April 4, 2025 • 53 mins
The life of a concentration camp prisoner is something most people could never truly fathom. In part 3 of this series, we discuss a small part of what that was like; we touch upon the role of music, the conditions the prisoners and guards deal with, the advent of Zyklon B, and Hoess’ transition of Auschwitz into a death camp to answer the question to the Final Solution. We are truly fixing to enter the darkest period in the history of humanity, and Rudolph Hoess is engineering and observing, front and center, with gas mask donned.
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(00:03):
I have certainly watched them close enough, but I have never
really been able to get to the bottom of their behaviour.
The Jews way of living and of dying was a true Riddle that I
never managed to solve. That's Rudolph Host, the
commandant of Auschwitz. OK.
This is Jen, this is Becky, thisis too close to home, and this
is Part 3. Of the Nazi edition.
(00:26):
Well, I shouldn't do. Maybe not anyway.
So sources, let's get that knocked out because there's
about 30 billion of them. The Commandant of Auschwitz
Autobiography, you know what I should call sources?
Just hyperfixation area, becausethat's what happens.
It's a hyper, you know, we were talking about, you know, doing a
(00:48):
video saying like, what was our process on picking things?
And I was like, there is no process for me.
It just happens. It's a hyper fixation.
And then I just don't stop. Don't stop, won't stop.
So the commandant of Auschwitz, which is the autobiography by
Rudolf host himself kla History of Nazi concentration camps by
(01:08):
nikolaus washman, Third Reich. The rise and fall on Netflix
Nazi death marches 1944 to 1945 Nazis at Nuremberg, The lost
testimony. Telegraph UK, Smithsonian
magazine, auschwitz.org, GOP everyday science.
The Holocaust encyclopedia set in Hall university World
Holocaust remembrance center, Jewish currents organization
(01:29):
Conference on Jewish material claims against Germany.
Music and the Holocaust organization.
CNNN Auschwitz Birkenau museum PBS National Library of of
medicine BBC history of sorts blog the Holocaust history
project Jewish virtual library organization facing history
organization World War 2 foundation Jewish gin
organization not oh, I've already said that one Nazis in
(01:51):
Nuremberg, the lost testimonies.But so last time we talked about
his journey to Auschwitz, the prisoners, the guards, the zone
of interest. Today we're going to pick up in
the camp once again, but we're going to delve into the final
solution, starting with a conversation of what was a day
in Auschwitz like. And so I found a description
(02:11):
written by Vincent Chattel, whose father had been interned
at bought concentration camp, aswell as Mr. Richard Soufit,
which is a Auschwitz survivor and Mr. Van Horen, a Flossenberg
survivor. I got some information on
testimonies and like several books, jen.org website which
hosts information for global Jewish genealogy if you want to
look further into those sources.This is an amalgamation
(02:34):
testimony, so Please note that this is generalized and that no
two days were the same because, I mean, you got to have a little
variety I guess in your Nazi life. 4:00 AM you awake by capos
barking? Hurry up.
You need to find your shoes first because if you don't have
them, you can't work and if you can't work, you get fucking
shot. So stolen shoes was kind of an
(02:55):
issue. I always knew Jordans were life
or death, you know what I mean? Then you have to follow Beaten
Bow, which is a military way of making a bed, except you just
have a lumpy stroll mattress to make it to a nice neat bed.
And if you don't do it right, you get beaten.
Now you attempt to get washed, but there are only a few
facilities for hundreds of prisoners, so you either skip to
(03:17):
attend roll call or you'd be late to roll call and suffer.
Guess what? Getting beaten.
And sometimes beatings are so bad people die for breakfast.
You have a mess tin of 10 ouncesof bread and some coffee.
Rarely, if ever, you win the Lotto of sausage with your bread
or some margarine. But that's if you if you get a
tin, there's a lot of times you don't.
(03:38):
And when you do, the only solid food you will be given that day
will be in that tin. Worse, the capos are real Dicks
and they'll throw your food in the mud or the bump into you
spill your coffee just like oh, Oh my bad.
Real Regina George chit. Real Regina George.
I wouldn't have made it long because the first time my coffee
(03:58):
got spilled, I'd have acted up. And they did.
I'd have been. Done straight to the chambers.
Yeah, Roll call's next. And everybody is lined up in
rows of 10, including those who have died the night before.
They would be lined up in front of the barracks and you'll be in
roll call for hours because if one mistake occurs, it causes
the county to start all over. In the rain, the snow storms,
(04:21):
you must pay attention and remain 100% silent.
Some people die during a roll call itself, all of which would
be sent to the crematories afterthe roll call.
Now for work time. You March off to to work by
foot, and sometimes you'll have a drum or the camp orchestra.
Sometimes you're even ordered tosing for the s s soldiers as you
March. Next is the task of your actual
(04:44):
job. Your day will be 12 to 14 hours
long, if not longer, and the work will be very hard and
sometimes even useless things like carrying sandbags from one
point to another, extracting large stones, or maybe you're
even in a factory where everything is done as fast as
possible, or else you'll be beat.
And again, some people die from those beatings.
Lunch comes with a whistle, but it's not like you have food.
(05:06):
When the whistle to resume starts, your body is aching with
pain and hunger, and it makes you feel like each limb is
thousands of pounds and every movement a concerted effort.
A prisoner faints from hunger. He gets beaten, if he doesn't
rise, he is killed and you were to bring his body back to camp
for evening roll call. Fuck.
(05:27):
The evening whistle blows and you and your fellow prisoners
walk back to camp holding bodies.
Sometimes they make you sing. Now it's time for roll call
again, and Rosa 10. The capos are counting.
Sometimes people will attempt toescape and you're going to
remain in that roll call until that person is returned, even if
that means hours, sometimes 10 hours or more.
(05:47):
This is also the moment where they those that were chosen by s
s for punishments and hangings would be announced while you
work all day and now you're going to come down to this awful
Lotto. Sometimes you get marched in
front of the Gallo so you can see the hanging prisoner as a
warning. Dinner is a weird mystery soup
that is 99% liquid and mostly ofno dietary substance.
(06:09):
If you did spare some bread fromthe morning, you eat it now with
your soup, but I doubt that happened, if ever.
Now it's time to retire to your barracks where you're going to
remain locked down for the rest of the night.
The block leader or the capo would sometimes let you sleep,
but sometimes decide to have funby torturing you with exercises
until you faint. If you do sleep, you're going to
share a bed with several others,5 or more at least, with a urine
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soaked sheet if one at all, on astraw mattress that more than
likely is infested with lice andother vermin.
The barracks is so cold and everyone is thin from starving
so cold is a constant state. But if you made it this far, you
survive the day. Talk.
Yeah. I wonder what was people's will
to live? I've thought about that often
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because there have been people that like literally just, I'm
ready to go, I'm ready to die, go ahead and take me now and
then. There's a lot of people who are
still scraping by in this what seems like almost impossible
conditions. And I'm like, I can't imagine I.
Don't know where they get them. The mental strength to it didn't
seem like it's going to get better.
And your mental acuity is going to completely change as you
(07:17):
starve. Yeah, you know, as your body
eats its brain, basically. I don't know.
So let's talk about music Segue.It would seem I'll placed at a
camp, but the Nazis love them some jams.
OK, earlier I spoke about the camp musicians and truly it's
such a unique role that it savedquite a few people's lives.
(07:41):
In December 1940, the first bandwas created in Auschwitz.
Of course it had 7 musicians in their instruments, a violin,
percussion, double bass, accordion, trumpet and a
saxophone and most were amateur musicians.
Eventually it would grow into 80players and a brass band of 120.
With these success of the bands,they formed subsequent ones in
(08:01):
the men's camp, the gypsy camp, the women's camp and sub camps.
I did see it described as like 1camp leader would see it and
hear about it like, Oh my God, Ineed a camp too.
They would play for marches and during executions.
During s s dinners. Their music lingered in the air
with the smell of death. One musician, trumpeter Herman
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Shots Nowitz, spoke of his duty.Every morning we played as the
inmate work crews departed, the same in the evening when they
returned to the camp. We played on other occasions,
too, especially during executions, which usually heard
on Sunday afternoons or evenings.
Perhaps they intended to drown out the last protest and final
curses with music, a grotesque spectacle that had been ordered
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at the highest level. And the S S men surrounded us
with loaded weapons. They would use music sometimes
as like a quiet defiance, sneaking in songs like the
Polish national anthem. Franz Donneman described how
Leonor's overture from Beethoven's Theodelio, performed
by the official band during rollcall in the summer of 1943,
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strengthened his will to survive.
I was aware of the similarity ofour situation to Fluorescends in
the last act. He should have died as a witness
to Pizarro's misdeeds, just as the s s pursued the destruction
of the prisoners. But the music warned us not to
despair and lose hope. Behind my words you're hearing
(09:26):
Lenore overture #3 by Daniel Baron, boy of the Western W
Eastern Divan Orchestra. The women's camp would be
written about in the 70s. A memoir by Fania Finland, who
was a survivor and played in theband.
There would also be a movie madefrom this and other survivors
would say there was a lot of incorrect and false information.
(09:47):
It is now generally accepted as historical fiction since there
has been several more memoirs onthe women's band.
One survivor is Anita Lasker Walfish, who is very well known.
She's 99 years old and still spicy as ever.
A cellist by profession. But that cello had also saved
her life, as it was difficult tosource a cellist at the time.
(10:09):
She was in documentary Shadow ofthe Commandant on Hulu, which is
about Rudy's autobiography, his life as commandant of Auschwitz,
his children, and his grandchildren's experience as
being relative to the commandant.
She meets the Sun Hans in person, and she and her daughter
speak of the trauma she endured and how it affected the
generations after. 10 out of 10 recommend this.
(10:30):
Anita is still active in giving interviews and educating people
in the Holocaust. Having grown up in a non
practicing Jewish family. She speaks about what it was
like in that time with her thoughts being very straight to
the point in factual. You would love her truly.
To be a person who's been personally asked to play
Schumann's Top Traumory by Yosa Mengele, which is what you're
(10:50):
hearing, and then living every day hoping the safety of your
cello would take you to the nextis one of the strongest examples
of human strength I've ever seen.
So that's a Mangle hit, you knowwhat I'm saying?
I know that was a little bit of a detour of information, but but
daily life and music were very much an influence on hosts
(11:12):
himself. He created this camp from the
ground up with just sticks and rubber bands, like a white
supremacist MacGyver. But if like MacGyver was truly
evil and a sadistic person, you know what I'm saying?
As with every military system, you must depreve your superiors.
And after grueling work, it was time to give Himmler some of his
first reports and of course, received critiques and orders.
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Not only would Rudy report his progress, but his difficulties
as well. Himmler would brush off any and
every complication and demand compliance.
By January, Auschwitz would have7000 prisoners, most of them
Polish. Himmler visited in March of
1941, where he would tour for the first time.
At this point in the war, you'relooking at an estimate of 25,000
total prisoners in the concentration camp system.
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That's the entire system, right?He would lay out the Reich's
plans to increase the site of Auschwitz, just Auschwitz from
10,000 as planned to become a peacetime establishment that can
hold 30,000. There would be armament
factories and research firms moving out to Poland as well.
Himmler would order that the camp supply 10,000 prisoners for
(12:19):
forced labor to construct AIG Barbin factory complex at
Dwohree, which is about a mile away.
This is also where he would declare that this point forward,
this is Himmler, that no Jew would be released from any camp
whatsoever, with the exception of the Jews who already had
visas in hand. He would allow those to
immigrate until April, but afterthat all bets are off.
