| From liberation to the opening of the Memorial |
| Contributed by Jacek Lachendro | |
|
From January 17 to 21, 1945, the Auschwitz administration evacuated about 58 thousand prisoners into the depths of the Reich. At the same time, the SS were burning the camp records. On January 20, they blew up crematoria and gas chambers II and III in Birkenau. Just after the end of the evacuation, on January 23, they set fire to Kanada II, the warehouse full of property plundered from the Jews. Three days later, they blew up gas chamber and crematorium V. When Red Army troops entered the grounds of the camp on the 27th, they found about 7 thousand prisoners there, most of them sick and at the limits of physical exhaustion.
After liberation, the Red Army was in charge of the grounds. Soldiers of the Soviet medical corps and members of the Polish Red Cross (Polski Czerwony Krzyż - PCK), with much help from the local population, set up hospitals that treated about 4,800 sick and physically exhausted prisoners. At first, the patients received treatment in three parts of the liberated camp—the main camp, Birkenau, and Monowitz. From the second half of February, all treatment was administered in seven specially prepared blocks at the main camp, where conditions were best. Patients requiring specialist treatment were transferred to hospitals in Cracow. Despite intensive care, some died—mostly in February and March. A total of about 600 ex-prisoners died while the hospitals were open. At first, the hospitals also treated liberated children. In February and March, however, the children were transferred from the camp to shelters in Katowice, Cracow, Rabka, Warsaw-Okęcie, and Harbutowice near Cracow. From June, the size of the PCK hospital was reduced as the number of patients declined, but also because German POWs were being quartered in the blocks. The PCK hospital closed on October 1, 1945. Other priority tasks included removing and burying the approximately 600 corpses found at the main camp and Birkenau sites. Block 11 at the main camp was used as a morgue, and the corpses were brought there. In Birkenau, they were placed in a large pit dug at the end of the railroad platform, between the ruins of gas chambers and crematoria II and III. The bodies of prisoners who died after liberation were also placed there. Doctors from the Soviet commission investigating German war crimes performed autopsies on some of the corpses before burial. A ceremonial funeral for victims was held on February 28, 1945. A funeral procession brought 470 bodies from Birkenau to be buried in a grave dug near the Lagererweiterung blocks just outside the main camp. All the corpses from block 11 had been placed in the grave beforehand. It is estimated that about 700 Auschwitz victims rest together in this common grave. Another important task was helping the prisoners in relatively good physical condition return home. Some set out on their own, and others in transports organized by the Red Army and the PCK. Several score transports were formed up and sent on their way between mid-February and July. Former prisoners from outside Poland were taken to assembly points in Cracow, Katowice, and Bielsko, and from there to resettlement camps in the Ukraine and Byelorussia. In the spring, several score prisoners sailed from Odessa to Marseilles, and in the autumn, after the end of the war, trains carried another group through Romania, Hungary, and Austria to Western Europe. Missions from Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Romania, and Hungary came to the Auschwitz site to evacuate their citizens. All of those who left received PCK certificates to prove that they had been in Auschwitz—the only identity document they had—along with passes in Polish and Russian, issued by the Voivodship office, which entitled them to help from the military and civilian authorities on their way home. The survivors also received dry rations for 3 to 5 days and, in some cases, modest sums of pocket money. PCK staff also prepared a list of the names of former prisoners on the basis of the partially extant camp records and information received from survivors. This list was the basis for providing several thousand families with information about relatives who had been in Auschwitz. Over time, PCK offices in Cracow and Warsaw took over this informational work, before the creation of an information office (now the Office for Information on Former Prisoners) at the State Museum in Auschwitz in 1954. The Soviet Commission secured, as material evidence of crime, the plundered victims’ property that the Germans did not manage to ship out, and collected testimony from more than 500 surviving prisoners. It also carried out almost 3 thousand examinations of former prisoners and over 500 autopsies. The Polish commission, in turn, secured thousands of documents found on the grounds, questioned many ex-prisoners, and sent samples of victims’ hair and some metal components of the gas chambers to the Institute of Forensic Research in Cracow. Analysis there revealed the presence of hydrogen cyanide and compounds of hydrogen cyanide. The Supreme National Tribunal used the material collected by the commission in the trials of former commandant Rudolf Höss and the 40 members of the Auschwitz garrison. On May 8, 1945, the Soviet commission issued a communiqué presenting the results of its investigations. One of them most important findings was the figure of 4 million people who died or were killed in the camp, which quickly became fixed in the public mind and served as an impediment to later research on the issue.In April-May 1945 at the latest, the Soviet military authorities established transit camps at the sites of the Auschwitz main camp and Birkenau for German POWs and for Polish citizens of Upper Silesia, Bielsko, Biała, and the vicinity who had signed the volksliste [declaration of German ethnicity] during the occupation. The State Bureau for Public Security (Państwowy Urząd Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego – PUBP) participated in administering the camps for Poles. The transit camp in the main camp probably existed until the fall of 1945, and the one in Birkenau until the following spring. One other camp existed in the buildings that had formerly made up the Gemeinschaftslager, a camp for conscript laborers employed by German construction firms. That camp opened in the early spring of 1945, and was transferred to Jaworzno in May of the following year. The PUBP headquarters occupied three blocks, and persons suspected of disloyalty to the Polish state were held in five wooden barracks. The POWs and civilians held in these three camps were used for groundskeeping work, the dismantling of wooden barracks, and above all for disassembling the equipment and installations in the former IG Farben plant in Dwory. This equipment was next shipped to the Soviet Union. There were Poles from Upper Silesia who had been conscripted under duress by the Wehrmacht among the German POWs. The internees also included Poles