleanliness is health]. Prisoners received half a litre of coffee substitute or a herbal tea in the morning, but no food. A second gong heralded roll call, when inmates lined up outside in rows of ten to be counted. No matter
1143-594: A gas chamber in bunker 2, and a tour of the building site of Auschwitz III, the new IG Farben plant being constructed at Monowitz . Use of bunkers I and 2 stopped in spring 1943 when the new crematoria were built, although bunker 2 became operational again in May 1944 for the murder of the Hungarian Jews. Bunker I was demolished in 1943 and bunker 2 in November 1944. Plans for crematoria II and III show that both had an oven room 30 by 11.24 m (98.4 by 36.9 ft) on
1270-409: A gassing facility; the windows had been bricked up and its four rooms converted into two insulated rooms, the doors of which said " Zur Desinfektion " ("to disinfection"). A second brick cottage, the "little white house" or bunker 2, was converted and operational by June 1942. When Himmler visited the camp on 17 and 18 July 1942, he was given a demonstration of a selection of Dutch Jews, a mass-murder in
1397-574: A group of Soviet prisoners of war—took place around August 1941. By the end of that year, during what most historians regard as the first phase of the Holocaust, 500,000–800,000 Soviet Jews had been murdered in mass shootings by a combination of German Einsatzgruppen , ordinary German soldiers, and local collaborators. At the Wannsee Conference in Berlin on 20 January 1942, Reinhard Heydrich outlined
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#17330926807951524-486: A group of male prisoners arrived to set up an infirmary in October 1942, their first task, according to researchers from the Auschwitz Museum, was to distinguish the corpses from the women who were still alive. Gisella Perl , a Romanian-Jewish gynecologist and inmate of the women's camp, wrote in 1948: There was one latrine for thirty to thirty-two thousand women and we were permitted to use it only at certain hours of
1651-569: A letter on 12 July 1940, Höss told Glücks that the local population was "fanatically Polish, ready to undertake any sort of operation against the hated SS men". By the end of 1940, the SS had confiscated land around the camp to create a 40-square-kilometer (15 sq mi) "zone of interest" ( Interessengebiet ) patrolled by the SS, Gestapo and local police. By March 1941, 10,900 were imprisoned in the camp, most of them Poles. An inmate's first encounter with Auschwitz, if they were registered and not sent straight to
1778-718: A lobbyist of Nazi war criminals. As the rapporteur of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Bundestag until 1976, Achenbach was responsible for the Franco-German Supplementary Agreement to the Transition Treaty signed in 1971, and successfully prevented its ratification until 1974 when he was discredited by the campaigns led by the Klarsfelds. In 1984 and 1985 Beate Klarsfeld toured the military dictatorships of Chile and Paraguay, to draw attention to
1905-641: A member of the International Council of the Austrian Service Abroad and has supported the memorial service of young Austrians in Holocaust memorials and Jewish museums around the world. In October 2015, she was designated as UNESCO Honorary Ambassador and Special Envoys for Education about the Holocaust and the Prevention of Genocide. In 2020, Klarsfeld approached the then German minister of Defence, Ursula von der Leyen , to stop honoring
2032-612: A member of the board of Inter Radio AG, which had been buying foreign radio stations for propaganda purposes. She also asserted that Kiesinger had been chiefly responsible for the contents of German international broadcasts which included anti-Semitic and war propaganda, and had collaborated closely with SS functionaries Gerhard Rühle [ de ] and Franz Alfred Six . The latter was responsible for mass murders in Eastern Europe. She alleged that Kiesinger had continued to produce anti-Semitic propaganda even after becoming aware of
2159-539: A new women's camp ( Frauenkonzentrationslager or FKL) in Auschwitz II. This consisted at first of 15 brick and 15 wooden barracks in sector ( Bauabschnitt ) BIa; it was later extended into BIb, and by October 1943 it held 32,066 women. In 1943–1944, about 11,000 women were also housed in the Gypsy family camp , as were several thousand in the Theresienstadt family camp . Conditions in the women's camp were so poor that when
2286-432: A panel discussion with Günter Grass (who had urged Kiesinger to resign in 1966), Johannes Agnoli , Ekkehart Krippendorff [ de ] , Jacob Taubes and Michel Lang (a student from the "Jewish Working Group for Politics") at Technische Universität Berlin . Klarsfeld, who presented Kiesinger as a major threat to Germany, promised those present to try to slap him publicly. This was greeted with laughter by part of
2413-485: A railway station or at one of several dedicated trackside ramps, including one next to Auschwitz I. The Altejudenrampe (old Jewish ramp), part of the Oświęcim freight railway station, was used from 1942 to 1944 for Jewish transports. Located between Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II, arriving at this ramp meant a 2.5 km journey to Auschwitz II and the gas chambers. Most deportees were forced to walk, accompanied by SS men and
2540-481: A reflection of how far served the Stasi legwork of Nazi Crimes elucidation and where it has harmed." In 1991, former Stasi officers Günter Bohnsack and Herbert Brehmer made public in an article for Der Spiegel that Klarsfeld received the "incriminating evidence against the former Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger" from East Germany. According to Bohnsack this cooperation began in 1966 and ended only in 1989. The "Plan with
2667-492: A secretary at the new Franco-German Youth Office . There she published a guide for German au pair girls living in Paris. During a year of unpaid leave after the birth of her son, she became increasingly involved with feminist literature and with the emancipation of women in Germany . By the end of 1966, she and her family moved into an apartment shared with her mother-in-law and the three-member family of Serge's sister. Following
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#17330926807952794-492: A serial number, on their left breast for Soviet prisoners of war and on the left arm for civilians. Categories of prisoner were distinguishable by triangular pieces of cloth (German: Winkel ) sewn onto on their jackets below their prisoner number. Political prisoners (Schutzhäftlinge or Sch), mostly Poles, had a red triangle, while criminals ( Berufsverbrecher or BV) were mostly German and wore green. Asocial prisoners ( Asoziale or Aso), which included vagrants, prostitutes and
2921-634: A slap in the "repulsive face of ten million Nazis". Klarsfeld was accompanied by her mother on 11 November 1968 in Brussels where two days later Kiesinger was to speak on the evening of 13 November 1968 to the Grandes Conférences Catholiques. She was advised to leave the country by the Belgian police. In 1969 she joined the Waldshut constituency federal election campaign as a direct candidate of
