Jean Lentbergor, a Struthof prisoner at the end of August 1943, and one of 3 Jews still alive there when 87 people arrived from Auschwitz. saw only the group of men.

They came to the camp in several convoys and were housed in hut number 10. Lemberger noticed them for the first time in front of the “Wachtstube” (guard station) at the camp’s entrance.

Dressed in patched “zebra” clothing with a yellow star, and being of very pale complexion, they contrasted with the camp’s prisoners, who wore civilian clothing, haphazardly painted yellow in the case of Jews. They received exactly the same food as the other internees.

Realizing that they did not work, Lemberger wanted to have himself added to their group. His kapo dissuaded him by giving him to understand that his request was sheer foly. Then, bit by bit, the “zebra” group melted away. Until one morning there were none left.

Later on, it was Lemberger’s turn to undertake the opposite journey from Struthof to Auschwitz. Based on a telephone conversation on 14 March 1985 between the witness and the author.

Pierre Henripierre, a civilian employee at the Institute of Anatomy, has testified that the bodies were brought there by truck in three lots: 30 women the first time, then 30 men, and finally another 26 men. The 86 corpses were spread among six vats full of synthetic alcohol at 55 degrees Centigrade and not formol [formaldehyde] as is often believed.

One skeleton was missing at the roll-call. An “incident” had occurred when one of the groups was being pushed into the gas chamber. Someone resisted and was slaughtered by an SS-man’s pistol fire. The “spoiled” body was not sent to Strasbourg.

After its “homicidal” use, the gas chamber recovered a measure of scientific “respectability”. In the fall of 1943, ten experiments to test for protection against phosgene by hexamethylene tetramine (urotropine) administered both orally and parenterally, were conducted by Professor Bickenbach under conditions that did not cause any deaths.

A gas sampling tube had been installed in the door, for the purpose of measuring the concentration of phosgene in the gas chamber. On the 15 June 1944, four more experiments were undertaken by Professor Hirt. They caused four deaths by acute oedema of the lungs, not because, as some historians have thought, the phosgene concentration was much higher, but because they were under Hirt’s brutal “direction”. Bickenbach gave his subjects phials containing up to 8 grams of phosgene, with inhalation for 20 minutes in a 20m³ room, with no mishaps except for slight oedemas. Hirt caused one death with the administration of a 2.7 g phial over a 25 minute inhalation period, and was responsible for 3 more deaths with a 10.14 g phial administered for 30 minutes.

Let us try now to understand the discrepancy between Joseph Kramer’s two depositions. At the Belsen trial he again furnished two often contradictory versions. Do we then conclude that he was lying each time? It is not hard to see where the truth lies, by comparing the following two extracts on the subject of Auschwitz, where Kramer was commandant of sector B.II of Birkenau from mid-May to the 29 November 1944. In a first deposition he states:

“I have heard allegations by ex-prisoners from Auschwitz regarding a gas chamber, mass executions and floggings, regarding the cruelty of the guards, and that all of this supposedly took place in my presence or that I had knowledge of it. All I can say on the subject is that these are falsehoods from start to finish.” Later on he comes back on his words and confesses to the following in a second deposition:
The first time I ever saw a gas chamber as such was Auschwitz. The whole building (Krematorium III), containing a crematorium and a gas chamber, was located at (the end of) camp number 2 (Bauabschnitt II at Birkenau), of which I was the commandant. I visited the building on my first inspection of the camp, when I had been there for three days, but it was not in operation for the first eight days.”

The explanation of this double talk is quite simple. At the beginning of his imprisonment, Kramer still considered himself under oath with respect to his superiors, such as SS-Obürgruppenführer Oswald Pohl, and constrained not to reveal anything of what he knew. This also explains why, at the Struthof trial, he initially admitted to Major Jadin to a false gassing procedure. He did this quite deliberately, thinking perhaps that the gassing technique and the substance involved were really “secrets” of the Third Reich's medical “science”. But then, given the behaviour, sometimes to the extent of suicide, of his previous superiors in the docks of Allied tribunals, Kramer, considering himself released from his SS oath, “laid his cards on the table” and started giving reasonably straightforward answers. Such are the origins of the “second” versions.

It is rather astonishing that French Military Justice paid little or no attention to the second deposition of the 6 December 1945, although it must be praised for having at least recorded this statement. In the collection of photographs put together by Major Jadin, only the first deposition is mentioned. Even though it contains a flagrant physical impossibility, the first one has been consistently reproduced and disseminated mainly because Kramer ends it, referring to the gassing operations he carried out, as follows:

“I FELT NO EMOTION WHILE ACCOMPLISHING THESE TASKS, BECAUSE I HAD RECEIVED AN ORDER TO EXECUTE THE 80 INTERNEES IN THE MANNER THAT I HAVE DESCRIBED TO YOU. THAT IS SIMPLY HOW I WAS BROUGHT UP”.
In the context of the years 1945-1950, one can understand the deliberate selection of such a reply by a concentration camp commandant. But when 40 years later, historians, who should remain dispassionate, and who have an obligation to remove all ambiguity regarding the workings of the Struthof gas chamber, continue to reproduce Kramer’s first deposition, without any explanation, then one has every right to question their abilities and the historical value of their writings – especially if they still mention the tourist prattle of crematorium guides about a “vivisection” table and shower water for SS-men heated by the oven.