detained by the Soviets during “mopping up operations behind the front lines” in the Bielsko, Biała, Rybnik, and Racibórz areas, and others suspected of opposition to the new political order. In August and September 1945, the Soviets freed some of the Poles interned in the camps. At the turn of 1945/1946, the Soviets turned the grounds of the camp over to the Polish authorities. At first, they came under the control of a commission of the Voivodship Branch of the Temporary State Administration (Wojewódzki Oddział Tymczasowego Zarządu Państwowego – WOTZP), which took an inventory of the buildings and movable property there. In March 1946, the District Liquidation Bureau (Okręgowy Urząd Likwidacyjny – OUL) in Cracow took over all the prerogatives and duties of the WOTZP. A so-called “Team” (Ekipa) worked at the site in the name of the OUL, securing and warehousing property, examining it and taking inventory, or selling it in cases where there was a danger of spoilage or where the storage costs were significantly higher than the value. Under these prerogatives, the OUL decided to dispose of the vacant camp barracks, which the Central Office of the Temporary State Administration had already placed at the disposal of the Ministry of Reconstruction in February 1946. The majority of these barracks were dismantled and sold to local civilians who had lost all their property during the occupation, or were shipped along with other building materials to various cities in Poland. Many articles of everyday use from the concentration camp sites were also distributed to civilians who had suffered the greatest wartime losses. Soviet soldiers removed some of the original camp property in 1945. Local residents coming back to their native villages also took some of the property in an attempt to compensate themselves for the material losses they had suffered during the expulsions of 1940 and 1941, when many of them lost everything they owned. Before the end of 1945, officials at the highest levels of the Polish government had already taken steps to transform the former camp into a museum. On May 1, the Provisional Government gave the Ministry of Culture and Art (MKiS) authority over “parts of the concentration camp in Oświęcim, which were connected with the direct extermination of millions of people.” The ministry received instructions to secure the site and prepare a concept for the future museum. It was former prisoners who carried on the effort. A group of former prisoners who belonged to the National People’s Council (Krajowa Rada Narodowa – KRN) tabled a legislative initiative at a session of the Council on December 31. They were led by Alfred Fiderkiewicz. Their initiative called for the creation in Oświęcim and Brzezinka of a site to commemorate Polish and international martyrdom. The KRN culture and art commission unanimously approved the initiative on February 1, 1946. On February 26, the Presidium of the Council of Ministers once again instructed the MKiS to secure and protect the Auschwitz site. As a result, a Protection Board was set up in March, with members nominated at a meeting of the Executive Board of the Union of Former Political Prisoners. The MKiS named former Auschwitz prisoner Tadeusz Wąsowicz (a future director of the Museum) head of the Protection Board. In mid-April, together with a team of former prisoners, he began work aimed at setting up the Museum. This team, its numbers constantly growing, took control of the site and took possession of the buildings and moveable property there from the OUL. Many of the structures, including the blocks in the main camp, and the brick blocks, guard towers, main gate, and some of the wooden barracks at Birkenau, were still in relatively good condition. Many items of various kinds that had belonged to the murdered Jews were found in the Lagererweiterung buildings. In June 1946, the OUL turned most of these items over as Museum exhibits. Wąsowicz’s team also collected and secured all material evidence of crime and all objects of historical value. It then sent relatively large numbers of documents to the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes (later, “Nazi Crimes”) in Cracow. Finally, the team prepared an exhibition and routes for visitors, and began showing guests around the site. It was already possible to visit the Auschwitz site in 1945. However, visiting was limited to organized groups, or took place in connection with various ceremonies. Only after the beginning of work on setting up the Museum was it placed on a regular basis. In 1946, there were 100 thousand visitors and pilgrims (many people, especially relatives of victims, treated the visit as a pilgrimage). The next year, there were 170 thousand.Both individual and group visits were possible. In either case, the visitor had to be accompanied by a guard or other member of the nascent Museum staff, acting as guide. Admission was by purchase of a ticket, with the proceeds going to organizational work. Until the official opening of the Museum, guides showed the “Arbeit macht frei” gate, block 11 and the Death Wall in the courtyard, and the reconstructed Crematorium I at the main camp, and the interiors of brick and wooden barracks, the ruins of the crematoria, and the burning pits at Birkenau. The ceremonial opening of the Museum took place on June 14, 1947, attended by tens of thousands of people—mostly former prisoners, their relatives, and delegations from many Polish and Jewish community and political organizations. The ceremony began with religious services—Catholic in the courtyard of block 11, Jewish in block 4, and Eastern Orthodox and Lutheran inside block 11. After the service, there were addresses by Polish Premier Józef Cyrankiewicz and parliamentary delegate Józef Sak, representing the Central Committee of Jews in Poland. Then the participants placed wreaths at the Death Wall in the courtyard of Block 11, and Cyrankiewicz declared the Museum open. Only on July 2 did the Sejm (the Polish parliament) pass the law calling the Museum into existence. The legislation stated that “the grounds of the former Nazi concentration camp in Oświęcim, together with all the buildings and equipment found there, shall be preserved for all time as a Monument to the Martyrdom of the Polish People and other Peoples. . . . The Oświęcim-Brzezinka State Museum has the task of collecting and gathering together evidence and materials associated with the Nazi crimes, making them accessible to the public, and studying them in a scientific way.” This somewhat atypical situation, in which the institution opened before the legal act governing its operations was passed, resulted from the desire to hold the opening ceremonies on June 14, the seventh anniversary of the arrival of the first transport of Polish political prisoners, while the earliest possible session of parliament was planned for early July. Not wanting to postpone the opening, the authorities decided that the Museum could begin operating before the passage of the required legislation. |