Monowice
Encyclopedia
Monowitz initially established as a subcamp of Nazi Germany
's Auschwitz concentration camp, was one of the three main camps in the Auschwitz concentration camp system, with an additional 45 subcamps in the surrounding area. It was named after the town of Monowice (German, Monowitz) upon which it was built which was located in the annexed portion of Poland
. The camp was established in October 1942 by the SS at the behest of I.G. Farben executives to provide slave labor for their Buna-Werke (Buna Works) industrial complex. The name Buna was derived from the butadiene-based synthetic rubber and the chemical symbol for sodium Na, a process of synthetic rubber production developed in Germany. Various other German industrial enterprises built factories with their own subcamps, such as Siemens-Schuckert
's Bobrek
subcamp, close to Monowitz in order to profit from the use of slave labor. The German armanents manufacturer Krupp
headed by SS member Alfried Krupp also built their own manufacturing facilities near Monowitz.
Monowitz was built as an arbeitslager
(workcamp), it also contained a "ArbeitsausbildungLager" (Labor Education Camp)" for non-Jewish prisoners perceived not up to par with German work standards. It held approximately 12,000 prisoners, the great majority of whom were Jewish, but also carried non-Jewish criminals and political prisoners. Monowitz prisoners were leased out by the SS to IG Farben
to labor at the Buna-Werke, a collection of chemical factories including those used to manufacture Buna (synthetic rubber
) and synthetic oil
. The SS charged IG Farben three Reichsmarks (RM) per hour for unskilled workers, four (RM) per hour for skilled workers and one and one-half (RM) for children. Elie Wiesel
author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book "Night
" was a teenage inmate at Monowitz along with his father. So was Primo Levi
prisoner in this camp. The life expectancy of Jewish workers at Buna Werke was three to four months, for those working in the outlying mines, only one month. Those deemed unfit for work were gassed at Birkenau or sent "to Birkenau" (nach Birkenau), according to a euphemism used in I.G. Farben record books.
Fritz Löhner-Beda
(prisoner number 68561) was a popular song lyricist who was murdered in Monowitz-Buna at the behest of an I.G. Farben executive, as his friend Raymond van den Straaten testified at the Nuremberg trial of 24 I.G. Farben executives:
In November 1943, the SS declared that the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and Auschwitz III (Monowitz) camps would become separate concentration camps. SS Hauptsturmführer
(Captain) Heinrich Schwarz
was commandant of Monowitz from November 1943 to January 1945.
IG Farben made the preparations and reached an agreement with the Nazis between February and April 1941. The company bought the land from the treasury for a low price, after it had been seized from Polish owners without compensation and their houses were vacated and demolished. Meanwhile German authorities removed Jews from their homes in Oświęcim
and placed them in Sosnowiec
or Chrzanów
and sold their homes to IG Farben as housing for company employees brought from Germany. This also happened to some local Polish residents. The IG Farben officials came to an agreement with the concentration camp commandant to hire prisoners at a rate of 3 to 4 marks per day for labor of auxiliary and skilled construction workers.
Trucks began bringing in the first KL prisoners to work at the plant's construction site in mid-April 1941. Starting in May the workers had to walk 6 to 7 km from camp to the labor at the factory. At the end of July, with the laborers numbering over a thousand, they began taking the train to Dwory station. They did things such as leveling the ground, digging drainage ditches, laying cables, and building roads.
The prisoners returned to the construction site 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. Worried over losing the laborers, factory management decided to turn the barracks camp being built in Monowice for civilians over to the SS, to house prisoners. Because of delays in the supply of barbed wire there were several postponements in opening the camp. The first prisoners arrived on October 26 and by early November there were approximately two thousand prisoners.