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It is also important to note that in April 1941, Germany
would be would make the s s the authorized supplier of Zyklom B,
meaning that they could use it with no oversight despite it
being out of custom. Rudy did relay their water
supply, drainage, building and staffing problems and Himmler
waved it off saying like bro I'mnot asking how you're going to
do it you're just going to do itand have it done like I want
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period. Quote I'm just kidding.
This would require hosts pretty much sourcing all the materials
themselves as Germany couldn't or wouldn't send the supplies.
They were in war and all supplies were strictly kept and
disseminated only when they feltnecessary.
So instead of building a brand new facility had to use the
buildings that were bombed out left in the zone slated for
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Auschwitz. Even barbed wire felt impossible
to find with Rudy directing soldiers to breakdown old
armaments abandoned in fields toget leftover wire needed to line
the tops the perimeter of the camp.
Also, like, I'm sitting there thinking about it, like, it
wasn't like they had the best productive gear.
I would hate to have been that soldier on that duty.
I'm going to do a breakdown of this barbed wire and then put it
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up in little bundles. Yeah.
Here are these little dainty gloves for you.
Get that God? Oh wait, never mind, they had
slave labor. I forget.
Well, at first I was thinking I was like, oh, well, that's good
they had the soldiers doing it. But.
No. Essentially, dig your own grave,
build your own prism. Pretty much there you go.
He would say he became disillusioned with his comrades
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and just avoid any kind of social contact.
To me, this says like it's like,look, I wasn't really into this.
I was just a cog in this machine.
But truly when you look at the accounts of Rudy and his wife
Hedwig, they were both deeply anti-Semitic.
And with Hedwig telling people that they wholeheartedly
believed in the Nazi vision, howhe really feels does get read
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between the lines where he's more frustrated at the lack of
intelligence, sloppiness, and lack of cooperation in his
directives. To me, that's his true
character. He was a mangle of sorts in that
he really took deep in consideration into effectively
and efficiently conducting mass killings and extermination of
Jews. This hit that his role wasn't a
faux scientific view, but one that I'm going to make.
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I'm going to be the very best that no one ever was, and he's
going to make Daddy Himmler proud, OK?
That was his big goal. He would say that it was him and
him alone that would be responsible to create this large
camp out of nothing and nothing provide with nothing provided,
and that it was accomplished with no help of his
(15:13):
subordinates. So basically I did this on my
back, my work, my blood, sweat and tears, not my slave labor.
No, none of that. So in June 1941 it would be the
beginning of what be Millions upon Millions of Murderers by
Hitler V Himmler. Which when they announced the
(15:35):
final solution of the Jewish question, I always thought that
was very weird that they always framed it like that.
Their answer for the Jewish question.
I didn't know that was a question.
Didn't know it was a question. But apparently to them, they had
one. I'm like, apparently Google
could have solved a lot of problems those days.
Rudy would recall. In the summer of 1941, he gave
(15:58):
me the order to prepare installations at Auschwitz where
mass exterminations could take place and personally to carry
out these exterminations. I did not have the slightest
idea of their scale or consequences.
It was certainly an extraordinary and monstrous
order. Nevertheless, the reasons behind
the extermination program seemedright, seemed to me right.
I did not reflect on it at that time.
(16:19):
I had been given an order and I had to carry it out.
Whether this mass extermination of the Jews was necessary or not
was something on which I could not allow myself to form an
opinion. But I lack the necessary breath
of you. Basically.
Like I was given an order. I'm just doing my job.
I mean, it's not up to me to be a questioning them.
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They know. They know why we're doing it.
They got the good reasons. Yeah, it's just because they're
Jews. No other reason.
That's it. What would happen would be a
large invasion by the Einsatzgruppen eastward through
Operation Barbarossa. This operation would carry out
the plan of mass exterminations in two ways. 1st through death
squads that would kill thousandsas they pushed war further east
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to the occupied parts of the Soviet Union.
And when I say thousands, I meanit.
There were several massacres. The Bobby Yard massacre which
was a ravine where 34,000 Jews would be stripped of their
items, put in the ravine and then shot by a Bush and gunfire.
The Rambula massacre killed 25,000 Jews in Latvia.
(17:25):
I've seen several accounts on these death squads and it's
startling because you would think that most of these
soldiers didn't want to, but thefacts were just so different.
One such account I saw that it was a unit of soldiers being
told of their orders and asking if anyone who does not want to
shoot to please stay behind thatthat they were not going to be
punished. Nothing was going to be done to
these soldiers. They wanted people who were
(17:46):
going to be in 100% agreement and compliancy with these
orders, 100% agreement and compliant with these orders.
A witness stated that the first soldier to get out of formation
began to be cursed by his unit leader when the commander of the
unit stopped him. And he said no, no, no, we're
not doing that. He's allowed to not do this.
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And so all these other soldiers started like, oh, you don't want
to, I don't want to. It wasn't that many.
Surprisingly. The rest, who did not object to
this, went out in the woods and would systematically shoot
groups upon groups of Jews. I do have to say in my opinion,
there were probably, I'm not saying all of them.
I think a large amount of them wanted to, but I do have to say
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some of them probably didn't want to.
But if you're telling me I have to go kill all these people and
it's cool if I don't want to you'll let me go home, I'm going
to have to say it's a trap that you're not really going to let
me go home. So I don't know that I would
volunteer to walk out regardlessif I wanted to do it or not,
because the task is to kill people and you're telling me
you're not going to kill me if Idon't kill them?
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The math ain't math in so I I dohave to say, in my personal
opinion, I think there was probably a lot that didn't want
to do it, but I'm not. I don't trust you that you're
not going to hurt me and I can just go home and live my life
and all is good and gravy. I don't believe.
That you're correct though, you're correct in this.
But the the thing was they treated them like social
pariahs. Yeah.
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They would not kill them. They wouldn't punish them.
They would socially punish them and that and like pretty much
call them cowards to their facesand they left them in.
They didn't remove their ranks or anything like that.
I'm sure they just get paid. They they were getting paid.
Oh, they're all getting paid. But they would they would be the
outsiders. And for some people that was
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some people that was just too much.
And that's how you get like between people who didn't want
to jump out of line because theyknow it was a trap or two.
The outsiders. It just kind of makes everybody
go, well, I don't have a fuckingchoice.
Right. Yeah, they say you have a
choice, but you don't have a choice.
You never did. You never did.
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One soldier, he would learn of the Jew that he was about to
kill, owned the very theater from his little tiny town that
he had patronized so many times.Regardless, it was one after
another after another that they would shoot, including women and
children, even babies, because babies grow up to be big Jews.
It's literally how many times I've I've read it so many times.
Like the reason we have to kill the kids guys is because the
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kids will grow up. They're cute when they're
babies, but then they become Jewdemons when they're grown.
Like what? So the babies, you know, to
conserve bullets, they would have the mothers hold the babies
and shoot through the baby through the mother's chest.
Just like a 2 for one deal. I'm glad we're using big brain
(20:38):
energy. And then if they didn't want to
use bullets, they would just slam the baby's body against the
tree. Oh, OK, yeah, so I think if I
had the choice between shooting a baby or slamming against a
tree, I'd have to opt with shooting.
Not that I want to do either onebecause they'd both be terrible,
but you really got to be as sicko to slam a baby against a
tree to kill. Seriously, I don't know how you
(21:00):
could frame that in any way whatsoever.
That seems humane. There's not and.
Not even like the we all had choices not to do this.
You just literally could just drop your gun, but whatever.
Anyways, who am I? Who am I?
This girl doing a podcast with her best friend.
That's it, That's it. The second phase would be the
death camps, which Auschwitz would play an ugly, pivotal role
(21:23):
in. In the camps, they began
experimenting with gases while they conducted mass shootings.
In both phases, the Nazis did take into account how much of A
toll this would take on their soldiers.
So they were working on a more effective solution to preserve
their mental health as they carried out the solution.
OK, would you guys are killing so many.
(21:44):
It's fucking your brains up so. So.
We're going to have a pizza party.
We're going to, yes, just like the corporate role of dictates.
We have a pizza party and then we're going to come up with a
gas chamber so you guys don't have to do it no more.
Prior to the Final Solution, Nazi Germany had already been
working on ways to kill prisoners in camps more
effectively through Action 14 F 13, also called Sandabuhandlong
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Special Treatment. This action is what you would
hear about basically in death camps.
Those two, weak or ill or mentally unstable to work, were
to be euthanized as it was more compassionate in the views of
Nazi ideology. You know, just not even letting
them live is not an option. Just these are baddies.
(22:27):
This was after some forced sterilizations, of course,
because racial purity can't happen if you let weirdos like
me procreate. Sure, they began using carbon
monoxide during this program, which began in the late 1930s
and would technically end in 1941, although it never really
went away. This standard to kill those they
deemed that was not worthy was the heart of the killing camps,
(22:48):
and the use of the gas opened the doors in ways that they
shouldn't have. This T4 method sparked many
insane inventions, including thedeath vans where they would have
mobile death units to kill on the go.
It sounds crazy. Uber before Uber was the thing,
or DoorDash before DoorDash was.We're going to DoorDash your
(23:12):
murder right to your home. You know it make it convenient
for you. I hear right now it's $0.00 zero
dollar delivery fee. OK, we'll.
Come to you, Jesus. In September 1941, the Eastward
movement brought more death and prisoners of war being
transported to the camps. Around the September 5th,
Auschwitz would get a train fromnew Hammer war camp in Lower
(23:34):
Silesia. They were all Soviet PO WS
identified by police as quote UNquote unacceptable, and they
would be led to the infamous block 11.
Block 11 was used for tortures and executions.
It had a death wall where they would have shooting squads and
that's still it's still erected today.
The building is still there and it's.
(23:55):
Awesome. Just a chilling.
Just awesome. Yeah.
It also hosted special torture chambers in which various
punishments were applied to prisoners.
Some could include being locked in a dark chamber for days or
being forced to stand in one of their standing cell, called the
Stesola Stesela in German. Punishments in these
(24:17):
compartments, which were one square meter total, it was like
you just putting 4 prisoners in there and then everybody's kind
of forced to stand and they would remain standing all night
up to 20 nights and go to work during the day.
(24:37):
How'd they even survive 20 nights?
That's bro, there's so many times that I'm like the, the
amount of people that did survive such crazy fucking
things is I, I don't even know how where to describe it really.
Yeah. Let's talk about Cyclone B
though for a minute. You know what I mean?
Little light stuff. It's a prussic acid, and they've
(25:01):
been using it to kill the rodents in the camp for some
time. The inventor of cyclombie is
Fritz Haber, who is surprisinglya German Jew.
Fritz received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his
invention of the Haber process, a method used in industry to
synthesize ammonia from nitrogengas and hydrogen gas.
(25:23):
This invention is important for the large scale synthesis of
fertilizers and explosives. He was also a World War 1
veteran, having fought for Germany and helped create
endorse many new types of criminal weapons and masks to
protect soldiers from those gases.
He would say that death was death no matter what caused it
to be inflicted and referred to the history quote.
(25:44):
The disapproval that the knight had for the man with a firearm
is repeated in the soldier who shoots with steel bullets
towards the man who confronts him with chemical weapons.
The gas weapons are not at all more cruel than the flying iron
pieces. On the contrary, the fraction of
fatal gas diseases as comparatively smaller than
mutilations of munitions. So you're saying it's nicer?
(26:09):
Yeah, like listen, this is 100% rate you might miss in a gun.
