Francis Sedgemore has posted an essay by his mother, written after her recent trip to a number of concentration camps. It is well worth a read. One point stands out:
Did the factories who made Cyclon B know what it was to be used for? Tomasz Kranz’ book, “Die Vernichtung der Juden im Konzentrationslager Majdanek†[The annihilation of the Jews at Majdanek Concentration Camp]; pub.: Panstowe Muzeum na Majdanku, 2007 (ISBN 978-83-925187-1-6) contains a typed letter from the firm of Tesch u. Stabenau, a pesticide company in Hamburg, dated 3.6.1943 and addressed to the camp authorities at Majdanek. The letter concerns the delivery of 1474 x 1500g canisters of Cyclon to the camp, and is signed “Heil Hitler! TESCH & STABENAU, International Pesticides Company m.b.H. Signed pp K. Weinbacher.†Clearly a large consignment, and presumably not the only such consigment to be negotiated. However, it is well known that the camps purported to use the gas for disinfection and de-lousing of the inmates, so it would be difficult to attribute knowledge of its real use to the manufacturers of the pesticide.
In fact, the manufacturers were found guilty of knowingly supplying Zyklon B. Tesch was the owner of a firm called Tesch and Stabenow; his company supplied Zyklon B to the SS concentration camps. At the Nuremburg trials Tesch and his deputy Weinbacher were both found guilty of supplying poison gas knowing it was intended to kill allied nationals in concentration camps. Both were executed. The chief gassing technician, Droshin, was aquitted. Interestingly, he was not aquitted because of a lack of knowledge of the use of the Zyklon B (the gas was also used for fumigating buildings), but because his subordinate position in the company meant he could not prevent the supply of gas to Auschwitz. You can read a PDF copy of the trial here [large file 2.2mb].
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Anthony – thanks for pointing this out. I’ve passed on the link to my mother, and advised her to put together a short addendum to her essay. It was only recently that she started reading around this subject, and that no doubt accounts for the error of omission. She is also ignorant of technologies such as Google.
Katharine’s oversight aside, her description of the camps at Majdanek and Sobibor is particularly powerful. Stacks of shoes you can touch, and “a few bits of uncrushed bones”? Maybe this is a pilgrimage we should all make once in our lives.
Hi Francis, it wasn’t meant as criticism at all, I found the piece powerful as well. When I went to Auschwitz last year, I found the rooms full of suitcases, hair and other personal effects extremely powerful; of an almost unbearable intensity.