At this time the camp only occupied half of its planned area, the expansion was for the most part finished in the summer of 1943; however the last 4 barracks were not built until a year later. The death camp's population grew from 3,500 in December 1942 to over 6,000 by the first half of 1943. By July of 1944 the prisoner population was over 11,000, most of whom were Jews. Despite the
growing death-rate from slave labor, starvation, executions or other forms of murders, the demand for labor was growing and more
prisoners were brought in. Because the factory management insisted on removing sick and exhausted prisoners from Monowice, people uncapable of continuing the labor were murdered. The company argued that they had not spent large amounts of money building barracks for prisoners incapable of working.
February 10, 1943 SS-Obersturmbannführer
Gerhard Maurer, responsible for employment of concentration camp prisoners went to Oświęcim, he promised IG Farben the arrival of another thousand prisoners, in exchange for the incapable factory workers. More than 10,000 prisoners were victims of the selection during the period in which the camp operated. Taken to the main camp's hospital, most victims were killed by a lethal injection of phenol to the heart. Some were sent to Birkenau where they were liquidated after “re-selection” in the Bllf prison hospital or in most cases murdered in the gas chambers. More than 1,600 other prisoners died in the hospital at Monowice, and many were shot at the construction site or hanged at the camp. Summing up all figures, an estimated total number of about 10,000 Auschwitz concentration camp
prisoners lost their lives because of working for IG Farben.
The total number of victims at Auschwitz III cannot be blamed solely on the murderous conditions that were nearly the same in all Auschwitz camps and sub-camps. The barracks were overcrowded like the ones in Birkenau, however the ones in Monowice had windows and heating during the winter when needed. “Buna-suppe” a watery soup was served as a minimal supplement, along with the extremely low food rations. It can reasonably be inferred that the reason for the high death-rates in the Monowice camp is because factory management wanted to maintain a high work rate, and tried to do so by giving directions to the foremen. The foremen were in charge of laborers and constantly demanded that the capos and SS men enforce higher productivity of the prisoners, by beating them. The factory's management approved such methods. In reports sent from Monowice to the corporate headquarters in Frankfurt am Main, Maximilian Faust, an engineer in charge of construction stated in these reports that the only way to keep the prisoners' labor productivity at a satisfactory level was through the use of violence and corporal punishment. While declaring his own opposition to “flogging and mistreating prisoners to death”, Faust nevertheless added that “achieving the appropriate productivity is out of the question without the stick”.
Prisoners worked more slowly than the German construction workers, even with being beaten. This was a source of anger and dissatisfaction to factory management, and lead to repeated requests that camp authorities increase the numbers of SS men and energetic capos to supervise the prisoners. A group of specially chosen German common criminal capos were sent to Monowice. When these steps seemed to fail, IG Farben officials suggested the introduction of rudimentary piecework system and a motivational scheme including the right to wear watches, have longer hair (rejected in practice), the payment of scrip that could be used in the camp canteen (which offered cigarettes and other low-value trifles for sale), and free visits to the camp bordello (which opened in the Monowice camp in 1943).
These steps hardly had an effect on prisoner productivity. in December 1944, at conferences in Katowice
, it was brought to attention that the real cause of low prisoners' productivity: the motivational system was characterized as ineffective and the capos as “good”, but it was admitted that the prisoners worked slowly simply because they were hungry.
To a large degree, the SS men from the garrison in Monowice were responsible for the conditions that prevailed in the camp. SS-Obersturmführer
Vinzenz Schöttl held the post of Lagerführer
during the period when Monowice functioned as one of the many Auschwitz sub-camps. In November 1943, after the reorganization of the administrative system and the division of Auschwitz into three quasi-autonomous components, the camp in Monowice received a commandant of its own. This was SS-Hauptsturmführer
Heinrich Schwarz
, who until then had been the head of the labor department and Lagerführer in the main camp. At Monowice, he was given authority over the Jawischowitz, Neu-Dachs, Fürstengrube, Janinagrube, Golleschau, Eintrachthütte, Sosnowitz, Lagischa, and Brünn
(Bohemia) sub-camps. Later, the directors of new sub-camps opened at industrial facilities in Silesia and Bohemia answered to him.