3048-513: A telegraph wire, so close together that we could not help soiling one another. Langefeld was succeeded as Lagerführerin in October 1942 by SS Oberaufseherin Maria Mandl , who developed a reputation for cruelty. Höss hired men to oversee the female supervisors, first SS Obersturmführer Paul Müller, then SS Hauptsturmführer Franz Hössler . Mandl and Hössler were executed after the war. Sterilisation experiments were carried out in barracks 30 by
3175-440: A thousand people were crammed into the superimposed compartments of each barracks. Unable to stretch out completely, they slept there both lengthwise and crosswise, with one man's feet on another's head, neck, or chest. Stripped of all human dignity, they pushed and shoved and bit and kicked each other in an effort to get a few more inches' space on which to sleep a little more comfortably. For they did not have long to sleep. Sunday
3302-718: A time, the Sonderkommando were able to burn some 8,000 bodies a day. This maximum capacity was rarely needed; the average between 1942 and 1944 was 1,000 bodies burned every day. After examining several sites for a new plant to manufacture Buna-N , a type of synthetic rubber essential to the war effort, the German chemical conglomerate IG Farben chose a site near the towns of Dwory and Monowice (Monowitz in German), about 7 km (4.3 mi) east of Auschwitz I. Tax exemptions were available to corporations prepared to develop industries in
3429-472: A transport of Polish Jews from Silesia and Zagłębie Dąbrowskie was taken straight from the station to the Auschwitz II gas chamber, which had just come into operation. On 26 and 28 March, two transports of Slovakian Jews were registered as prisoners in the women's camp , where they were kept for slave labour; these were the first transports organized by Adolf Eichmann 's department IV B4 (the Jewish office) in
3556-472: Is a Franco-German journalist and Nazi hunter who, along with her French husband, Serge , became famous for their investigation and documentation of numerous Nazi war criminals, including Kurt Lischka , Alois Brunner , Klaus Barbie , Ernst Ehlers [ de ] and Kurt Asche . In March 2012, she ran as the candidate for The Left in the 2012 German presidential election against Joachim Gauck , but lost by 126 to 991. Beate Auguste Künzel
3683-435: Is not drinkable; it has a revolting smell and often fails for many hours. The walls are covered by curious didactic frescoes : for example, there is the good Häftling [prisoner], portrayed stripped to the waist, about to diligently soap his sheared and rosy cranium, and the bad Häftling, with a strong Semitic nose and a greenish colour, bundled up in his ostentatiously stained clothes with a beret on his head, who cautiously dips
3810-503: Is to be rebuilt to hold approximately 30,000." Construction of Auschwitz II-Birkenau—called a Kriegsgefangenenlager (prisoner-of-war camp) on blueprints—began in October 1941 in Brzezinka , about three kilometers from Auschwitz I. The initial plan was that Auschwitz II would consist of four sectors (Bauabschnitte I–IV), each consisting of six subcamps (BIIa–BIIf) with their own gates and fences. The first two sectors were completed (sector BI
3937-601: The 1st Ukrainian Front of the Red Army . Several other German industrial enterprises, such as Krupp and Siemens-Schuckert , built factories with their own subcamps. There were around 28 camps near industrial plants, each camp holding hundreds or thousands of prisoners. Designated as Aussenlager (external camp), Nebenlager (extension camp), Arbeitslager (labor camp), or Aussenkommando (external work detail), camps were built at Blechhammer , Jawiszowice , Jaworzno , Lagisze , Mysłowice , Trzebinia , and as far afield as
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4064-811: The DB Museum in Nuremberg. The former DB CEO Hartmut Mehdorn argued the issue was much too serious, for display in German railway stations. Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee spoke out in favor of the exhibition. At the end of 2006 Tiefensee and Mehdorn agreed to support a new, DB owned exhibition on the role of the Reichsbahn in World War II. The special Deutsche Bahn traveling exhibition " Special Trains to Death " has been shown since 23 January 2008 at numerous German train stations. Since its opening, this exhibition has seen over 150,000 visitors. The hunt for Klaus Barbie
4191-636: The Final Solution to the Jewish Question to senior Nazis, and from early 1942 freight trains delivered Jews from all over occupied Europe to German extermination camps in Poland: Auschwitz, Bełżec , Chełmno , Majdanek , Sobibór , and Treblinka . Most prisoners were gassed on arrival. A former World War I camp for transient workers and later a Polish army barracks, Auschwitz I was the main camp ( Stammlager ) and administrative headquarters of
4318-607: The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in Czechoslovakia. Industries with satellite camps included coal mines, foundries and other metal works, and chemical plants. Prisoners were also made to work in forestry and farming. For example, Wirtschaftshof Budy , in the Polish village of Budy near Brzeszcze , was a farming subcamp where prisoners worked 12-hour days in the fields, tending animals, and making compost by mixing human ashes from
4445-719: The Reich Security Head Office (RSHA). On 30 March the first RHSA transport arrived from France. "Selection", where new arrivals were chosen for work or the gas chamber, began in April 1942 and was conducted regularly from July. Piper writes that this reflected Germany's increasing need for labour. Those selected as unfit for work were gassed without being registered as prisoners. There is also disagreement about how many were gassed in Auschwitz I. Perry Broad , an SS-Unterscharführer , wrote that "transport after transport vanished in
4572-841: The Reichstag passed the Nuremberg Laws . One, the Reich Citizenship Law , defined as citizens those of "German or related blood who demonstrate by their behaviour that they are willing and suitable to serve the German People and Reich faithfully", and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor prohibited marriage and extramarital relations between those with "German or related blood" and Jews. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, triggering World War II, Hitler ordered that
4699-566: The Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg , Germany, to inspect it. Around 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) long and 400 metres (1,300 ft) wide, Auschwitz consisted at the time of 22 brick buildings, eight of them two-story. A second story was added to the others in 1943 and eight new blocks were built. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler , head of the SS , approved the site in April 1940 on