He chillingly discovered that the long exposure of a low
concentration of gas was just aslethal as a high concentration
in a short time, which would be called Haber's rule.
He would be highly respected andhonored for the time being
(26:30):
between World War One and World War Two, he would become
director of De Gesch, which was a German chemical corporation
that manufactured pesticides. It would be here that he created
cyanide based pesticides. Zyklon Before Zyklon B While
Zyklon would become banned because of the similar chemicals
being used in World War One's warfare.
Eventually the Gesh would be bought out by another chemical
(26:52):
company in 1922, where scientists started working on
Cyclone again. Cyanide, which is what cyclone
is kind of made of, is volatiles, water and air.
So to make it less volatile, they devised a method of
packaging hydrogen cyanide in a sealed canister along with a
cautionary eye irritant and several of absorbents like
(27:14):
diatomaceous earth. And that would be what Cyclone B
is. IG Farben, which was the
chemical company that they were building using slave labor and
providing slave labor to work there.
They manufactured the canisters.They put them in that form to
help make it safer to transport.Yeah, we wouldn't want any of
(27:37):
them to die. That cautionary eye, your intent
that was put in there so whoeverwas handling it would know, oh
shit, that shit's getting out run.
But they were like, that's taking that's that's making it
take too long. So you're going to take that
out. So they took that out.
Jesus Prince would be alarmed atthe rise of National Socialism
in Germany. He was shocked when they came
(27:58):
after him, seeing how he converted to Christianity and
had provided great service to Germany in World War One.
But not dog Hitler still saw youas a Jew.
So he left as Germany in 1933 and would only live a year
before passing in Switzerland at65.
That always makes me think of the leopards eating faces.
It's like some kind of politicalparty thing where these people
(28:20):
were voting a certain way and itwas not really that great.
And then something came back andit hurt one of their own voters.
And they're like, I didn't know the leopards were going to eat
my face. So like, oh.
It's OK if, wouldn't you? It's OK if it's not happening to
you, but when it happens to you,it's bad.
(28:41):
Now it's bad. But like, I did my part, I
converted. I'm not a Jew anymore.
Now they don't care about that. They cared about bloodlines.
So what does Zyklon B do to the body?
After dropping the canister intothe chamber, the warm air causes
the gas to emit into the room, filling the air.
It enters the bloodstream by thelungs and mucous membranes,
(29:03):
while part of the acid has a chemical reaction, turning it
into cyanide. From there it attacks cells,
particularly the mitochondria ofthe cell.
The Powerhouse. Oh my God, because I didn't.
I like the powerhouse's cell. If you recall from science
class, my girl knew it. My girl knew it.
I know we're known her to be wrong.
It causes the cell to no longer to be.
I like how we were like cheeringfor that in the middle.
(29:25):
I'm like, let me tell you what it does though.
It causes the cell to no longer be able to take oxygen, in which
fuel cells and without oxygen the cells die and therefore use
of comes asphyxiation, leading quickly to your death.
They say it's quick. I don't think it was really that
quick. Knowing this, let's go back to
those Soviet prisoners. The Soviet Piws would be LED
(29:48):
into the sealed chamber where they would find other prisoners,
although they were all in a direstate or invalid of some sort.
So like we got off a train, we're all like a prisoners and
we go in a room and it looks like all these people on death's
doorstep. So this was raising every red
flag with them. They didn't have long to think
though, because once they were all ushered in the room, they
(30:10):
like literally threw the CycloneBee in there and shut the door.
The gas came in contact with thewarm bodies in air and began to
quickly fill the room. Immediately, the poison
literally melted their mucous brain membranes and their
screams became choking noises. All of them would pass, despite
some of them tearing pieces of clothes off of their bodies and
(30:31):
stuffing them into their mouth and nose to prevent the gas from
getting in. Rudy would watch this whole
thing behind the safety of a gasmask, congratulating himself for
killing hundreds of prisoners without firing a single bullet.
But like all Nazis, he saw room for improvements.
So let's talk about that. Firstly, Block 11 was soups far
(30:55):
from the crematorium chambers, which meant that to dispose of
their bodies. They had a long way to drag
them. They had to schlep them all the
way across the clamp. And that's just not going to do
anything for morale. You know, I'm saying next, Block
11 had no ventilation. So not only did they have to
move the bodies across camp, they'd have to wait hours for
the gas to disperse first. And by then, the rigor mortis
would, would like, have set in. And all these bodies were like
(31:20):
basically tangled in and they'd had to be like, trying to pull
bodies apart. Bless their hearts, I'm so.
Sorry, it's very difficult beinga Nazi, you know?
A witness of these early chambercleanups was a Polish prisoner
named Adam Sarkarsky. Quote.
The scene was truly eerie because no one could see that
these people had scratched and bitten each other in a fitted
(31:42):
madness before they died. Many had torn uniforms.
Although I had already gotten used to some of the macabre
scenes in the camp, I became sick when I saw these murdered
people and I had to vomit violently.
In his biography, Rudy would speak on his thoughts as he
witnessed and participated in these atrocities, saying that he
was thinking, but he assumed many soldiers and s s officers
(32:05):
were thinking when they saw women and children walk into the
gas chamber. They thought about their wives
and their children, of course, But the same man said, quote,
Jews have strongly developed family feelings.
They stick together like Olympics.
Nevertheless, according to my observations, they lack
solidarity. And then he would go on to say
quote. I've certainly watched them
(32:25):
close enough, but I have never really been able to get to the
bottom of their behavior. The Jews way of living and of
dying was a true Riddle that I never managed to solve.
It's not a fucking Riddle to solve, son.
It's not, it's a. Fucking religion.
Yeah, OK, sorry. Let me wipe away this
indignation and continue the story.
(32:45):
This to me shows that they aren't people but animals to be
dealt with personality. And so how can you connect
feelings of your family? Like you think about your wife
and and children when you see these victims, but you don't
stop them when you have every ounce of ability to stop them.
Right. I say that because there were
other Nazis who toe the line andwe're not into killing.
(33:08):
Like there was literally people who were like, I am kind of
fucking stuck here. I don't really believe in all
this, but I also don't want to get murdered, right?
And so those were like the ones that would help resistance
efforts and stuff. I'm not sure what the statistics
are on that, but I'm sure I probably we would have been a
punk them of the ones that were like, oh, fuck, oh, fuck.
(33:28):
I don't believe any of this. Oh, shit, I'm going to die.
Yeah, I'm going to die. Yeah, I get the chills on that
one. Like, oh, I don't want to do it.
Don't make me a Nazi. Poor little baby JJ and Jimmy,
what do I do? Who would have died of heart
attacks? Yes, I can't handle this.
(33:50):
They can't even handle like paper cuts, right?
OK, ever growing as the plans dictate a con construction of
the Auschwitz to Birkenau camp called This is a long one.
Kris Ganfangen Laga. No Kris Ganfangen nan Kris
(34:10):
Ganfangenen, not a. That's perfect.
Close enough prisoner of war came from blueprints and it
began in October of 1941 in Brazinka, which is about 3
kilometers from Auschwitz the 1st.
This is part of Himmler's order to expand Auschwitz.
This would create a second complex on the other side of the
rail tracks and would be called Auschwitz 2 or Birkenau. 1/3
(34:34):
portion would be a work camp with workers being supplied to
IG Farben the the nearby factorywhenever they like.
The prisoners couldn't work anymore though, they would send
them back and get fresh ones andthose would be sent straight to
the crematories because they weren't worthless, they weren't
worth anymore anymore. So it's like literally
disposable. That's sad.
(34:56):
Really. Really, this is all sad.
It is, I mean, and it's hard to sit here and be jokes at the
same time, but it's like we're super uncomfortable.
It's hard. I I enjoyed learning about this
because I really expanded these things that I never knew before.
But at the same time it comes with that cost of just yelling
soul crushing sadness you know? So the IT was planned to have 4
(35:21):
segments only the but although only the first 3 would be built,
it would feature more crematoriums, a women's and
men's barracks, infirm infirmaries, s s quarters, just
everything you need for a death machine.
It would stay under constructionfor the entire time of its
operation and in in the end it would grow from a single camp
with 22 buildings in 1940 to become a complex of three main
(35:45):
camp and 40 sub camps. The workers would go on from
being mostly Soviet PO WS to mostly Jews.
As the war progressed and the Final solution was put into
place to build it, they sent 10,000 Russian PO WS, the best
they apparently had at the Lambsdorff POW camp.
They marched them over 90 miles,Jesus Christ and they stopped.
(36:05):
But the listen, they stopped andlet them rest and eat along the
way. But they didn't supply the food
they told them to to graze a squirrel.
No, they told him to graze to the field like they were fucking
cattle. Jesus Christ.
Like you guys like grass, right?What?
So by the time they showed up atAuschwitz, they were extremely
poor conditioned, with Rudy saying she think, yeah, quote, I
(36:28):
remember very clearly how we were continually giving them
food when they first arrived at the base camp, but in vain.
Their weakened bodies could no longer function.
Their whole constitution was finished and done for.
They died like flies from general physical exhaustion or
from the most trifling maladies with which their debilitated
constitutions could no longer resist.
(36:48):
I saw countless Russians die while in the act of swallowing
root vegetables or potatoes. Jesus.
Christ. So the hunger had made them into
shadows themselves, with the host saying cases of cannibalism
were not rare in Birkenau. I myself came upon across a
Russian lying between piles of bricks whose body had been
ripped open, the liver removed, and they would beat each other
(37:09):
to death for food. Later on, he would say, when the
foundations of for the first group of buildings were being
dug, the men often found bodies of Russians who had been killed
by their fellows, partly eaten and then stuffed in a hole in
the mud. The mysterious disappearance of
many Russians were explained this way.
By the summer of 1942, only a few 100 of that 10,000 PO WS
(37:31):
survived, which is crazy that heeven survived that long.
Yeah, I think it's important to note that just two months after
the expansion of Auschwitz began, Pearl Harbor would occur
in December 1941. That night, the very night that
Pearl Harbor happened, it is said that Sir Winston Churchill,
quote, went to bed and slept thesleep of the saved.
(37:53):
The reason being is that he knewthat America was going to be
absolutely compelled to enter the war the very next day.
And and they did, they declared war on Japan and they were
allies with Germany. So ipso facto, everybody's at
war. It's a World War 2 to me.
This created a ripple in Germany's plans and made what
would happen next in Auschwitz afast reality.
(38:17):
Next, the time came to begin finessing their mass murder
plans, from the selection process to how to handle that
many corpses. And it's going to be listen.
It's already been awful. We already talked about babies
and stuff being killed, but it'sjust going to continue to keep
getting worse. So if you have a sensitive
stomach, sorry, maybe don't listen.
Maybe wait until we have anotherseries.
(38:38):
Becky doesn't have a choice, OK?I don't.
Selection was the first step andit would happen at the train
platform. There would be 3 train platforms
on the inside of Auschwitz 1 andAuschwitz 1.
Then you have the Auschwitz 2 Birkenau train platform and then
the one built between the two facilities.
The last one being built was theBirkenau one, which was built in
(39:00):
1943 and was began being used in1944 and was probably the most
infamous one. Like when as things progress
through the war, it went from somewhat semblance of neatness
and, you know, order to just complete utter chaos at all
times. I'm sure.
(39:23):
The soldiers didn't like to callit selection as much as they
said it was decommissioning likethey were old computers.
The first step, once they were off the train, was to separate
people by sex. Next they began parsing them out
by who could work and who could not.