In May 1944, the headquarters of a separate guard battalion (SS-Totenkopfsturmbann KL Auschwitz III) was established in Monowice. It consisted of seven companies, who were on duty in the following sub-camps:
In September 1944, a total of 1,315 SS men served in these companies. The 439 of them who made up 1 Company were stationed at Monowice, and included not only guards but also the staffs of the offices and stores that saw to the needs of the remaining sub-camps.
In January 1945, the majority of the prisoners were evacuated and sent on a death march
to Gliwice
, and then carried by train to the Buchenwald and Mauthausen camps.
Prisoners at the camp in Monowice included the Nobel Peace-Prize winner Elie Wiesel
and the prominent Italian writer Primo Levi
.
(information retrieved from *[www.auschwitz.org.pl])
to the Gleiwitz (Gliwice) a subcamp near the Czech border. Victor “Young” Perez
(prisoner number 107984) a professional boxer of Jewish heritage from French Tunisia died on the death march on January 22, 1945; Paul Steinberg, who would chronicle his experiences in a 1996 book was among those on the March. He was later liberated by the American Army at Buchenwald. The remaining prisoners were liberated on January 27, 1945 by the Red Army
along with others in the Auschwitz camp complex, among them was the renowned writer Primo Levi
.
Unlike the Buna Werke complex there are no longer any extant structures or visible remains of the Monowitz camp itself.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
's Auschwitz concentration camp, was one of the three main camps in the Auschwitz concentration camp system, with an additional 45 subcamps in the surrounding area. It was named after the town of Monowice (German, Monowitz) upon which it was built which was located in the annexed portion of Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. The camp was established in October 1942 by the SS at the behest of I.G. Farben executives to provide slave labor for their Buna-Werke (Buna Works) industrial complex. The name Buna was derived from the butadiene-based synthetic rubber and the chemical symbol for sodium Na, a process of synthetic rubber production developed in Germany. Various other German industrial enterprises built factories with their own subcamps, such as Siemens-Schuckert
Siemens-Schuckert
Siemens-Schuckert was a German electrical engineering company headquartered in Berlin, Erlangen and Nuremberg that was incorporated into the Siemens AG in 1966....
's Bobrek
Bobrek concentration camp
Bobrek was a subcamp of Monowitz concentration camp and part of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex. It was built by Siemens predecessor Siemens-Schuckert near the town of Bobrek, Poland, it held approximately 250-300 prisoners who were used as slave labor to produce electrical parts for...
subcamp, close to Monowitz in order to profit from the use of slave labor. The German armanents manufacturer Krupp
Krupp
The Krupp family , a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, have become famous for their steel production and for their manufacture of ammunition and armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp, was the largest company in Europe at the beginning of the 20th...
headed by SS member Alfried Krupp also built their own manufacturing facilities near Monowitz.
Monowitz was built as an arbeitslager
Arbeitslager
Arbeitslager is a German language word which means labor camp.The German government under Nazism used forced labor extensively, starting in the 1930s but most especially during World War II....
(workcamp), it also contained a "ArbeitsausbildungLager" (Labor Education Camp)" for non-Jewish prisoners perceived not up to par with German work standards. It held approximately 12,000 prisoners, the great majority of whom were Jewish, but also carried non-Jewish criminals and political prisoners. Monowitz prisoners were leased out by the SS to IG Farben
IG Farben
I.G. Farbenindustrie AG was a German chemical industry conglomerate. Its name is taken from Interessen-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG . The company was formed in 1925 from a number of major companies that had been working together closely since World War I...
to labor at the Buna-Werke, a collection of chemical factories including those used to manufacture Buna (synthetic rubber
Synthetic rubber
Synthetic rubber is is any type of artificial elastomer, invariably a polymer. An elastomer is a material with the mechanical property that it can undergo much more elastic deformation under stress than most materials and still return to its previous size without permanent deformation...
) and synthetic oil
Synthetic oil
Synthetic oil is a lubricant consisting of chemical compounds that are artificially made . Synthetic lubricants can be manufactured using chemically modified petroleum components rather than whole crude oil, but can also be synthesized from other raw materials...