4826-486: The Star of David , overlaid by a second triangle if they also belonged to a second category. The nationality of the inmate was indicated by a letter stitched onto the cloth. A racial hierarchy existed, with German prisoners at the top. Next were non-Jewish prisoners from other countries. Jewish prisoners were at the bottom. Deportees were brought to Auschwitz crammed in wretched conditions into goods or cattle wagons, arriving near
4953-544: The " Jewish question ". Both during and immediately after the Nazi seizure of power in Germany in 1933, acts of violence against German Jews became ubiquitous, and legislation was passed excluding them from certain professions, including the civil service and the law. Harassment and economic pressure encouraged Jews to leave Germany ; their businesses were denied access to markets, forbidden from advertising in newspapers, and deprived of government contracts. On 15 September 1935,
5080-662: The "highest honor" that she could be granted. At the end of February 2012, the Saxon State Commissioner for the Stasi files, Lutz Rathenow , discussed in the Tagesspiegel Klarsfeld's contacts with the East German Ministry of State Security . Klarsfeld had indeed supplied no reports and had also not been a player, but did receive material from the Ministry of State Security. According to Rathenow, it "needs
5207-449: The 991 votes received. Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz concentration camp was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust . It consisted of Auschwitz I , the main camp ( Stammlager ) in Oświęcim ; Auschwitz II-Birkenau ,
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5334-702: The Auschwitz II Sonderkommando , who had been forced to dig up and burn the remains of that camp's mass graves, thought to hold over 100,000 corpses. After visiting Auschwitz I in March 1941, it appears that Himmler ordered that the camp be expanded, although Peter Hayes notes that, on 10 January 1941, the Polish underground told the Polish government-in-exile in London: "the Auschwitz concentration camp ...can accommodate approximately 7,000 prisoners at present, and
5461-515: The Auschwitz [I] crematorium." In the view of Filip Müller , one of the Auschwitz I Sonderkommando , tens of thousands of Jews were murdered there from France, Holland, Slovakia, Upper Silesia, and Yugoslavia, and from the Theresienstadt , Ciechanow , and Grodno ghettos. Against this, Jean-Claude Pressac estimated that up to 10,000 people had been murdered in Auschwitz I. The last inmates gassed there, in December 1942, were around 400 members of
5588-577: The Klarsfelds" that Klaus Barbie was tried, and the slap in the face was doubtful also because Kiesinger had been a " fellow traveller of the Nazi regime". When choosing 18 March 2012 voted 126 members of the Federal Assembly for Klarsfeld. These are placed three more than the Left Party delegates. Klarsfeld was against Joachim Gauck , whose candidacy of CDU / CSU, SPD, FDP and Greens had been supported and
5715-492: The Monowitz concentration camp, it was the first concentration camp to be financed and built by private industry. Measuring 270 m × 490 m (890 ft × 1,610 ft), the camp was larger than Auschwitz I. By the end of 1944, it housed 60 barracks measuring 17.5 m × 8 m (57 ft × 26 ft), each with a day room and a sleeping room containing 56 three-tiered wooden bunks. IG Farben paid
5842-734: The Nazi-war criminals in the largest Nazi-cemetery in Europe in Ysselsteyn ( Venray , the Netherlands); In 2021 the new German ambassador indeed stopped all forms of honoring such as wreath laying. Klarsfeld remained friends with Marlene Dietrich until the German film star's death in 1992. Dietrich also lived in Paris and admired the Klarsfelds for their hunt for Klaus Barbie . On 27 February 2012, Klarsfeld, after previously Luc Jochimsen and Christoph Butterwegge had been mentioned as possible candidates,
5969-534: The Polish leadership and intelligentsia be destroyed. The area around Auschwitz was annexed to the German Reich , as part of first Gau Silesia and from 1941 Gau Upper Silesia . The camp at Auschwitz was established in April 1940, at first as a quarantine camp for Polish political prisoners. On 22 June 1941, in an attempt to obtain new territory, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union . The first gassing at Auschwitz—of
6096-453: The Roma, wore black. Purple was for Jehovah's Witnesses ( Internationale Bibelforscher-Vereinigung or IBV)'s and pink for gay men, who were mostly German. An estimated 5,000–15,000 gay men prosecuted under German Penal Code Section 175 (proscribing sexual acts between men) were detained in concentration camps, of whom an unknown number were sent to Auschwitz. Jews wore a yellow badge , the shape of
6223-456: The SS ordered that the site be evacuated, sending 9,000 inmates, most of them Jews, on a death march to another Auschwitz subcamp at Gliwice . From Gliwice, prisoners were taken by rail in open freight wagons to the Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps. The 800 inmates who had been left behind in the Monowitz hospital were liberated along with the rest of the camp on 27 January 1945 by
6350-911: The SS personnel, were members of the SS-Totenkopfverbände ( death's head units). Other SS staff worked in the medical or political departments, or in the economic administration, which was responsible for clothing and other supplies, including the property of dead prisoners. The SS viewed Auschwitz as a comfortable posting; being there meant they had avoided the front and had access to the victims' property. Certain prisoners, at first non-Jewish Germans but later Jews and non-Jewish Poles, were assigned positions of authority as Funktionshäftlinge (functionaries), which gave them access to better housing and food. The Lagerprominenz (camp elite) included Blockschreiber (barracks clerk), Kapo (overseer), Stubendienst (barracks orderly), and Kommandierte (trusties). Wielding tremendous power over other prisoners,
6477-408: The SS three or four Reichsmark for nine- to eleven-hour shifts from each worker. In 1943–1944, about 35,000 inmates worked at the plant; 23,000 (32 a day on average) were killed through malnutrition, disease, and the workload. Within three to four months at the camp, Peter Hayes writes, the inmates were "reduced to walking skeletons". Deaths and transfers to the gas chambers at Auschwitz II reduced
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#17330926807956604-562: The Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) Central Committee immediately informed Walter Ulbricht , its leader, of Klarsfeld's plans. Subsequently, the National Council was instructed "to provide any relevant assistance to Mrs Klarsfeld". She was eventually supported by the publication of a brochure with a circulation of 30,000 copies. However, the financial help she wished for was not granted. On 9 May, Klarsfeld participated in