Elderly, visibly pregnant women,small children under 16, which
(39:44):
later got dropped to 14, would be sent immediately to the gas
chambers. Others who appeared on a brief
and superficial inspection by NSS doctor could be found not to
be fit for work. Practically any fault.
Scars, bandages, boils, emaciation.
That might be enough of a reasonto say not not fit for work.
Send them to the. Send them to the Chamber.
(40:05):
Jesus. Those who couldn't serve a
purpose were usually disposed ofquickly.
I say purpose because not only were they used for labor, they
were used as experiments. Like in the case of US of
Mangala. He would not be placed at
Auschwitz until 1943. However, there were science
experiments and other ghastly medical things happening before
the Angel of Death came to Auschwitz.
(40:26):
If you did not get chosen for death, you would then be
processed where you would have your dignity and immunity taken
and be turned into a tattooed number.
One in five were chosen to be inthe work camp, which is about
20% of all the people who were brought to the camps.
So 20% of the people that came off that train stayed alive from
the get go. The medical experiments, the
(40:48):
need for human Guinea pigs, well, that was infamous in
Auschwitz. They worked hard to study
sterilization and other things like castration experiments
causing premature termination ofpregnancy and carried it out on
pregnant and childbearing women.Experiments of artificial
insemination and also weirdly aimed at.
Cancer Research, OK, sure. That's just what you threw in
(41:11):
there. You'll be terrified to know that
a lot of Nazi medical experiments have been used in
modern medicine research. What I mean is that these highly
analytical experiments were done, and years later, some
scientists have tried to justifyusing information from these
experiments to help develop medical advancements.
It's quite a touchy subject. And really.
So a lot of lies were tortured and died for this information
(41:34):
needlessly. And the debate of whether to use
this information now is a question of ethics.
Ethics. Thank you.
I was like, I was reading ABBC article by Frank Swain who spoke
to some of the doctors and scientists to see their
opinions. So this is like today's time.
The basic intuition is that if information had been attained
(41:55):
unethically, but we use that information, then we become
complicit in that that past just.
What I was talking about earlier.
This is a common view actually, amongst those who, you know,
discuss the use of these kind offindings.
Writing in the bioethics journalThe Hastings Center Report in
1984, Christine Moe recounts a conversation with John Hayward,
(42:18):
a leading expert in hypothermia at the University of Victoria,
BC, who used Nazi data in his studies.
Quote, I don't want to have to use this data, but there's no
other and will be no other in the ethical world.
I rationalized it a little bit, but not to use it would be
equally bad. It is a very it's like if, well,
if we learned that we can do blah, blah, blah to save people
(42:41):
from this, do we or do we not? You know it is a hard thing.
She would point out, I think it's very important to say that
these findings very rarely provide key important
information on in isolation. For the most part, scientific
scientific information is like apiece in a jugsaw.
It fits into an overall puzzle. But she would ultimately say
(43:03):
what I think is quite the truth.If we do use this research, it
expresses the attitude that thisresearch was OK and encourage
future researchers that history will not will judge me
positively if I use this research.
And we do not want to do that. We don't want to promote
unethical research. So like if I use this unethical,
(43:24):
that someone's going to come down the line and say, well, for
science, I need to go ahead and do this.
It might not be ethical, but I'mgoing to do it and someone's
going to use this information someday.
Right. It's just a wormhole, we don't
need to go down. To make things even more
disturbing, there's Operation Paper Clip.
Have you heard of that? I have, but you know it's a very
(43:46):
late memory. You're going to anyway.
It's. It's definitely one of those
unless you're into weird shit like we are, you might not know
about it. So it brought over 1600 Nazi
scientists, researchers and medical professionals to be used
in our military to aid our fightin the Cold War.
(44:06):
So like, that's a whole different wormhole.
Like there are NASA scientists that were Nazis in the 50s.
Well, yeah, because like when wedid the a bomb, we brought a
bunch of them over and saved them to come over and help us to
make the bomb. I didn't find a whole lot of
information to directly tie hosts to all the medical stuff
(44:27):
except in his affidavit written in Nuremberg quote.
We received from time to time special prisoners from the
local, the Gestapo office. The s s doctors killed such
prisoners by injections of benzene.
Doctors had orders to write ordinary death certificates and
could put down any reason at allfor the cause of death.
From time to time we conducted medical experiments on women
(44:47):
inmates, including sterilizationand experiments relating to
cancer. Most of the people who died
under these experiments have been already been condemned to
death by the Gestapo. So, I mean, they were going to
die anyway. So while he was super focused on
the efficiency and gassing wholeswaths of people and then
burning their corpses, he was still highly aware of all the
(45:08):
other atrocities that were happening in addition to his
own. They'd already been murdering
people, but now came the time for the more to be more
strategic in the process and really finesse those plans.
You know what I mean? How are you going to make it to
Carnegie? All practice.
You always need to be more efficient.
They relocated those gas things from Block 11 to the crematorium
(45:29):
outside the camp, which made it less visible, so it made it
subject to less unwelcome witnesses.
So nobody's going to just like, hap a stance into there.
It already had ventilation so all they had to do was make sure
they could seal the doors effectively and then they
punched a hole in the roof for the gas canister to be dropped
in. Oh, great.
Good job guys. This became the prototype for
(45:51):
the Nazi gas chamber systems. Further, it could hold up to 700
people at a time. Excellent.
They had another test in September, more PO WS who were
told to get completely nude for de laosing.
Once inside the chamber with thedoor shut, they dropped the
canister and Rudy would recall quote.
After the insertion, some screamed gas, followed by mighty
(46:12):
howling and pushing toward the two doors, but the doors held
of. Course they did.
After the death it would take days for the bodies to be
burned, but Rudy was relieved tohave come up with a solution
that was less intense. In the murdering squads quote, I
was shuddered at the prospect ofcarrying out exterminations by
shooting when I thought of the vast numbers concerned and of
(46:32):
the women and children. The shooting of hostages in the
group executions ordered by the Reich Federal S S or by the
Reich Security Head office had been enough for me.
I was therefore relieved that tothink that we could be spared
all these bloodbaths and the victims too would be spared
their suffering. Their last moment came.
Listen, all that howling, the scratching people literally
(46:56):
tearing pieces. I can't tear my clothes.
Like, can you tear your shirt inhalf?
I can't. I'm not Hulk Hogan.
The fact that these people in that fury tore pieces of their
clothing off the stuff in their face.
I'm guessing their clothing was pretty ragged.
But that's true. That's true, you know.
I don't think they had a nice shirt on like you do.
His concern for the soldiers wasalso noted quote.
(47:17):
Many gruesome scenes are said tobe had taken place, people
running away after being shot, the finishing off of the wounded
and particularly of the women and children.
Many member of the Einsatzkamandos, unable to
endure wading through the blood any longer, had committed
suicide. Some had even gone mad.
Most of these members of Commandos had to rely on alcohol
when carrying out their horriblework.
(47:38):
According to Wholefest description, the men employed at
Globenix extermination centers consumed amazing quantities of
alcohol. I'm sure.
After being murdered, the Sonderkommando's would come in
and begin stripping the victims of hair and gold in their teeth
and any artificial limbs or anything else that wasn't
removed from the bodies prior todeath.
(48:00):
I don't know if I said what a Sonderkomando.
Is all I can picture when you talk about.
I did not. Removing the gold teeth is when
that guy gets in a cage with theDino to pull his tooth out and
then the Dino eats him. Exactly.
Exactly. Except sadly, the Jews did not
come back life and kill him. That would be beautiful. 10 out
of 10 teach us Nazis a thing or two.
(48:20):
Asander Commando is actually also a prisoner, but they were
prisoner workers that really mostly handled the gas chambers.
They were not in there very long, like they weren't us on to
come on to it. They were killed regularly and
at a regular interval, so nobodyknew who was going to die and
everything, but they handled allthe disposal of the bodies.
(48:41):
It wasn't the Nazis. Of course it wasn't.
Yeah, it was these little fellas.
Quote The bodies had to be had to be taken from the gas
chambers. After the gold teeth had been
extracted and the hair cut off. They had to be dragged to the
pits or to the crematoria. Then the fires in the pits had
to be stoked, the surplus surplus fat drained off, and the
(49:02):
mountain of burning corpses constantly turned over so the
drought might fan the flames. The hair was a commodity.
Actually, I don't know if you know that.
I did not. I did not.
This was a new thing for me. They would dry it above the
crematoriums. So like they would cut it off
the bodies, put it above the crematories and sell it in large
batches. Because it was used to make
(49:23):
socks for submarine crews. It was also used to made to make
felt stockings for railroad workers.
It even made they use the hair to make ignition mechanism for
bombs, ropes, cords for ships, stuffing and mattresses.
That's lovely. The gold was sent to the s s
Health service and used by dentists to treat the s s and
(49:44):
their families. 50 kilograms have been collected by 8 May.
By October 8th, 1942 and by early 194410 to 12 kilograms of
gold was being extracted monthlyfrom victim's teeth.
That's nice because these numbers aren't a perfect lens
for truth at times. Here's something that will sober
you. A gold tooth is usually an
(50:05):
average of 3 grams. 11 kilogramsof gold is equal to 11,000
grams, meaning over 3600 teeth were pulled from victims.
That's nice. In that one month after that,
they would cremate the bodies and throw the ashes out or use
them for fertilizer. They even had large bone
grinding machines to help pulverize the leftover bones as
(50:28):
well because cremating does not break down the bones.
Remember, the Sonderkommando were also prisoners, so it was
only a matter of time for someone they knew would be in
that pile of bodies, as in a instance recalled by Rudy quote.
Once when the bodies were being carried from a gas chamber to a
fire pit, a man from the specialdetachment which was
(50:49):
Sonderkommando's suddenly stopped and stood for a moment
as though rooted to the spot. Then he continued to drag a body
out of body with his comrades. Asked the couple what was up, he
explained that the courts was that of the Jew's wife.
I watched him for a while, but noticed nothing particular of
his behavior. He continued to drag corpses
along, just as he had done before.
(51:10):
When I visited the detachment a little later, he was sitting
with the others, eating as though nothing had happened.
Was he really able to hide his emotions so completely, or had
he become too brutalized to evencare about this?
And that's where we're going to lay off today.
Well, thank God. Well, nothing up for you because
you're going to be hearing this quick succession.
(51:30):
Yeah, you're probably only goingto get two of these.
I don't know that I can do three.
You're really bumming me out dude.
Well, at least the third one is like mostly about his death and
his downfall today, like the ending 1.
So yeah, there's that. We'll see.
So we're going to talk about next time, we're going to talk
about Rudy's naughty little secret, his big promotion into
(51:54):
the Nazi big leagues. But definitely in the meantime,
don't forget to find us on our socials.
Jimmy is the one who's been handling our socials.
You guys, he's been posting likecrazy.
We've been working on like all these different kinds of things
emerge and stuff. It's been a lot of fun.
TikTok has been huge. And if you found us on there,
(52:15):
thank you for following us. Don't forget to let us know your
own to close to home Stories. If something weird happened to
you, let me know about it. We're here for it.
I love alien abductions, but youknow what I love even more?
Bigfoot abductions. Were you Bigfoot's baby?
Same. I want to hear tell me all about
it. And don't forget to rate and
subscribe on all the platforms you listen to Apple, Spotify,
(52:37):
Amazon, the more visibility, themore we see it to spread us.
So that's right, until next time.
Stay safe. Keep your head on the swivel.
And don't bring it so close to home that you use gold from the
teeth of a dead Nazi. Yeah, thanks.
Bye. If you enjoyed this episode of
(52:59):
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Thanks for listening.