. The SS charged IG Farben three Reichsmarks (RM) per hour for unskilled workers, four (RM) per hour for skilled workers and one and one-half (RM) for children. Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel
Sir Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel KBE; born September 30, 1928) is a Hungarian-born Jewish-American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He is the author of 57 books, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz, Buna, and...
author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book "Night
Night (book)
Night is a work by Elie Wiesel about his experience with his father, Shlomo, in the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944–1945, at the height of the Holocaust and toward the end of the Second World War...
" was a teenage inmate at Monowitz along with his father. So was Primo Levi
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist and writer. He was the author of two novels and several collections of short stories, essays, and poems, but is best known for If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland...
prisoner in this camp. The life expectancy of Jewish workers at Buna Werke was three to four months, for those working in the outlying mines, only one month. Those deemed unfit for work were gassed at Birkenau or sent "to Birkenau" (nach Birkenau), according to a euphemism used in I.G. Farben record books.
Fritz Löhner-Beda
Fritz Löhner-Beda
Fritz Löhner-Beda , born Friedrich Löwy, was an Austrian librettist, lyricist and writer.- Life :He was born in Wildenschwert, Bohemia ....
(prisoner number 68561) was a popular song lyricist who was murdered in Monowitz-Buna at the behest of an I.G. Farben executive, as his friend Raymond van den Straaten testified at the Nuremberg trial of 24 I.G. Farben executives:
In November 1943, the SS declared that the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and Auschwitz III (Monowitz) camps would become separate concentration camps. SS Hauptsturmführer
Hauptsturmführer
Hauptsturmführer was a Nazi rank of the SS which was used between the years of 1934 and 1945. The rank of Hauptsturmführer was a mid-grade company level officer and was the equivalent of a Captain in the German Army and also the equivalent of captain in foreign armies...
(Captain) Heinrich Schwarz
Heinrich Schwarz
Heinrich Schwarz was camp commandant of Auschwitz III in Nazi-occupied Poland....
was commandant of Monowitz from November 1943 to January 1945.
History of the labor camp
The creation of the camp was the result of an initiative by the German chemical company I.G. Farben to build the third largest plant to produce synthetic rubber and liquid fuels. The camp was supposed to be located in Silesia, out of range of allied bombers. Among the sites proposed between December 1940 and January 1942 the chosen location was the flat land between the eastern part of Oświęcim and the villages of Dwory and Monowice, justified by good geological conditions, access to transport routes, water supply, and the availability of raw materials such as: coal from mines in Libiąż, Jawiszowice and Jaworzno, limestone from Krzeszowice, and salt from Wieliczka. However the primary reason for building the industrial complex in that location was the immediate access to the slave work-force from the nearby Auschwitz camps.IG Farben made the preparations and reached an agreement with the Nazis between February and April 1941. The company bought the land from the treasury for a low price, after it had been seized from Polish owners without compensation and their houses were vacated and demolished. Meanwhile German authorities removed Jews from their homes in Oświęcim
Oswiecim
Oświęcim is a town in the Lesser Poland province of southern Poland, situated west of Kraków, near the confluence of the rivers Vistula and Soła.- History :...
and placed them in Sosnowiec
Sosnowiec
Sosnowiec is a city in Zagłębie Dąbrowskie in southern Poland, near Katowice. It is one of the central districts of the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union - a metropolis with a combined population of over two million people located in the Silesian Highlands, on the Brynica river .It is situated in...
or Chrzanów
Chrzanów
Chrzanów is a town in south Poland with 39,704 inhabitants . It is situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship and is the capital of Chrzanów County.- To 1809:...
and sold their homes to IG Farben as housing for company employees brought from Germany. This also happened to some local Polish residents. The IG Farben officials came to an agreement with the concentration camp commandant to hire prisoners at a rate of 3 to 4 marks per day for labor of auxiliary and skilled construction workers.