6731-589: The Wehrmacht. She attended his campaign events and after his election she disrupted his appearances in Istanbul and Amman, where she was supported by the World Jewish Congress . On 4 July 1987, the SS war criminal Klaus Barbie (known as the butcher of Lyon) was convicted on her initiative. Barbie was found guilty of crimes against humanity and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Klarsfeld rated this success as
6858-464: The absentee was found or the reason for the absence discovered, even if it took hours. On 6 July 1940, roll call lasted 19 hours because a Polish prisoner, Tadeusz Wiejowski , had escaped; following an escape in 1941, a group of prisoners was picked out from the escapee's barracks and sent to block 11 to be starved to death. After roll call, prisoners retired to their blocks for the night and received their bread rations. Then they had some free time to use
6985-547: The age of about fourteen years, Beate began to frequently argue with her parents because they did not feel responsible for the Nazi era, focused on the injustices and material losses they had suffered, and, while blaming the Russians, felt no sympathy for other countries. In 1960, Beate Künzel spent a year as an au pair in Paris . By her own admission, at that time politics and history were completely foreign to her. However, in Paris she
7112-541: The area around the gas chambers. The day began at 4:30 am for the men (an hour later in winter), and earlier for the women, when the block supervisor sounded a gong and started beating inmates with sticks to make them wash and use the latrines quickly. There were few latrines and there was a lack of clean water. Each washhouse had to service thousands of prisoners. In sectors BIa and BIb in Auschwitz II, two buildings containing latrines and washrooms were installed in 1943. These contained troughs for washing and 90 faucets;
7239-417: The audience, including representatives of the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS). Grass's thesis that a withdrawal by Kiesinger would be a prerequisite for an effective fight against the far-right NPD , was rejected by Agnoli and Krippendorff. The conference ended with a 3/4 majority urging Kiesinger to resign. In mid-1968, as a witness in a lawsuit, Kiesinger stated that he had not heard about
7366-409: The camp be established. Living with his wife and children in a two-story stucco house near the commandant's and administration building, he served as commandant until 11 November 1943, with Josef Kramer as his deputy. Succeeded as commandant by Arthur Liebehenschel , Höss joined the SS Business and Administration Head Office in Oranienburg as director of Amt DI, a post that made him deputy of
7493-520: The camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. In 1947, Poland founded the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on the site of Auschwitz I and II, and in 1979 it was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO . Auschwitz is the site of the largest mass murder in a single location in history. The ideology of Nazism combined elements of " racial hygiene ", eugenics , antisemitism , pan-Germanism , and territorial expansionism, Richard J. Evans writes. Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party became obsessed by
7620-439: The camp complex. Fifty kilometres (31 mi) southwest of Kraków , the site was first suggested in February 1940 as a quarantine camp for Polish prisoners by Arpad Wigand , the inspector of the Sicherheitspolizei (security police) and deputy of Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski , the Higher SS and Police Leader for Silesia. Richard Glücks , head of the Concentration Camps Inspectorate , sent Walter Eisfeld , former commandant of
7747-459: The camp, including with the SS. Nevertheless, their life expectancy was short; they were regularly murdered and replaced. About 100 survived to the camp's liquidation. They were forced on a death march and by train to the camp at Mauthausen , where three days later they were asked to step forward during roll call. No one did, and because the SS did not have their records, several of them survived. Uniquely at Auschwitz, prisoners were tattooed with
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#17330926807957874-477: The camp. Only two Jewish calendars made in Auschwitz survived to the end of the war. Prisoners kept track of the days in other ways, such as obtaining information from newcomers. About 30 percent of the registered inmates were female. The first mass transport of women, 999 non-Jewish German women from the Ravensbrück concentration camp , arrived on 26 March 1942. Classified as criminal, asocial and political, they were brought to Auschwitz as founder functionaries of
8001-447: The camps inspectorate. Richard Baer became commandant of Auschwitz I on 11 May 1944 and Fritz Hartjenstein of Auschwitz II from 22 November 1943, followed by Josef Kramer from 15 May 1944 until the camp's liquidation in January 1945. Heinrich Schwarz was commandant of Auschwitz III from the point at which it became an autonomous camp in November 1943 until its liquidation. Höss returned to Auschwitz between 8 May and 29 July 1944 as
8128-412: The ceiling to resemble showerheads. The daily capacity of the crematoria (how many bodies could be burned in a 24-hour period) was 340 corpses in crematorium I; 1,440 each in crematoria II and III; and 768 each in IV and V. By June 1943 all four crematoria were operational, but crematorium I was not used after July 1943. This made the total daily capacity 4,416, although by loading three to five corpses at
8255-455: The ceiling. Historians have disagreed about the date the all-Jewish transports began arriving in Auschwitz. At the Wannsee Conference in Berlin on 20 January 1942, the Nazi leadership outlined, in euphemistic language, its plans for the Final Solution . According to Franciszek Piper , the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss offered inconsistent accounts after the war, suggesting the extermination began in December 1941, January 1942, or before
8382-418: The crematoria with sod and manure. Incidents of sabotage to decrease production took place in several subcamps, including Charlottengrube, Gleiwitz II , and Rajsko . Living conditions in some of the camps were so poor that they were regarded as punishment subcamps. Rudolf Höss , born in Baden-Baden in 1900, was named the first commandant of Auschwitz when Heinrich Himmler ordered on 27 April 1940 that
8509-465: The day. We stood in line to get in to this tiny building, knee-deep in human excrement. As we all suffered from dysentry, we could barely wait until our turn came, and soiled our ragged clothes, which never came off our bodies, thus adding to the horror of our existence by the terrible smell that surrounded us like a cloud. The latrine consisted of a deep ditch with planks thrown across it at certain intervals. We squatted on those planks like birds perched on