I have certainly watched them close enough, but I have never
really been able to get to the bottom of their behaviour.
The Jews way of living and of dying was a true Riddle that I
never managed to solve. That's Rudolph Host, the
commandant of Auschwitz. OK.
This is Jen, this is Becky, thisis too close to home, and this
is Part 3. Of the Nazi edition.
(00:26):
Well, I shouldn't do. Maybe not anyway.
So sources, let's get that knocked out because there's
about 30 billion of them. The Commandant of Auschwitz
Autobiography, you know what I should call sources?
Just hyperfixation area, becausethat's what happens.
It's a hyper, you know, we were talking about, you know, doing a
(00:48):
video saying like, what was our process on picking things?
And I was like, there is no process for me.
It just happens. It's a hyper fixation.
And then I just don't stop. Don't stop, won't stop.
So the commandant of Auschwitz, which is the autobiography by
Rudolf host himself kla History of Nazi concentration camps by
(01:08):
nikolaus washman, Third Reich. The rise and fall on Netflix
Nazi death marches 1944 to 1945 Nazis at Nuremberg, The lost
testimony. Telegraph UK, Smithsonian
magazine, auschwitz.org, GOP everyday science.
The Holocaust encyclopedia set in Hall university World
Holocaust remembrance center, Jewish currents organization
(01:29):
Conference on Jewish material claims against Germany.
Music and the Holocaust organization.
CNNN Auschwitz Birkenau museum PBS National Library of of
medicine BBC history of sorts blog the Holocaust history
project Jewish virtual library organization facing history
organization World War 2 foundation Jewish gin
organization not oh, I've already said that one Nazis in
(01:51):
Nuremberg, the lost testimonies.But so last time we talked about
his journey to Auschwitz, the prisoners, the guards, the zone
of interest. Today we're going to pick up in
the camp once again, but we're going to delve into the final
solution, starting with a conversation of what was a day
in Auschwitz like. And so I found a description
(02:11):
written by Vincent Chattel, whose father had been interned
at bought concentration camp, aswell as Mr. Richard Soufit,
which is a Auschwitz survivor and Mr. Van Horen, a Flossenberg
survivor. I got some information on
testimonies and like several books, jen.org website which
hosts information for global Jewish genealogy if you want to
look further into those sources.This is an amalgamation
(02:34):
testimony, so Please note that this is generalized and that no
two days were the same because, I mean, you got to have a little
variety I guess in your Nazi life. 4:00 AM you awake by capos
barking? Hurry up.
You need to find your shoes first because if you don't have
them, you can't work and if you can't work, you get fucking
shot. So stolen shoes was kind of an
(02:55):
issue. I always knew Jordans were life
or death, you know what I mean? Then you have to follow Beaten
Bow, which is a military way of making a bed, except you just
have a lumpy stroll mattress to make it to a nice neat bed.
And if you don't do it right, you get beaten.
Now you attempt to get washed, but there are only a few
facilities for hundreds of prisoners, so you either skip to
(03:17):
attend roll call or you'd be late to roll call and suffer.
Guess what? Getting beaten.
And sometimes beatings are so bad people die for breakfast.
You have a mess tin of 10 ouncesof bread and some coffee.
Rarely, if ever, you win the Lotto of sausage with your bread
or some margarine. But that's if you if you get a
tin, there's a lot of times you don't.
(03:38):
And when you do, the only solid food you will be given that day
will be in that tin. Worse, the capos are real Dicks
and they'll throw your food in the mud or the bump into you
spill your coffee just like oh, Oh my bad.
Real Regina George chit. Real Regina George.
I wouldn't have made it long because the first time my coffee
(03:58):
got spilled, I'd have acted up. And they did.
I'd have been. Done straight to the chambers.
Yeah, Roll call's next. And everybody is lined up in
rows of 10, including those who have died the night before.
They would be lined up in front of the barracks and you'll be in
roll call for hours because if one mistake occurs, it causes
the county to start all over. In the rain, the snow storms,
(04:21):
you must pay attention and remain 100% silent.
Some people die during a roll call itself, all of which would
be sent to the crematories afterthe roll call.
Now for work time. You March off to to work by
foot, and sometimes you'll have a drum or the camp orchestra.
Sometimes you're even ordered tosing for the s s soldiers as you
March. Next is the task of your actual
(04:44):
job. Your day will be 12 to 14 hours
long, if not longer, and the work will be very hard and
sometimes even useless things like carrying sandbags from one
point to another, extracting large stones, or maybe you're
even in a factory where everything is done as fast as
possible, or else you'll be beat.
And again, some people die from those beatings.
Lunch comes with a whistle, but it's not like you have food.
(05:06):
When the whistle to resume starts, your body is aching with
pain and hunger, and it makes you feel like each limb is
thousands of pounds and every movement a concerted effort.
A prisoner faints from hunger. He gets beaten, if he doesn't
rise, he is killed and you were to bring his body back to camp
for evening roll call. Fuck.
(05:27):
The evening whistle blows and you and your fellow prisoners
walk back to camp holding bodies.
Sometimes they make you sing. Now it's time for roll call
again, and Rosa 10. The capos are counting.
Sometimes people will attempt toescape and you're going to
remain in that roll call until that person is returned, even if
that means hours, sometimes 10 hours or more.
(05:47):
This is also the moment where they those that were chosen by s
s for punishments and hangings would be announced while you
work all day and now you're going to come down to this awful
Lotto. Sometimes you get marched in
front of the Gallo so you can see the hanging prisoner as a
warning. Dinner is a weird mystery soup
that is 99% liquid and mostly ofno dietary substance.
(06:09):
If you did spare some bread fromthe morning, you eat it now with
your soup, but I doubt that happened, if ever.
Now it's time to retire to your barracks where you're going to
remain locked down for the rest of the night.
The block leader or the capo would sometimes let you sleep,
but sometimes decide to have funby torturing you with exercises
until you faint. If you do sleep, you're going to
share a bed with several others,5 or more at least, with a urine
(06:32):
soaked sheet if one at all, on astraw mattress that more than
likely is infested with lice andother vermin.
The barracks is so cold and everyone is thin from starving
so cold is a constant state. But if you made it this far, you
survive the day. Talk.
Yeah. I wonder what was people's will
to live? I've thought about that often
(06:54):
because there have been people that like literally just, I'm
ready to go, I'm ready to die, go ahead and take me now and
then. There's a lot of people who are
still scraping by in this what seems like almost impossible
conditions. And I'm like, I can't imagine I.
Don't know where they get them. The mental strength to it didn't
seem like it's going to get better.
And your mental acuity is going to completely change as you
(07:17):
starve. Yeah, you know, as your body
eats its brain, basically. I don't know.
So let's talk about music Segue.It would seem I'll placed at a
camp, but the Nazis love them some jams.
OK, earlier I spoke about the camp musicians and truly it's
such a unique role that it savedquite a few people's lives.
(07:41):
In December 1940, the first bandwas created in Auschwitz.
Of course it had 7 musicians in their instruments, a violin,
percussion, double bass, accordion, trumpet and a
saxophone and most were amateur musicians.
Eventually it would grow into 80players and a brass band of 120.
With these success of the bands,they formed subsequent ones in
(08:01):
the men's camp, the gypsy camp, the women's camp and sub camps.
I did see it described as like 1camp leader would see it and
hear about it like, Oh my God, Ineed a camp too.
They would play for marches and during executions.
During s s dinners. Their music lingered in the air
with the smell of death. One musician, trumpeter Herman
(08:22):
Shots Nowitz, spoke of his duty.Every morning we played as the
inmate work crews departed, the same in the evening when they
returned to the camp. We played on other occasions,
too, especially during executions, which usually heard
on Sunday afternoons or evenings.
Perhaps they intended to drown out the last protest and final
curses with music, a grotesque spectacle that had been ordered
(08:43):
at the highest level. And the S S men surrounded us
with loaded weapons. They would use music sometimes
as like a quiet defiance, sneaking in songs like the
Polish national anthem. Franz Donneman described how
Leonor's overture from Beethoven's Theodelio, performed
by the official band during rollcall in the summer of 1943,
(09:05):
strengthened his will to survive.
I was aware of the similarity ofour situation to Fluorescends in
the last act. He should have died as a witness
to Pizarro's misdeeds, just as the s s pursued the destruction
of the prisoners. But the music warned us not to
despair and lose hope. Behind my words you're hearing
(09:26):
Lenore overture #3 by Daniel Baron, boy of the Western W
Eastern Divan Orchestra. The women's camp would be
written about in the 70s. A memoir by Fania Finland, who
was a survivor and played in theband.
There would also be a movie madefrom this and other survivors
would say there was a lot of incorrect and false information.
(09:47):
It is now generally accepted as historical fiction since there
has been several more memoirs onthe women's band.
One survivor is Anita Lasker Walfish, who is very well known.
She's 99 years old and still spicy as ever.
A cellist by profession. But that cello had also saved
her life, as it was difficult tosource a cellist at the time.
(10:09):
She was in documentary Shadow ofthe Commandant on Hulu, which is
about Rudy's autobiography, his life as commandant of Auschwitz,
his children, and his grandchildren's experience as
being relative to the commandant.
She meets the Sun Hans in person, and she and her daughter
speak of the trauma she endured and how it affected the
generations after. 10 out of 10 recommend this.
(10:30):
Anita is still active in giving interviews and educating people
in the Holocaust. Having grown up in a non
practicing Jewish family. She speaks about what it was
like in that time with her thoughts being very straight to
the point in factual. You would love her truly.
To be a person who's been personally asked to play
Schumann's Top Traumory by Yosa Mengele, which is what you're
(10:50):
hearing, and then living every day hoping the safety of your
cello would take you to the nextis one of the strongest examples
of human strength I've ever seen.
So that's a Mangle hit, you knowwhat I'm saying?
I know that was a little bit of a detour of information, but but
daily life and music were very much an influence on hosts
(11:12):
himself. He created this camp from the
ground up with just sticks and rubber bands, like a white
supremacist MacGyver. But if like MacGyver was truly
evil and a sadistic person, you know what I'm saying?
As with every military system, you must depreve your superiors.
And after grueling work, it was time to give Himmler some of his
first reports and of course, received critiques and orders.
(11:34):
Not only would Rudy report his progress, but his difficulties
as well. Himmler would brush off any and
every complication and demand compliance.
By January, Auschwitz would have7000 prisoners, most of them
Polish. Himmler visited in March of
1941, where he would tour for the first time.
At this point in the war, you'relooking at an estimate of 25,000
total prisoners in the concentration camp system.
(11:57):
That's the entire system, right?He would lay out the Reich's
plans to increase the site of Auschwitz, just Auschwitz from
10,000 as planned to become a peacetime establishment that can
hold 30,000. There would be armament
factories and research firms moving out to Poland as well.
Himmler would order that the camp supply 10,000 prisoners for
(12:19):
forced labor to construct AIG Barbin factory complex at
Dwohree, which is about a mile away.
This is also where he would declare that this point forward,
this is Himmler, that no Jew would be released from any camp
whatsoever, with the exception of the Jews who already had
visas in hand. He would allow those to
immigrate until April, but afterthat all bets are off.
(12:41):
It is also important to note that in April 1941, Germany
would be would make the s s the authorized supplier of Zyklom B,
meaning that they could use it with no oversight despite it
being out of custom. Rudy did relay their water
supply, drainage, building and staffing problems and Himmler
waved it off saying like bro I'mnot asking how you're going to
do it you're just going to do itand have it done like I want
(13:04):
period. Quote I'm just kidding.