Trucks began bringing in the first KL prisoners to work at the plant's construction site in mid-April 1941. Starting in May the workers had to walk 6 to 7 km from camp to the labor at the factory. At the end of July, with the laborers numbering over a thousand, they began taking the train to Dwory station. They did things such as leveling the ground, digging drainage ditches, laying cables, and building roads.
The prisoners returned to the construction site in May 1942 and worked there until July 21, when an outbreak of typhus
Typhus
Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...
in the main camp and Birkenau stopped their trips to work. Worried over losing the laborers, factory management decided to turn the barracks camp being built in Monowice for civilians over to the SS, to house prisoners. Because of delays in the supply of barbed wire there were several postponements in opening the camp. The first prisoners arrived on October 26 and by early November there were approximately two thousand prisoners.
At this time the camp only occupied half of its planned area, the expansion was for the most part finished in the summer of 1943; however the last 4 barracks were not built until a year later. The death camp's population grew from 3,500 in December 1942 to over 6,000 by the first half of 1943. By July of 1944 the prisoner population was over 11,000, most of whom were Jews. Despite the
growing death-rate from slave labor, starvation, executions or other forms of murders, the demand for labor was growing and more
prisoners were brought in. Because the factory management insisted on removing sick and exhausted prisoners from Monowice, people uncapable of continuing the labor were murdered. The company argued that they had not spent large amounts of money building barracks for prisoners incapable of working.
February 10, 1943 SS-Obersturmbannführer
Obersturmbannführer
Obersturmbannführer was a paramilitary Nazi Party rank used by both the SA and the SS. It was created in May 1933 to fill the need for an additional field grade officer rank above Sturmbannführer as the SA expanded. It became an SS rank at the same time...
Gerhard Maurer, responsible for employment of concentration camp prisoners went to Oświęcim, he promised IG Farben the arrival of another thousand prisoners, in exchange for the incapable factory workers. More than 10,000 prisoners were victims of the selection during the period in which the camp operated. Taken to the main camp's hospital, most victims were killed by a lethal injection of phenol to the heart. Some were sent to Birkenau where they were liquidated after “re-selection” in the Bllf prison hospital or in most cases murdered in the gas chambers. More than 1,600 other prisoners died in the hospital at Monowice, and many were shot at the construction site or hanged at the camp. Summing up all figures, an estimated total number of about 10,000 Auschwitz concentration camp
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
prisoners lost their lives because of working for IG Farben.
The total number of victims at Auschwitz III cannot be blamed solely on the murderous conditions that were nearly the same in all Auschwitz camps and sub-camps. The barracks were overcrowded like the ones in Birkenau, however the ones in Monowice had windows and heating during the winter when needed. “Buna-suppe” a watery soup was served as a minimal supplement, along with the extremely low food rations. It can reasonably be inferred that the reason for the high death-rates in the Monowice camp is because factory management wanted to maintain a high work rate, and tried to do so by giving directions to the foremen. The foremen were in charge of laborers and constantly demanded that the capos and SS men enforce higher productivity of the prisoners, by beating them. The factory's management approved such methods. In reports sent from Monowice to the corporate headquarters in Frankfurt am Main, Maximilian Faust, an engineer in charge of construction stated in these reports that the only way to keep the prisoners' labor productivity at a satisfactory level was through the use of violence and corporal punishment. While declaring his own opposition to “flogging and mistreating prisoners to death”, Faust nevertheless added that “achieving the appropriate productivity is out of the question without the stick”.
Prisoners worked more slowly than the German construction workers, even with being beaten. This was a source of anger and dissatisfaction to factory management, and lead to repeated requests that camp authorities increase the numbers of SS men and energetic capos to supervise the prisoners. A group of specially chosen German common criminal capos were sent to Monowice. When these steps seemed to fail, IG Farben officials suggested the introduction of rudimentary piecework system and a motivational scheme including the right to wear watches, have longer hair (rejected in practice), the payment of scrip that could be used in the camp canteen (which offered cigarettes and other low-value trifles for sale), and free visits to the camp bordello (which opened in the Monowice camp in 1943).