8636-409: The efforts of Klarsfeld, Brunner was sentenced by a French court in absentia to life imprisonment. In July 2001, Klarsfeld called for a demonstration in Berlin against the state visit of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad . Beate and Serge Klarsfeld published a commemorative book in which the names of over 80,000 victims of the Nazi era in France are listed. They strove successfully to have
8763-499: The end of June or beginning of July 1940. Initially intended not for mass murder but for prisoners who had been executed or had otherwise died in the camp, the crematorium was in operation from August 1940 until July 1943, by which time the crematoria at Auschwitz II had taken over. By May 1942 three ovens had been installed in crematorium I, which together could burn 340 bodies in 24 hours. The first experimental gassing took place around August 1941, when Lagerführer Karl Fritzsch , at
8890-404: The end of the war, the SS sent most of the camp's population west on a death march to camps inside Germany and Austria. Soviet troops entered the camp on 27 January 1945, a day commemorated since 2005 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day . In the decades after the war, survivors such as Primo Levi , Viktor Frankl , Elie Wiesel , and Edith Eger wrote memoirs of their experiences, and
9017-422: The establishment of the women's camp in March 1942. In Kommandant in Auschwitz , he wrote: "In the spring of 1942 the first transports of Jews, all earmarked for extermination, arrived from Upper Silesia." On 15 February 1942, according to Danuta Czech , a transport of Jews from Beuthen, Upper Silesia ( Bytom , Poland), arrived at Auschwitz I and was sent straight to the gas chamber. In 1998 an eyewitness said
9144-569: The extermination of the Jews. These allegations were based in part on the Braunbuch , a work of East German propaganda. On 2 April 1968, from the public gallery in the Bonn Bundestag (German parliament), Klarsfeld shouted "Nazi Kiesinger, resign!" at Kiesinger, and was arrested to be released soon after. According to archives, she traveled to East Berlin in the end of April 1968 in order "to discuss
9271-485: The face" an internal statement of the SED Politburo member Albert Norden . Norden announced that a week after the slap against Kiesinger, Klarsfeld should be provided 2000 DM "for further initiatives". Officially, the amount should be reported as the fee for an article that she had written for an East German magazine. Referring to this publication, CDU General Secretary Hermann Gröhe denied Klarsfeld's suitability for
9398-475: The fact of the victim being the Chancellor. Klarsfeld appealed against the verdict, which in late 1969, was reduced to four months in prison, which were suspended on probation. In recognition of her action, author Heinrich Böll sent red roses to her in Paris . Günter Grass , however, deemed Klarsfeld's action "irrational" and criticized Böll's reaction to it. During a wave of violence gestures and attacks by
9525-421: The factory; and that Auschwitz prisoners be used in the construction work. Auschwitz inmates began working at the plant, known as Buna Werke and IG-Auschwitz, in April 1941, demolishing houses in Monowitz to make way for it. By May, because of a shortage of trucks, several hundred of them were rising at 3 am to walk there twice a day from Auschwitz I. Because a long line of exhausted inmates walking through
9652-714: The following month, and from 1942 until late 1944 freight trains delivered Jews from all over German-occupied Europe to its gas chambers. Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million were murdered. The number of victims includes 960,000 Jews (865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival), 74,000 non-Jewish Poles , 21,000 Romani , 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war , and up to 15,000 others. Those not gassed were murdered via starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions, or beatings. Others were killed during medical experiments . At least 802 prisoners tried to escape, 144 successfully, and on 7 October 1944 , two Sonderkommando units, consisting of prisoners who operated
9779-497: The frontier regions under the Eastern Fiscal Assistance Law, passed in December 1940. In addition to its proximity to the concentration camp, a source of cheap labour, the site had good railway connections and access to raw materials. In February 1941, Himmler ordered that the Jewish population of Oświęcim be expelled to make way for skilled laborers; that all Poles able to work remain in the town and work on building
9906-517: The functionaries developed a reputation as sadists. Very few were prosecuted after the war, because of the difficulty of determining which atrocities had been performed by order of the SS. Although the SS oversaw the murders at each gas chamber, the forced labor portion of the work was done by prisoners known from 1942 as the Sonderkommando (special squad). These were mostly Jews but they included groups such as Soviet POWs. In 1940–1941 when there
10033-603: The gas chamber, was at the prisoner reception centre near the gate with the Arbeit macht frei sign, where they were tattooed, shaved, disinfected, and given a striped prison uniform. Built between 1942 and 1944, the center contained a bathhouse, laundry, and 19 gas chambers for delousing clothing. The prisoner reception center of Auschwitz I became the visitor reception center of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum . Construction of crematorium I began at Auschwitz I at
10160-523: The gas chambers, launched an unsuccessful uprising. After the Holocaust ended, only 789 Schutzstaffel personnel (no more than 15 percent) ever stood trial. Several were executed, including camp commandant Rudolf Höss . The Allies ' failure to act on early reports of mass murder by bombing the camp or its railways remains controversial. As the Soviet Red Army approached Auschwitz in January 1945, toward
10287-434: The ground floor, and an underground dressing room 49.43 by 7.93 m (162.2 by 26.0 ft) and gas chamber 30 by 7 m (98 by 23 ft). The dressing rooms had wooden benches along the walls and numbered pegs for clothing. Victims would be led from these rooms to a five-yard-long narrow corridor, which in turn led to a space from which the gas chamber door opened. The chambers were white inside, and nozzles were fixed to
10414-570: The higher number is probably attributable to the logistics of evacuating the camp. Female guards were known as SS supervisors ( SS-Aufseherinnen ). Most of the staff were from Germany or Austria, but as the war progressed, increasing numbers of Volksdeutsche from other countries, including Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and the Baltic states, joined the SS at Auschwitz. Not all were ethnically German. Guards were also recruited from Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. Camp guards, around three quarters of