This would require hosts pretty much sourcing all the materials
themselves as Germany couldn't or wouldn't send the supplies.
They were in war and all supplies were strictly kept and
disseminated only when they feltnecessary.
So instead of building a brand new facility had to use the
buildings that were bombed out left in the zone slated for
(13:26):
Auschwitz. Even barbed wire felt impossible
to find with Rudy directing soldiers to breakdown old
armaments abandoned in fields toget leftover wire needed to line
the tops the perimeter of the camp.
Also, like, I'm sitting there thinking about it, like, it
wasn't like they had the best productive gear.
I would hate to have been that soldier on that duty.
I'm going to do a breakdown of this barbed wire and then put it
(13:47):
up in little bundles. Yeah.
Here are these little dainty gloves for you.
Get that God? Oh wait, never mind, they had
slave labor. I forget.
Well, at first I was thinking I was like, oh, well, that's good
they had the soldiers doing it. But.
No. Essentially, dig your own grave,
build your own prism. Pretty much there you go.
He would say he became disillusioned with his comrades
(14:09):
and just avoid any kind of social contact.
To me, this says like it's like,look, I wasn't really into this.
I was just a cog in this machine.
But truly when you look at the accounts of Rudy and his wife
Hedwig, they were both deeply anti-Semitic.
And with Hedwig telling people that they wholeheartedly
believed in the Nazi vision, howhe really feels does get read
(14:30):
between the lines where he's more frustrated at the lack of
intelligence, sloppiness, and lack of cooperation in his
directives. To me, that's his true
character. He was a mangle of sorts in that
he really took deep in consideration into effectively
and efficiently conducting mass killings and extermination of
Jews. This hit that his role wasn't a
faux scientific view, but one that I'm going to make.
(14:53):
I'm going to be the very best that no one ever was, and he's
going to make Daddy Himmler proud, OK?
That was his big goal. He would say that it was him and
him alone that would be responsible to create this large
camp out of nothing and nothing provide with nothing provided,
and that it was accomplished with no help of his
(15:13):
subordinates. So basically I did this on my
back, my work, my blood, sweat and tears, not my slave labor.
No, none of that. So in June 1941 it would be the
beginning of what be Millions upon Millions of Murderers by
Hitler V Himmler. Which when they announced the
(15:35):
final solution of the Jewish question, I always thought that
was very weird that they always framed it like that.
Their answer for the Jewish question.
I didn't know that was a question.
Didn't know it was a question. But apparently to them, they had
one. I'm like, apparently Google
could have solved a lot of problems those days.
Rudy would recall. In the summer of 1941, he gave
(15:58):
me the order to prepare installations at Auschwitz where
mass exterminations could take place and personally to carry
out these exterminations. I did not have the slightest
idea of their scale or consequences.
It was certainly an extraordinary and monstrous
order. Nevertheless, the reasons behind
the extermination program seemedright, seemed to me right.
I did not reflect on it at that time.
(16:19):
I had been given an order and I had to carry it out.
Whether this mass extermination of the Jews was necessary or not
was something on which I could not allow myself to form an
opinion. But I lack the necessary breath
of you. Basically.
Like I was given an order. I'm just doing my job.
I mean, it's not up to me to be a questioning them.
(16:41):
They know. They know why we're doing it.
They got the good reasons. Yeah, it's just because they're
Jews. No other reason.
That's it. What would happen would be a
large invasion by the Einsatzgruppen eastward through
Operation Barbarossa. This operation would carry out
the plan of mass exterminations in two ways. 1st through death
squads that would kill thousandsas they pushed war further east
(17:03):
to the occupied parts of the Soviet Union.
And when I say thousands, I meanit.
There were several massacres. The Bobby Yard massacre which
was a ravine where 34,000 Jews would be stripped of their
items, put in the ravine and then shot by a Bush and gunfire.
The Rambula massacre killed 25,000 Jews in Latvia.
(17:25):
I've seen several accounts on these death squads and it's
startling because you would think that most of these
soldiers didn't want to, but thefacts were just so different.
One such account I saw that it was a unit of soldiers being
told of their orders and asking if anyone who does not want to
shoot to please stay behind thatthat they were not going to be
punished. Nothing was going to be done to
these soldiers. They wanted people who were
(17:46):
going to be in 100% agreement and compliancy with these
orders, 100% agreement and compliant with these orders.
A witness stated that the first soldier to get out of formation
began to be cursed by his unit leader when the commander of the
unit stopped him. And he said no, no, no, we're
not doing that. He's allowed to not do this.
(18:07):
And so all these other soldiers started like, oh, you don't want
to, I don't want to. It wasn't that many.
Surprisingly. The rest, who did not object to
this, went out in the woods and would systematically shoot
groups upon groups of Jews. I do have to say in my opinion,
there were probably, I'm not saying all of them.
I think a large amount of them wanted to, but I do have to say
(18:28):
some of them probably didn't want to.
But if you're telling me I have to go kill all these people and
it's cool if I don't want to you'll let me go home, I'm going
to have to say it's a trap that you're not really going to let
me go home. So I don't know that I would
volunteer to walk out regardlessif I wanted to do it or not,
because the task is to kill people and you're telling me
you're not going to kill me if Idon't kill them?
(18:49):
The math ain't math in so I I dohave to say, in my personal
opinion, I think there was probably a lot that didn't want
to do it, but I'm not. I don't trust you that you're
not going to hurt me and I can just go home and live my life
and all is good and gravy. I don't believe.
That you're correct though, you're correct in this.
But the the thing was they treated them like social
pariahs. Yeah.
(19:09):
They would not kill them. They wouldn't punish them.
They would socially punish them and that and like pretty much
call them cowards to their facesand they left them in.
They didn't remove their ranks or anything like that.
I'm sure they just get paid. They they were getting paid.
Oh, they're all getting paid. But they would they would be the
outsiders. And for some people that was
(19:31):
some people that was just too much.
And that's how you get like between people who didn't want
to jump out of line because theyknow it was a trap or two.
The outsiders. It just kind of makes everybody
go, well, I don't have a fuckingchoice.
Right. Yeah, they say you have a
choice, but you don't have a choice.
You never did. You never did.
(19:54):
One soldier, he would learn of the Jew that he was about to
kill, owned the very theater from his little tiny town that
he had patronized so many times.Regardless, it was one after
another after another that they would shoot, including women and
children, even babies, because babies grow up to be big Jews.
It's literally how many times I've I've read it so many times.
Like the reason we have to kill the kids guys is because the
(20:17):
kids will grow up. They're cute when they're
babies, but then they become Jewdemons when they're grown.
Like what? So the babies, you know, to
conserve bullets, they would have the mothers hold the babies
and shoot through the baby through the mother's chest.
Just like a 2 for one deal. I'm glad we're using big brain
(20:38):
energy. And then if they didn't want to
use bullets, they would just slam the baby's body against the
tree. Oh, OK, yeah, so I think if I
had the choice between shooting a baby or slamming against a
tree, I'd have to opt with shooting.
Not that I want to do either onebecause they'd both be terrible,
but you really got to be as sicko to slam a baby against a
tree to kill. Seriously, I don't know how you
(21:00):
could frame that in any way whatsoever.
That seems humane. There's not and.
Not even like the we all had choices not to do this.
You just literally could just drop your gun, but whatever.
Anyways, who am I? Who am I?
This girl doing a podcast with her best friend.
That's it, That's it. The second phase would be the
death camps, which Auschwitz would play an ugly, pivotal role
(21:23):
in. In the camps, they began
experimenting with gases while they conducted mass shootings.
In both phases, the Nazis did take into account how much of A
toll this would take on their soldiers.
So they were working on a more effective solution to preserve
their mental health as they carried out the solution.
OK, would you guys are killing so many.
(21:44):
It's fucking your brains up so. So.
We're going to have a pizza party.
We're going to, yes, just like the corporate role of dictates.
We have a pizza party and then we're going to come up with a
gas chamber so you guys don't have to do it no more.
Prior to the Final Solution, Nazi Germany had already been
working on ways to kill prisoners in camps more
effectively through Action 14 F 13, also called Sandabuhandlong
(22:06):
Special Treatment. This action is what you would
hear about basically in death camps.
Those two, weak or ill or mentally unstable to work, were
to be euthanized as it was more compassionate in the views of
Nazi ideology. You know, just not even letting
them live is not an option. Just these are baddies.
(22:27):
This was after some forced sterilizations, of course,
because racial purity can't happen if you let weirdos like
me procreate. Sure, they began using carbon
monoxide during this program, which began in the late 1930s
and would technically end in 1941, although it never really
went away. This standard to kill those they
deemed that was not worthy was the heart of the killing camps,
(22:48):
and the use of the gas opened the doors in ways that they
shouldn't have. This T4 method sparked many
insane inventions, including thedeath vans where they would have
mobile death units to kill on the go.
It sounds crazy. Uber before Uber was the thing,
or DoorDash before DoorDash was.We're going to DoorDash your
(23:12):
murder right to your home. You know it make it convenient
for you. I hear right now it's $0.00 zero
dollar delivery fee. OK, we'll.
Come to you, Jesus. In September 1941, the Eastward
movement brought more death and prisoners of war being
transported to the camps. Around the September 5th,
Auschwitz would get a train fromnew Hammer war camp in Lower
(23:34):
Silesia. They were all Soviet PO WS
identified by police as quote UNquote unacceptable, and they
would be led to the infamous block 11.
Block 11 was used for tortures and executions.
It had a death wall where they would have shooting squads and
that's still it's still erected today.
The building is still there and it's.
(23:55):
Awesome. Just a chilling.
Just awesome. Yeah.
It also hosted special torture chambers in which various
punishments were applied to prisoners.
Some could include being locked in a dark chamber for days or
being forced to stand in one of their standing cell, called the
Stesola Stesela in German. Punishments in these
(24:17):
compartments, which were one square meter total, it was like
you just putting 4 prisoners in there and then everybody's kind
of forced to stand and they would remain standing all night
up to 20 nights and go to work during the day.
(24:37):
How'd they even survive 20 nights?
That's bro, there's so many times that I'm like the, the
amount of people that did survive such crazy fucking
things is I, I don't even know how where to describe it really.
Yeah. Let's talk about Cyclone B
though for a minute. You know what I mean?
Little light stuff. It's a prussic acid, and they've
(25:01):
been using it to kill the rodents in the camp for some
time. The inventor of cyclombie is
Fritz Haber, who is surprisinglya German Jew.
Fritz received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his
invention of the Haber process, a method used in industry to
synthesize ammonia from nitrogengas and hydrogen gas.
(25:23):
This invention is important for the large scale synthesis of
fertilizers and explosives. He was also a World War 1
veteran, having fought for Germany and helped create
endorse many new types of criminal weapons and masks to
protect soldiers from those gases.
He would say that death was death no matter what caused it
to be inflicted and referred to the history quote.
(25:44):
The disapproval that the knight had for the man with a firearm
is repeated in the soldier who shoots with steel bullets
towards the man who confronts him with chemical weapons.
The gas weapons are not at all more cruel than the flying iron
pieces. On the contrary, the fraction of
fatal gas diseases as comparatively smaller than
mutilations of munitions. So you're saying it's nicer?
(26:09):
Yeah, like listen, this is 100% rate you might miss in a gun.
He chillingly discovered that the long exposure of a low
concentration of gas was just aslethal as a high concentration
in a short time, which would be called Haber's rule.