These steps hardly had an effect on prisoner productivity. in December 1944, at conferences in Katowice
Katowice
Katowice is a city in Silesia in southern Poland, on the Kłodnica and Rawa rivers . Katowice is located in the Silesian Highlands, about north of the Silesian Beskids and about southeast of the Sudetes Mountains.It is the central district of the Upper Silesian Metropolis, with a population of 2...
, it was brought to attention that the real cause of low prisoners' productivity: the motivational system was characterized as ineffective and the capos as “good”, but it was admitted that the prisoners worked slowly simply because they were hungry.
To a large degree, the SS men from the garrison in Monowice were responsible for the conditions that prevailed in the camp. SS-Obersturmführer
Obersturmführer
Obersturmführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi party that was used by the SS and also as a rank of the SA. Translated as “Senior Assault Leader”, the rank of Obersturmführer was first created in 1932 as the result of an expansion of the Sturmabteilung and the need for an additional rank in...
Vinzenz Schöttl held the post of Lagerführer
Lagerführer
Lagerführer was a paramilitary title of the SS, specific to the Totenkopfverbande . A Lagerführer was the head SS officer assigned to a particular Concentration Camp, serving as the commander of the said camp.The term Lagerführer was distinct and separate from the position of Kommondant...
during the period when Monowice functioned as one of the many Auschwitz sub-camps. In November 1943, after the reorganization of the administrative system and the division of Auschwitz into three quasi-autonomous components, the camp in Monowice received a commandant of its own. This was SS-Hauptsturmführer
Hauptsturmführer
Hauptsturmführer was a Nazi rank of the SS which was used between the years of 1934 and 1945. The rank of Hauptsturmführer was a mid-grade company level officer and was the equivalent of a Captain in the German Army and also the equivalent of captain in foreign armies...
Heinrich Schwarz
Heinrich Schwarz
Heinrich Schwarz was camp commandant of Auschwitz III in Nazi-occupied Poland....
, who until then had been the head of the labor department and Lagerführer in the main camp. At Monowice, he was given authority over the Jawischowitz, Neu-Dachs, Fürstengrube, Janinagrube, Golleschau, Eintrachthütte, Sosnowitz, Lagischa, and Brünn
Brunn
Brunn or Brünn may refer to:Places* Brünn, the German form of the Czech city Brno* Brunn, Upper Palatinate, a town in Bavaria, Germany* Brunn, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a municipality in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany...
(Bohemia) sub-camps. Later, the directors of new sub-camps opened at industrial facilities in Silesia and Bohemia answered to him.
In May 1944, the headquarters of a separate guard battalion (SS-Totenkopfsturmbann KL Auschwitz III) was established in Monowice. It consisted of seven companies, who were on duty in the following sub-camps:
- 1 Company – Monowitz,
- 2 Company – Golleschau, Jawischowitz,
- 3 Company – Bobrek, Fürstengrube, Günthergrube, Janinagrube,
- 4 Company – Neu-Dachs,
- 5 Company – Eintrachthütte, Lagischa, Laurahütte, Sosnowitz II,
- 6 Company – Gleiwitz I, II and III,
- 7 Company – Blechhammer.
In September 1944, a total of 1,315 SS men served in these companies. The 439 of them who made up 1 Company were stationed at Monowice, and included not only guards but also the staffs of the offices and stores that saw to the needs of the remaining sub-camps.
In January 1945, the majority of the prisoners were evacuated and sent on a death march
Death marches (Holocaust)
The death marches refer to the forcible movement between Autumn 1944 and late April 1945 by Nazi Germany of thousands of prisoners from German concentration camps near the war front to camps inside Germany.-General:...
to Gliwice
Gliwice
Gliwice is a city in Upper Silesia in southern Poland, near Katowice. Gliwice is the west district of the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union – a metropolis with a population of 2 million...
, and then carried by train to the Buchenwald and Mauthausen camps.