10541-490: The image of Germany. A moral Germany had to be created, one that can bring about social justice in other European countries. Klarsfeld had announced, she would support Incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2012 French presidential election . She is not troubled to "candidate for The Left of all things" although she would have preferred a nomination by the CDU or the SPD. According to Klarsfeld, the election as President of Germany would be
10668-416: The instruction of Rudolf Höss, murdered a group of Soviet prisoners of war by throwing Zyklon B crystals into their basement cell in block 11 of Auschwitz I. A second group of 600 Soviet prisoners of war and around 250 sick Polish prisoners were gassed on 3–5 September. The morgue was later converted to a gas chamber able to hold at least 700–800 people. Zyklon B was dropped into the room through slits in
10795-594: The leftist Aktion Demokratischer Fortschritt against the direct candidate of the CDU, Chancellor Kiesinger. Kiesinger received 60,373 votes, Klarsfeld 644. In February 1971 Klarsfeld demonstrated in front of the Charles University in Prague against "Stalinisation, persecution and anti-Semitism". As a result, she was temporarily banned from entering East Germany . That same year in Germany, with her husband and several other people, she tried to kidnap Kurt Lischka , who
10922-689: The local SS garrison commander ( Standortältester ) to oversee the arrival of Hungary's Jews, which made him the superior officer of all the commandants of the Auschwitz camps. According to Aleksander Lasik , about 6,335 people (6,161 of them men) worked for the SS at Auschwitz over the course of the camp's existence; 4.2 percent were officers, 26.1 percent non-commissioned officers, and 69.7 percent rank and file. In March 1941, there were 700 SS guards; in June 1942, 2,000; and in August 1944, 3,342. At its peak in January 1945, 4,480 SS men and 71 SS women worked in Auschwitz;
11049-624: The minimum space needed to exist". The prisoners were forced to live in the barracks as they were building them; in addition to working, they faced long roll calls at night. As a result, most prisoners in BIb (the men's camp) in the early months died of hypothermia , starvation or exhaustion within a few weeks. Some 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war arrived at Auschwitz I between 7 and 25 October 1941, but by 1 March 1942 only 945 were still registered; they were transferred to Auschwitz II, where most of them had died by May. The first gas chamber at Auschwitz II
11176-477: The money to pay for the flight costs of supporters of her anti-Kiesinger campaign on 13 November 1968 in Brussels. As early as 1972 she had described it in her autobiography. Klarsfeld answer was interpreted by Welt online as an indirect and first-time admission that she had once actually received the 2000 D-Mark. Free Democratic Party General Secretary Patrick Döring said: "If it turns out that in 1968 Ms. Klarsfeld
11303-608: The most important result of their actions. In 1972 she had helped to discover Barbie's whereabouts in Bolivia. It is thanks to their commitment that the Maison d’Izieu (Children of Izieu ) memorial was founded, which commemorates the victims of the crimes committed by Barbie. In 1991, she fought for the extradition of Eichmann's deputy Alois Brunner , then living in Syria, for the murder of 130,000 Jews in German concentration camps. In 2001, through
11430-547: The murder of Jews until 1942 and that it had not been until late 1944, on the strength of foreign reports, that he had first believed any of it. During a CDU party conference in the Berlin Congress Hall , in West Berlin, on 7 November 1968, Klarsfeld mounted the podium, slapped Kiesinger, and shouted "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi". A few days later, during an interview with Der Spiegel she maintained that she had already planned
11557-497: The office of president. The head of the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial , Hubertus Knabe, said something similar and attested her a missing "democratic awareness". Asked about the allegations, Klarsfeld called it outrageous to reduce her commitment for Kiesinger's Nazi past to support by East German officials. She said she never worked on behalf of East Germany but on her own behalf. According to Klarsfeld, she used
11684-447: The parliamentary faction Dietmar Bartsch said Klarsfeld sought to put the slap Kiesingers a sign, but achieved a great deal more. He opposed equating GDR and Nazism, calling it legitimate that Klarsfeld was supported in her "fight against Nazis" by France , Israel , and also by East Germany . Die Welt which Klarsfeld had three years earlier honored on her birthday, now published opinion comments, after which "it had little to do with
11811-432: The person's given name (s) to the link. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Klarsfeld&oldid=1254424619 " Category : Surnames Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description is different from Wikidata All set index articles Monitored short pages Beate Klarsfeld Beate Auguste Klarsfeld (née Künzel ; born 13 February 1939)
11938-413: The pictures displayed of about 11,400 deported Jewish children in the years 1942 to 1944. The French railway SNCF welcomed the project and displayed the pictures at 18 stations as a traveling exhibition ( Enfants juifs Déportés de France ). The German Railways (DB), the legal successor of Deutsche Reichsbahn, turned down a corresponding exhibition at DB-stations "for security reasons" and referred them to
12065-459: The population by nearly a fifth each month. Site managers constantly threatened inmates with the gas chambers, and the smell from the crematoria at Auschwitz I and II hung heavy over the camp. Although the factory had been expected to begin production in 1943, shortages of labour and raw materials meant start-up was postponed repeatedly. The Allies bombed the plant in 1944 on 20 August, 13 September, 18 December, and 26 December. On 19 January 1945,
12192-642: The post of chancellor and in favour of Willy Brandt . In these and other pieces for Combat in March and on 27 July of that year she accused Kiesinger of having made a "good reputation" for himself "in the ranks of the Brown Shirts" and "in the CDU". At the end of August, she was fired by the Franco-German Youth Office. The Klarsfelds initiated legal action against the decision and redoubled their journalistic campaign against Kiesinger. To draw attention to Kiesinger's Nazi past, Beate Klarsfeld initiated
12319-528: The preparation of actions against Kiesinger and obtain appropriate support" there with the National Council, the supreme body of the National Front . On 9 May she was in West Berlin , for a demonstration of the extra-parliamentary opposition about Kiesinger's Nazi past. A press conference was scheduled for 10 May. On 14 May, Klarsfeld wanted to organize a "Kiesinger-Colloquium" in Paris. The West Department of