He would be highly respected andhonored for the time being
(26:30):
between World War One and World War Two, he would become
director of De Gesch, which was a German chemical corporation
that manufactured pesticides. It would be here that he created
cyanide based pesticides. Zyklon Before Zyklon B While
Zyklon would become banned because of the similar chemicals
being used in World War One's warfare.
Eventually the Gesh would be bought out by another chemical
(26:52):
company in 1922, where scientists started working on
Cyclone again. Cyanide, which is what cyclone
is kind of made of, is volatiles, water and air.
So to make it less volatile, they devised a method of
packaging hydrogen cyanide in a sealed canister along with a
cautionary eye irritant and several of absorbents like
(27:14):
diatomaceous earth. And that would be what Cyclone B
is. IG Farben, which was the
chemical company that they were building using slave labor and
providing slave labor to work there.
They manufactured the canisters.They put them in that form to
help make it safer to transport.Yeah, we wouldn't want any of
(27:37):
them to die. That cautionary eye, your intent
that was put in there so whoeverwas handling it would know, oh
shit, that shit's getting out run.
But they were like, that's taking that's that's making it
take too long. So you're going to take that
out. So they took that out.
Jesus Prince would be alarmed atthe rise of National Socialism
in Germany. He was shocked when they came
(27:58):
after him, seeing how he converted to Christianity and
had provided great service to Germany in World War One.
But not dog Hitler still saw youas a Jew.
So he left as Germany in 1933 and would only live a year
before passing in Switzerland at65.
That always makes me think of the leopards eating faces.
It's like some kind of politicalparty thing where these people
(28:20):
were voting a certain way and itwas not really that great.
And then something came back andit hurt one of their own voters.
And they're like, I didn't know the leopards were going to eat
my face. So like, oh.
It's OK if, wouldn't you? It's OK if it's not happening to
you, but when it happens to you,it's bad.
(28:41):
Now it's bad. But like, I did my part, I
converted. I'm not a Jew anymore.
Now they don't care about that. They cared about bloodlines.
So what does Zyklon B do to the body?
After dropping the canister intothe chamber, the warm air causes
the gas to emit into the room, filling the air.
It enters the bloodstream by thelungs and mucous membranes,
(29:03):
while part of the acid has a chemical reaction, turning it
into cyanide. From there it attacks cells,
particularly the mitochondria ofthe cell.
The Powerhouse. Oh my God, because I didn't.
I like the powerhouse's cell. If you recall from science
class, my girl knew it. My girl knew it.
I know we're known her to be wrong.
It causes the cell to no longer to be.
I like how we were like cheeringfor that in the middle.
(29:25):
I'm like, let me tell you what it does though.
It causes the cell to no longer be able to take oxygen, in which
fuel cells and without oxygen the cells die and therefore use
of comes asphyxiation, leading quickly to your death.
They say it's quick. I don't think it was really that
quick. Knowing this, let's go back to
those Soviet prisoners. The Soviet Piws would be LED
(29:48):
into the sealed chamber where they would find other prisoners,
although they were all in a direstate or invalid of some sort.
So like we got off a train, we're all like a prisoners and
we go in a room and it looks like all these people on death's
doorstep. So this was raising every red
flag with them. They didn't have long to think
though, because once they were all ushered in the room, they
(30:10):
like literally threw the CycloneBee in there and shut the door.
The gas came in contact with thewarm bodies in air and began to
quickly fill the room. Immediately, the poison
literally melted their mucous brain membranes and their
screams became choking noises. All of them would pass, despite
some of them tearing pieces of clothes off of their bodies and
(30:31):
stuffing them into their mouth and nose to prevent the gas from
getting in. Rudy would watch this whole
thing behind the safety of a gasmask, congratulating himself for
killing hundreds of prisoners without firing a single bullet.
But like all Nazis, he saw room for improvements.
So let's talk about that. Firstly, Block 11 was soups far
(30:55):
from the crematorium chambers, which meant that to dispose of
their bodies. They had a long way to drag
them. They had to schlep them all the
way across the clamp. And that's just not going to do
anything for morale. You know, I'm saying next, Block
11 had no ventilation. So not only did they have to
move the bodies across camp, they'd have to wait hours for
the gas to disperse first. And by then, the rigor mortis
would, would like, have set in. And all these bodies were like
(31:20):
basically tangled in and they'd had to be like, trying to pull
bodies apart. Bless their hearts, I'm so.
Sorry, it's very difficult beinga Nazi, you know?
A witness of these early chambercleanups was a Polish prisoner
named Adam Sarkarsky. Quote.
The scene was truly eerie because no one could see that
these people had scratched and bitten each other in a fitted
(31:42):
madness before they died. Many had torn uniforms.
Although I had already gotten used to some of the macabre
scenes in the camp, I became sick when I saw these murdered
people and I had to vomit violently.
In his biography, Rudy would speak on his thoughts as he
witnessed and participated in these atrocities, saying that he
was thinking, but he assumed many soldiers and s s officers
(32:05):
were thinking when they saw women and children walk into the
gas chamber. They thought about their wives
and their children, of course, But the same man said, quote,
Jews have strongly developed family feelings.
They stick together like Olympics.
Nevertheless, according to my observations, they lack
solidarity. And then he would go on to say
quote. I've certainly watched them
(32:25):
close enough, but I have never really been able to get to the
bottom of their behavior. The Jews way of living and of
dying was a true Riddle that I never managed to solve.
It's not a fucking Riddle to solve, son.
It's not, it's a. Fucking religion.
Yeah, OK, sorry. Let me wipe away this
indignation and continue the story.
(32:45):
This to me shows that they aren't people but animals to be
dealt with personality. And so how can you connect
feelings of your family? Like you think about your wife
and and children when you see these victims, but you don't
stop them when you have every ounce of ability to stop them.
Right. I say that because there were
other Nazis who toe the line andwe're not into killing.
(33:08):
Like there was literally people who were like, I am kind of
fucking stuck here. I don't really believe in all
this, but I also don't want to get murdered, right?
And so those were like the ones that would help resistance
efforts and stuff. I'm not sure what the statistics
are on that, but I'm sure I probably we would have been a
punk them of the ones that were like, oh, fuck, oh, fuck.
(33:28):
I don't believe any of this. Oh, shit, I'm going to die.
Yeah, I'm going to die. Yeah, I get the chills on that
one. Like, oh, I don't want to do it.
Don't make me a Nazi. Poor little baby JJ and Jimmy,
what do I do? Who would have died of heart
attacks? Yes, I can't handle this.
(33:50):
They can't even handle like paper cuts, right?
OK, ever growing as the plans dictate a con construction of
the Auschwitz to Birkenau camp called This is a long one.
Kris Ganfangen Laga. No Kris Ganfangen nan Kris
(34:10):
Ganfangenen, not a. That's perfect.
Close enough prisoner of war came from blueprints and it
began in October of 1941 in Brazinka, which is about 3
kilometers from Auschwitz the 1st.
This is part of Himmler's order to expand Auschwitz.
This would create a second complex on the other side of the
rail tracks and would be called Auschwitz 2 or Birkenau. 1/3
(34:34):
portion would be a work camp with workers being supplied to
IG Farben the the nearby factorywhenever they like.
The prisoners couldn't work anymore though, they would send
them back and get fresh ones andthose would be sent straight to
the crematories because they weren't worthless, they weren't
worth anymore anymore. So it's like literally
disposable. That's sad.
(34:56):
Really. Really, this is all sad.
It is, I mean, and it's hard to sit here and be jokes at the
same time, but it's like we're super uncomfortable.
It's hard. I I enjoyed learning about this
because I really expanded these things that I never knew before.
But at the same time it comes with that cost of just yelling
soul crushing sadness you know? So the IT was planned to have 4
(35:21):
segments only the but although only the first 3 would be built,
it would feature more crematoriums, a women's and
men's barracks, infirm infirmaries, s s quarters, just
everything you need for a death machine.
It would stay under constructionfor the entire time of its
operation and in in the end it would grow from a single camp
with 22 buildings in 1940 to become a complex of three main
(35:45):
camp and 40 sub camps. The workers would go on from
being mostly Soviet PO WS to mostly Jews.
As the war progressed and the Final solution was put into
place to build it, they sent 10,000 Russian PO WS, the best
they apparently had at the Lambsdorff POW camp.
They marched them over 90 miles,Jesus Christ and they stopped.
(36:05):
But the listen, they stopped andlet them rest and eat along the
way. But they didn't supply the food
they told them to to graze a squirrel.
No, they told him to graze to the field like they were fucking
cattle. Jesus Christ.
Like you guys like grass, right?What?
So by the time they showed up atAuschwitz, they were extremely
poor conditioned, with Rudy saying she think, yeah, quote, I
(36:28):
remember very clearly how we were continually giving them
food when they first arrived at the base camp, but in vain.
Their weakened bodies could no longer function.
Their whole constitution was finished and done for.
They died like flies from general physical exhaustion or
from the most trifling maladies with which their debilitated
constitutions could no longer resist.
(36:48):
I saw countless Russians die while in the act of swallowing
root vegetables or potatoes. Jesus.
Christ. So the hunger had made them into
shadows themselves, with the host saying cases of cannibalism
were not rare in Birkenau. I myself came upon across a
Russian lying between piles of bricks whose body had been
ripped open, the liver removed, and they would beat each other
(37:09):
to death for food. Later on, he would say, when the
foundations of for the first group of buildings were being
dug, the men often found bodies of Russians who had been killed
by their fellows, partly eaten and then stuffed in a hole in
the mud. The mysterious disappearance of
many Russians were explained this way.
By the summer of 1942, only a few 100 of that 10,000 PO WS
(37:31):
survived, which is crazy that heeven survived that long.
Yeah, I think it's important to note that just two months after
the expansion of Auschwitz began, Pearl Harbor would occur
in December 1941. That night, the very night that
Pearl Harbor happened, it is said that Sir Winston Churchill,
quote, went to bed and slept thesleep of the saved.
(37:53):
The reason being is that he knewthat America was going to be
absolutely compelled to enter the war the very next day.
And and they did, they declared war on Japan and they were
allies with Germany. So ipso facto, everybody's at
war. It's a World War 2 to me.
This created a ripple in Germany's plans and made what
would happen next in Auschwitz afast reality.
(38:17):
Next, the time came to begin finessing their mass murder
plans, from the selection process to how to handle that
many corpses. And it's going to be listen.
It's already been awful. We already talked about babies
and stuff being killed, but it'sjust going to continue to keep
getting worse. So if you have a sensitive
stomach, sorry, maybe don't listen.
Maybe wait until we have anotherseries.
(38:38):
Becky doesn't have a choice, OK?I don't.
Selection was the first step andit would happen at the train
platform. There would be 3 train platforms
on the inside of Auschwitz 1 andAuschwitz 1.
Then you have the Auschwitz 2 Birkenau train platform and then
the one built between the two facilities.
The last one being built was theBirkenau one, which was built in
(39:00):
1943 and was began being used in1944 and was probably the most
infamous one. Like when as things progress
through the war, it went from somewhat semblance of neatness
and, you know, order to just complete utter chaos at all
times. I'm sure.
(39:23):
The soldiers didn't like to callit selection as much as they
said it was decommissioning likethey were old computers.
The first step, once they were off the train, was to separate
people by sex. Next they began parsing them out
by who could work and who could not.
Elderly, visibly pregnant women,small children under 16, which
(39:44):
later got dropped to 14, would be sent immediately to the gas
chambers. Others who appeared on a brief
and superficial inspection by NSS doctor could be found not to
be fit for work. Practically any fault.