Prisoners at the camp in Monowice included the Nobel Peace-Prize winner Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel
Sir Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel KBE; born September 30, 1928) is a Hungarian-born Jewish-American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He is the author of 57 books, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz, Buna, and...
and the prominent Italian writer Primo Levi
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist and writer. He was the author of two novels and several collections of short stories, essays, and poems, but is best known for If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland...
.
(information retrieved from *[www.auschwitz.org.pl])
Monowitz/Buna-Werke bombed
The allies bombed the I.G. Farben factories at Monowitz four times during the war .- The first raid was conducted August 20, 1944 by 127 B-17 Flying Fortresses of the 15th U.S. Army Air Force based in FoggiaFoggiaFoggia is a city and comune of Apulia, Italy, capital of the province of Foggia. Foggia is the main city of a plain called Tavoliere, also known as the "granary of Italy".-History:...
ItalyItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. The first bombing started at 10:32 p.m. and lasted for 28 minutes. A total of 1,336 500 lb. high explosive bombs were dropped from an altitude of between 26,000 and 29,000 feet. - On Sept. 13, 1944 96 B-24 Liberators bombed Monowitz in an air raid that lasted 13 minutes.
- The third attack occurred on Dec. 18th, 1944 by 2 B-17's and 47 B-24's, 436 500 lb. bombs were dropped.
- The fourth and last attack was on Dec, 26th, 1944 by 95 B-24's, a total of 679 500 lb. bombs were dropped.
Liberation of the camp
January 18, 1945, all prisoners in Monowitz who were deemed healthy enough to walk were evacuated from the camp and sent on a death marchDeath marches (Holocaust)
The death marches refer to the forcible movement between Autumn 1944 and late April 1945 by Nazi Germany of thousands of prisoners from German concentration camps near the war front to camps inside Germany.-General:...
to the Gleiwitz (Gliwice) a subcamp near the Czech border. Victor “Young” Perez
Victor Perez
Victor "Young" Perez was a Sephardic Jew born in French Tunisia, who became the World Flyweight Champion in 1931 and 1932. He was born to Khmaïssa Perez a household goods salesman and Khaïlou René Perez. He was raised along with his four siblings in Dar-El Berdgana, the Jewish quarter of Tunis...
(prisoner number 107984) a professional boxer of Jewish heritage from French Tunisia died on the death march on January 22, 1945; Paul Steinberg, who would chronicle his experiences in a 1996 book was among those on the March. He was later liberated by the American Army at Buchenwald. The remaining prisoners were liberated on January 27, 1945 by the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
along with others in the Auschwitz camp complex, among them was the renowned writer Primo Levi
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist and writer. He was the author of two novels and several collections of short stories, essays, and poems, but is best known for If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland...
.
Buna-Werke today
What remained of the Buna Werke industrial complex is now owned by two Polish companies - Chemoservos-Dwory S.A., which produces metal structures, parts, metal building elements, tanks and reservoirs etc., and Synthos Dwory Sp. a subsidiary of the Synthos S.A. Group which manufactures synthetic rubbers, latex and polystyrene among other chemical products. Both are based in Oświęcim.Unlike the Buna Werke complex there are no longer any extant structures or visible remains of the Monowitz camp itself.
See also
- Charles CowardCharles CowardCharles Joseph Coward , known as the "Count of Auschwitz", was a British soldier captured during World War II who rescued Jews from Auschwitz and smuggled himself into Auschwitz for one night, subsequently testifying about his experience at the Nuremberg Trials and the IG Farben...
- Auschwitz concentration campAuschwitz concentration campConcentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
- List of concentration camps of Nazi Germany
- If This Is a ManIf This Is a ManIf This Is a Man is a work by the Italian writer, Primo Levi, describing his 11 months—from February 21, 1944 until liberation on January 27, 1945—in the German concentration camp at Auschwitz in Poland, during the Second World War...
- Arthur Dodd (Auschwitz survivor)Arthur Dodd (Auschwitz survivor)Arthur Dodd served in the British Army during World War II and was a Prisoner of War at Auschwitz III , a sub-camp of the notorious Auschwitz.-Early life:...