12446-510: The recommendation of SS- Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss of the camps inspectorate. Höss oversaw the development of the camp and served as its first commandant. The first 30 prisoners arrived on 20 May 1940 from the Sachsenhausen camp. German "career criminals" ( Berufsverbrecher ), the men were known as "greens" ( Grünen ) after the green triangles on their prison clothing. Brought to the camp as functionaries, this group did much to establish
12573-514: The sadism of early camp life, which was directed particularly at Polish inmates, until the political prisoners took over their roles. Bruno Brodniewicz , the first prisoner (who was given serial number 1), became Lagerälteste (camp elder). The others were given positions such as kapo and block supervisor. The first mass transport—of 728 Polish male political prisoners, including Catholic priests and Jews—arrived on 14 June 1940 from Tarnów , Poland. They were given serial numbers 31 to 758. In
12700-582: The same day. According to Danuta Czech , this was the first registered transport sent to Auschwitz by the Reich Security Head Office (RSHA) office IV B4, known as the Jewish Office, led by SS Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann . (Office IV was the Gestapo .) A third transport of 798 Jewish women from Bratislava , Slovakia, followed on 28 March. Women were at first held in blocks 1–10 of Auschwitz I, but from 6 August 1942, 13,000 inmates were transferred to
12827-543: The search for the suspected Nazi war criminals Walter Rauff and Josef Mengele . In 1986 she spent a month in West Beirut , Lebanon, and offered to go into custody in an exchange for Israeli hostages. In 1986, she campaigned against the candidacy of former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim to the post of the Federal President of Austria, on the grounds of his being accused of involvement in war crimes as an officer of
12954-494: The slap on 9 May 1968. She said that she had wanted to give voice to that part of the German people – especially the youth – who were opposed to a Nazi being the head of the Federal Government. Berlin was selected as the location because Klarsfeld and her husband expected that as a French citizen she would only be punished mildly, given the four-power status of the city . The same day, on 7 November 1968, Klarsfeld received
13081-729: The slap" have Klarsfeld "probably concocted itself"; he knew nothing about it before it is executed. Klarsfeld confirmed that she was not an informer, she said the German Democratic Republic (GDR) offered her access to archives about Nazi criminals in Potsdam. After Klarsfeld actions against antisemitism early 70s in Prague and Warsaw , the GDR had these doors but closed again. The state security background of her interlocutors in East Germany, she
13208-470: The sound of " Arbeitskommandos formieren " ("form work details"), prisoners walked to their place of work, five abreast, to begin a working day that was normally 11 hours long—longer in summer and shorter in winter. A prison orchestra, such as the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz , was forced to play cheerful music as the workers left the camp. Kapos were responsible for the prisoners' behaviour while they worked, as
13335-454: The student movement following the judgment against Klarsfeld, the judge's windows were pelted with stones, which the SDS called "an adequate response to an unparalleled terror judgment". Klarsfeld justified the act in a poem that she recorded on 23 November 1968, saying that her slap was on behalf of 50 million dead of World War II as well as for future generations. She wanted it to be understood as
13462-518: The toilet facilities were "sewage channels" covered by concrete with 58 holes for seating. There were three barracks with washing facilities or toilets to serve 16 residential barracks in BIIa, and six washrooms/latrines for 32 barracks in BIIb, BIIc, BIId, and BIIe. Primo Levi described a 1944 Auschwitz III washroom: It is badly lighted, full of draughts, with the brick floor covered by a layer of mud. The water
13589-464: The town of Oświęcim might harm German-Polish relations, the inmates were told to shave daily, make sure they were clean, and sing as they walked. From late July they were taken to the factory by train on freight wagons. Given the difficulty of moving them, including during the winter, IG Farben decided to build a camp at the plant. The first inmates moved there on 30 October 1942. Known as KL Auschwitz III–Aussenlager (Auschwitz III subcamp), and later as
13716-630: The train contained "the women of Beuthen". Saul Friedländer wrote that the Beuthen Jews were from the Organization Schmelt labor camps and had been deemed unfit for work. According to Christopher Browning , transports of Jews unfit for work were sent to the gas chamber at Auschwitz from autumn 1941. The evidence for this and the February 1942 transport was contested in 2015 by Nikolaus Wachsmann . Around 20 March 1942, according to Danuta Czech,
13843-485: The washrooms and receive their mail, unless they were Jews: Jews were not allowed to receive mail. Curfew ("nighttime quiet") was marked by a gong at nine o'clock. Inmates slept in long rows of brick or wooden bunks, or on the floor, lying in and on their clothes and shoes to prevent them from being stolen. The wooden bunks had blankets and paper mattresses filled with wood shavings; in the brick barracks, inmates lay on straw. According to Miklós Nyiszli : Eight hundred to
13970-469: The weather, they had to wait for the SS to arrive for the count; how long they stood there depended on the officers' mood, and whether there had been escapes or other events attracting punishment. Guards might force the prisoners to squat for an hour with their hands above their heads or hand out beatings or detention for infractions such as having a missing button or an improperly cleaned food bowl. The inmates were counted and re-counted. After roll call, to
14097-438: The women's camp. Rudolf Höss wrote of them: "It was easy to predict that these beasts would mistreat the women over whom they exercised power ... Spiritual suffering was completely alien to them." They were given serial numbers 1–999. The women's guard from Ravensbrück, Johanna Langefeld , became the first Auschwitz women's camp Lagerführerin . A second mass transport of women, 999 Jews from Poprad , Slovakia, arrived on
14224-436: Was 300 grams of bread, often moldy, part of which the inmates were expected to keep for breakfast the next day, with a tablespoon of cheese or marmalade, or 25 grams of margarine or sausage. Prisoners engaged in hard labour were given extra rations. A second roll call took place at seven in the evening, in the course of which prisoners might be hanged or flogged. If a prisoner was missing, the others had to remain standing until