Scars, bandages, boils, emaciation.
That might be enough of a reasonto say not not fit for work.
Send them to the. Send them to the Chamber.
(40:05):
Jesus. Those who couldn't serve a
purpose were usually disposed ofquickly.
I say purpose because not only were they used for labor, they
were used as experiments. Like in the case of US of
Mangala. He would not be placed at
Auschwitz until 1943. However, there were science
experiments and other ghastly medical things happening before
the Angel of Death came to Auschwitz.
(40:26):
If you did not get chosen for death, you would then be
processed where you would have your dignity and immunity taken
and be turned into a tattooed number.
One in five were chosen to be inthe work camp, which is about
20% of all the people who were brought to the camps.
So 20% of the people that came off that train stayed alive from
the get go. The medical experiments, the
(40:48):
need for human Guinea pigs, well, that was infamous in
Auschwitz. They worked hard to study
sterilization and other things like castration experiments
causing premature termination ofpregnancy and carried it out on
pregnant and childbearing women.Experiments of artificial
insemination and also weirdly aimed at.
Cancer Research, OK, sure. That's just what you threw in
(41:11):
there. You'll be terrified to know that
a lot of Nazi medical experiments have been used in
modern medicine research. What I mean is that these highly
analytical experiments were done, and years later, some
scientists have tried to justifyusing information from these
experiments to help develop medical advancements.
It's quite a touchy subject. And really.
So a lot of lies were tortured and died for this information
(41:34):
needlessly. And the debate of whether to use
this information now is a question of ethics.
Ethics. Thank you.
I was like, I was reading ABBC article by Frank Swain who spoke
to some of the doctors and scientists to see their
opinions. So this is like today's time.
The basic intuition is that if information had been attained
(41:55):
unethically, but we use that information, then we become
complicit in that that past just.
What I was talking about earlier.
This is a common view actually, amongst those who, you know,
discuss the use of these kind offindings.
Writing in the bioethics journalThe Hastings Center Report in
1984, Christine Moe recounts a conversation with John Hayward,
(42:18):
a leading expert in hypothermia at the University of Victoria,
BC, who used Nazi data in his studies.
Quote, I don't want to have to use this data, but there's no
other and will be no other in the ethical world.
I rationalized it a little bit, but not to use it would be
equally bad. It is a very it's like if, well,
if we learned that we can do blah, blah, blah to save people
(42:41):
from this, do we or do we not? You know it is a hard thing.
She would point out, I think it's very important to say that
these findings very rarely provide key important
information on in isolation. For the most part, scientific
scientific information is like apiece in a jugsaw.
It fits into an overall puzzle. But she would ultimately say
(43:03):
what I think is quite the truth.If we do use this research, it
expresses the attitude that thisresearch was OK and encourage
future researchers that history will not will judge me
positively if I use this research.
And we do not want to do that. We don't want to promote
unethical research. So like if I use this unethical,
(43:24):
that someone's going to come down the line and say, well, for
science, I need to go ahead and do this.
It might not be ethical, but I'mgoing to do it and someone's
going to use this information someday.
Right. It's just a wormhole, we don't
need to go down. To make things even more
disturbing, there's Operation Paper Clip.
Have you heard of that? I have, but you know it's a very
(43:46):
late memory. You're going to anyway.
It's. It's definitely one of those
unless you're into weird shit like we are, you might not know
about it. So it brought over 1600 Nazi
scientists, researchers and medical professionals to be used
in our military to aid our fightin the Cold War.
(44:06):
So like, that's a whole different wormhole.
Like there are NASA scientists that were Nazis in the 50s.
Well, yeah, because like when wedid the a bomb, we brought a
bunch of them over and saved them to come over and help us to
make the bomb. I didn't find a whole lot of
information to directly tie hosts to all the medical stuff
(44:27):
except in his affidavit written in Nuremberg quote.
We received from time to time special prisoners from the
local, the Gestapo office. The s s doctors killed such
prisoners by injections of benzene.
Doctors had orders to write ordinary death certificates and
could put down any reason at allfor the cause of death.
From time to time we conducted medical experiments on women
(44:47):
inmates, including sterilizationand experiments relating to
cancer. Most of the people who died
under these experiments have been already been condemned to
death by the Gestapo. So, I mean, they were going to
die anyway. So while he was super focused on
the efficiency and gassing wholeswaths of people and then
burning their corpses, he was still highly aware of all the
(45:08):
other atrocities that were happening in addition to his
own. They'd already been murdering
people, but now came the time for the more to be more
strategic in the process and really finesse those plans.
You know what I mean? How are you going to make it to
Carnegie? All practice.
You always need to be more efficient.
They relocated those gas things from Block 11 to the crematorium
(45:29):
outside the camp, which made it less visible, so it made it
subject to less unwelcome witnesses.
So nobody's going to just like, hap a stance into there.
It already had ventilation so all they had to do was make sure
they could seal the doors effectively and then they
punched a hole in the roof for the gas canister to be dropped
in. Oh, great.
Good job guys. This became the prototype for
(45:51):
the Nazi gas chamber systems. Further, it could hold up to 700
people at a time. Excellent.
They had another test in September, more PO WS who were
told to get completely nude for de laosing.
Once inside the chamber with thedoor shut, they dropped the
canister and Rudy would recall quote.
After the insertion, some screamed gas, followed by mighty
(46:12):
howling and pushing toward the two doors, but the doors held
of. Course they did.
After the death it would take days for the bodies to be
burned, but Rudy was relieved tohave come up with a solution
that was less intense. In the murdering squads quote, I
was shuddered at the prospect ofcarrying out exterminations by
shooting when I thought of the vast numbers concerned and of
(46:32):
the women and children. The shooting of hostages in the
group executions ordered by the Reich Federal S S or by the
Reich Security Head office had been enough for me.
I was therefore relieved that tothink that we could be spared
all these bloodbaths and the victims too would be spared
their suffering. Their last moment came.
Listen, all that howling, the scratching people literally
(46:56):
tearing pieces. I can't tear my clothes.
Like, can you tear your shirt inhalf?
I can't. I'm not Hulk Hogan.
The fact that these people in that fury tore pieces of their
clothing off the stuff in their face.
I'm guessing their clothing was pretty ragged.
But that's true. That's true, you know.
I don't think they had a nice shirt on like you do.
His concern for the soldiers wasalso noted quote.
(47:17):
Many gruesome scenes are said tobe had taken place, people
running away after being shot, the finishing off of the wounded
and particularly of the women and children.
Many member of the Einsatzkamandos, unable to
endure wading through the blood any longer, had committed
suicide. Some had even gone mad.
Most of these members of Commandos had to rely on alcohol
when carrying out their horriblework.
(47:38):
According to Wholefest description, the men employed at
Globenix extermination centers consumed amazing quantities of
alcohol. I'm sure.
After being murdered, the Sonderkommando's would come in
and begin stripping the victims of hair and gold in their teeth
and any artificial limbs or anything else that wasn't
removed from the bodies prior todeath.
(48:00):
I don't know if I said what a Sonderkomando.
Is all I can picture when you talk about.
I did not. Removing the gold teeth is when
that guy gets in a cage with theDino to pull his tooth out and
then the Dino eats him. Exactly.
Exactly. Except sadly, the Jews did not
come back life and kill him. That would be beautiful. 10 out
of 10 teach us Nazis a thing or two.
(48:20):
Asander Commando is actually also a prisoner, but they were
prisoner workers that really mostly handled the gas chambers.
They were not in there very long, like they weren't us on to
come on to it. They were killed regularly and
at a regular interval, so nobodyknew who was going to die and
everything, but they handled allthe disposal of the bodies.
(48:41):
It wasn't the Nazis. Of course it wasn't.
Yeah, it was these little fellas.
Quote The bodies had to be had to be taken from the gas
chambers. After the gold teeth had been
extracted and the hair cut off. They had to be dragged to the
pits or to the crematoria. Then the fires in the pits had
to be stoked, the surplus surplus fat drained off, and the
(49:02):
mountain of burning corpses constantly turned over so the
drought might fan the flames. The hair was a commodity.
Actually, I don't know if you know that.
I did not. I did not.
This was a new thing for me. They would dry it above the
crematoriums. So like they would cut it off
the bodies, put it above the crematories and sell it in large
batches. Because it was used to make
(49:23):
socks for submarine crews. It was also used to made to make
felt stockings for railroad workers.
It even made they use the hair to make ignition mechanism for
bombs, ropes, cords for ships, stuffing and mattresses.
That's lovely. The gold was sent to the s s
Health service and used by dentists to treat the s s and
(49:44):
their families. 50 kilograms have been collected by 8 May.
By October 8th, 1942 and by early 194410 to 12 kilograms of
gold was being extracted monthlyfrom victim's teeth.
That's nice because these numbers aren't a perfect lens
for truth at times. Here's something that will sober
you. A gold tooth is usually an
(50:05):
average of 3 grams. 11 kilogramsof gold is equal to 11,000
grams, meaning over 3600 teeth were pulled from victims.
That's nice. In that one month after that,
they would cremate the bodies and throw the ashes out or use
them for fertilizer. They even had large bone
grinding machines to help pulverize the leftover bones as
(50:28):
well because cremating does not break down the bones.
Remember, the Sonderkommando were also prisoners, so it was
only a matter of time for someone they knew would be in
that pile of bodies, as in a instance recalled by Rudy quote.
Once when the bodies were being carried from a gas chamber to a
fire pit, a man from the specialdetachment which was
(50:49):
Sonderkommando's suddenly stopped and stood for a moment
as though rooted to the spot. Then he continued to drag a body
out of body with his comrades. Asked the couple what was up, he
explained that the courts was that of the Jew's wife.
I watched him for a while, but noticed nothing particular of
his behavior. He continued to drag corpses
along, just as he had done before.
(51:10):
When I visited the detachment a little later, he was sitting
with the others, eating as though nothing had happened.
Was he really able to hide his emotions so completely, or had
he become too brutalized to evencare about this?
And that's where we're going to lay off today.
Well, thank God. Well, nothing up for you because
you're going to be hearing this quick succession.
(51:30):
Yeah, you're probably only goingto get two of these.
I don't know that I can do three.
You're really bumming me out dude.
Well, at least the third one is like mostly about his death and
his downfall today, like the ending 1.
So yeah, there's that. We'll see.
So we're going to talk about next time, we're going to talk
about Rudy's naughty little secret, his big promotion into
(51:54):
the Nazi big leagues. But definitely in the meantime,
don't forget to find us on our socials.
Jimmy is the one who's been handling our socials.
You guys, he's been posting likecrazy.
We've been working on like all these different kinds of things
emerge and stuff. It's been a lot of fun.
TikTok has been huge. And if you found us on there,
(52:15):
thank you for following us. Don't forget to let us know your
own to close to home Stories. If something weird happened to
you, let me know about it. We're here for it.
I love alien abductions, but youknow what I love even more?
Bigfoot abductions. Were you Bigfoot's baby?
Same. I want to hear tell me all about
it. And don't forget to rate and
subscribe on all the platforms you listen to Apple, Spotify,
(52:37):
Amazon, the more visibility, themore we see it to spread us.
So that's right, until next time.
Stay safe. Keep your head on the swivel.
And don't bring it so close to home that you use gold from the
teeth of a dead Nazi. Yeah, thanks.
Bye. If you enjoyed this episode of
(52:59):
Too close to Home, don't forget to rate and subscribe to us on
most platforms. Follow us on our social media at
Too close Home Pod, on Facebook,at Too close Podcast on
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