14351-461: Was an SS escort. Much of the work took place outdoors at construction sites, gravel pits, and lumber yards. No rest periods were allowed. One prisoner was assigned to the latrines to measure the time the workers took to empty their bladders and bowels. Lunch was three-quarters of a litre of watery soup at midday, reportedly foul-tasting, with meat in the soup four times a week and vegetables (mostly potatoes and rutabaga ) three times. The evening meal
14478-550: Was born in Berlin , the only child of Kurt Künzel, an insurance clerk , and his wife, Helen. Her parents were not Nazis, according to Klarsfeld; however, they had voted for the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler . Her father was drafted in the summer of 1939 into the infantry. From the summer of 1940, he fought with his unit in France and was moved in 1941 to the eastern front . In the following winter, because he had contracted double pneumonia , he
14605-503: Was confronted with the consequences of the Holocaust . In 1963, she married the French lawyer and historian Serge Klarsfeld, whose father was a victim of the Auschwitz concentration camp exterminations. Beate has said that her husband helped her to become "a German of conscience and awareness". The couple had two children: Arno David Klarsfeld [ de ; fr ] (born 1965) and Lida Myriam (born 1973). In 1964 Beate began work as
14732-825: Was initially a quarantine camp), but the construction of BIII began in 1943 and stopped in April 1944, and the plan for BIV was abandoned. SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Bischoff , an architect, was the chief of construction. Based on an initial budget of RM 8.9 million, his plans called for each barracks to hold 550 prisoners, but he later changed this to 744 per barracks, which meant the camp could hold 125,000, rather than 97,000. There were 174 barracks, each measuring 35.4 by 11.0 m (116 by 36 ft), divided into 62 bays of 4 m (43 sq ft). The bays were divided into "roosts", initially for three inmates and later for four. With personal space of 1 m (11 sq ft) to sleep and place whatever belongings they had, inmates were deprived, Robert-Jan van Pelt wrote, "of
14859-578: Was made into the movie Die Hetzjagd ( The hunt ) of 2008. In 2009, she was again nominated by the parliamentary group Die Linke for the Order of Merit . The award was contingent on the approval of the Foreign Office. The Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle declined to approve it. In the term of office of Joschka Fischer as foreign minister (1998–2005) the award had been previously vetoed. Since 2008, Klarsfeld has been, together with Michel Cullin of France,
14986-532: Was nominated by the board of Die Linke unanimously for the election of the German President in 2012 as a candidate. Klarsfeld stated that she felt fully supported by The Left in the fight against fascism . The fact that the party had nominated her with knowledge of her commitment to Israel, shows that the party agreed with her on this matter. She did not publish a program for her administration in case of her winning, she did, however, say she wanted to improve
15113-480: Was not a workday, but prisoners had to clean the barracks and take their weekly shower, and were allowed to write (in German) to their families, although the SS censored the mail. Inmates who did not speak German would trade bread for help. Observant Jews tried to keep track of the Hebrew calendar and Jewish holidays , including Shabbat , and the weekly Torah portion . No watches, calendars, or clocks were permitted in
15240-517: Was not aware of at the time: "I met with people, which I thought they were historians with access to State archives of the GDR." On 5 March 2012, Klarsfeld was elected by the Saxon parliament on the list of the Left Group as one of 33 people election as member of the 15th Federal Assembly in 2012. On 7 March 2012, Welt online published under the article heading "2000 D-Mark for the famous German slap in
15367-473: Was nothing but an accomplice for a paid SED PR campaign, her candidacy for the highest German state office is a slap in the face for all democrats in our country". The general secretary of the CSU, Alexander Dobrindt, called Klarsfeld a "SED puppet". The managing director of Die Linke, Caren Lay, described it as an "absurd charge", to discredit Klarsfelds commitment as "commissioned by the GDR". The deputy chairman of
15494-462: Was one gas chamber, there were 20 such prisoners, in late 1943 there were 400, and by 1944 during the Holocaust in Hungary the number had risen to 874. The Sonderkommando removed goods and corpses from the incoming trains, guided victims to the dressing rooms and gas chambers, removed their bodies afterwards, and took their jewelry, hair, dental work, and any precious metals from their teeth, all of which
15621-506: Was operational by March 1942. On or around 20 March, a transport of Polish Jews sent by the Gestapo from Silesia and Zagłębie Dąbrowskie was taken straight from the Oświęcim freight station to the Auschwitz II gas chamber, then buried in a nearby meadow. The gas chamber was located in what prisoners called the "little red house" (known as bunker 1 by the SS), a brick cottage that had been turned into
15748-535: Was responsible for the deportation of some 76,000 Jews from France. Lischka was living openly under his own name in Cologne. Klarsfeld planned to hand him over to justice in Paris, as a previous conviction in France blocked further legal action against Lischka in Germany. Although the kidnapping was unsuccessful, it served to draw media attention to Klarsfeld's cause. She turned herself in to the German authorities, saying that they must arrest either her or Lischka. In 1974 she
15875-420: Was sent to Germany. Once the bodies were stripped of anything valuable, the Sonderkommando burned them in the crematoria. Because they were witnesses to the mass murder, the Sonderkommando lived separately from the other prisoners, although this rule was not applied to the non-Jews among them. Their quality of life was further improved by their access to the property of new arrivals, which they traded within
16002-518: Was sentenced to two months' imprisonment for the attempted kidnapping, with Lischka testifying at her trial. After an international outcry, her sentence was suspended. Lischka remained at large until 1980, when he was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. In the 1970s, Klarsfeld repeatedly denounced the involvement of the FDP politician Ernst Achenbach in the deportation of Jews from France. In 1976, she succeeded in stopping Achenbach's political activity as
16129-502: Was transferred back to Germany and worked as an accountant . Beate spent several months in Łódź with her godfather, who was a Nazi official. The Berlin apartment in which she lived was bombed and relatives in Sandau gave shelter to Beate and her mother. Her father joined them in 1945. The house and property in Sandau were seized by the Polish government, and the family returned to Berlin. From
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