The French Military Justice possessed irrefutable evidence of the existence and use of a gas chamber at Struthof, without even taking Joseph Kramer’s statements into consideration, and relying solely on German documents that had been seized. A daily report of building progress, signed on 3 August 1943 by the Chief of the K.L. Natzweiler Works Directorate, mentions the word “Gasraum” three times and the word "Gaskammer" (gas chamber) once. The weekly reports of the 14 and 21 August 1943 about the camp's overall complement are particularly eloquent by their silence on the cause of death of the 87 Jews. Moreover, SS-man Volkmar's note-book, which associates Professor Hirt with the “Gas Blausaure” (gas from hydrocyanic acid), shows that the camp’s entire staff was aware of the gassings.

In addition, to the above, Josef Kramer, in a letter of 12 April 1943 to the Ahnenerbe states that a 20m³ G-cell (“G-Zelle”) is ready: “dass die G-Zelle hier fertiggestellt ist und einen Rauminhalt von 20m³ hat) (Beger trial, special, volume I, page 112). There can be no doubt about the meaning ascribed by Kramer after the war to “G-cell”. He really did mean a gas cell, since the one in Struthof has a volume of exactly 20m³. Finally Professor Hirt's letter of the 14 July 1943 to the Ahnenerbe is unequivocal: .The material for the gassings (das Material zur Vergasung) …” All in all, an unequivocal and devastating collection of documents.

Letter from Professor Hirt to the Ahnenerbe of the 14 July 1943. Reference. Your letter of the 9 July 1943, that is, copy of letter from, the SD of the 25 June, constitution of a collection. I have taken note of the contents of this letter. This is to inform you that, according to the camp commandant, there has been a difficulty in that the gassing equipment is not in place. Therefore I ask you to intervene with the appropriate administrative authorities to have the necessary equipment made available; otherwise the matter cannot be brought to a close…

At the liberation, the water pouring device was dismantled for the purpose of toxicological testing for traces of cyanide. This was an habitual procedure. The Polish Judiciary did the same thing, with a positive result, with metal components taken from the gas chambers at Birkenau. The result at Struthof was negative, which was somewhat embarrassing. With the benefit of hind-sight, and without criticizing a logical procedure, we know that the funnel never contained anything but water, and that the contact time with hydrocyanic acid was too brief to leave a mark in the form of cyanide traces. Moreover, the gas chamber was saturated with phosgene more often than witch HCN. Following analysis of the “pouring” apparatus, the pipe was lost, while the funnel and tap were saved by the Comité d'Histoire de la 2eme guerre mondiale (Second World War Historical Committee), which offered them to the Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation de Franche-Comté (Franche-Comté Museum of the Resistance and the Deportation) at La Citadelle de Besançon, where they are still to be found.

As the Allies approached, the SS doctors and professors started to panic. The collection of Jewish skeletons at Strasbourg! What a loss for “racial science” if it were to fall into enemy hands, or if it were to prove necessary to destroy it. But Professor Hirt, the “owner” of the collection, had forgotten to make it clear to Himmler’s Headquarters that the work required to constitue the collection HAD NEVER BEEN DONE. As of September 1944, the 86 corpses were still steeped in alcohol, COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN. Pierre Henripierre stated quite succinctly: “Once the bodies had been preserved and placed in vats, THEY REMAINED THERE FOR A YEAR WITHOUT BEING DISTURBED BY ANYONE.”

Despite the growing threat to Strasbourg, and the predictably disastrous consequences of discovery of the bodies by the enemy, correspondence among various levels of the SS wasted precious time before reaching the obvious decision that the bodies had to be destroyed. It was too late. Too much work was involved in eradicating all the traces. On the 15 November, the SS

authorities still did not know whether the “work” had been done. On the 21, it was thought to have been completed, and on the 23, Leclerc’s Second Division suddenly overran Strasbourg. Since Hirt had lied, since his superior, SS Colonel Sievers, General Secretary of the Ahnenerbe, had also lied, and since everyone insisted that they had carried out orders which in fact were not executed in the debacle, as a result 16 or 17 bodies were indeed found intact in the cellars of the Institute of Anatomy, with an Auschwitz identification number still visible on the left forearm in some cases (3). In other cases, the number was removed in order to prevent identification of the victim’s origins, as can be seen on the photographs of forearms.

They were all photographed by the legal identification branch. In an ordinary school of medicine, such bodies would just be part of the “décor”. In Strasbourg, the corpses left over from Professor Hirt’s racial studies had been the subject of too much bureaucracy and had been seen by too many witnesses not belonging to the SS. They were not “normal”. They pointed and they still point a finger at a totalitarian regime that laid its foundations on a bed of racial inequality.

One might well wonder why Hirt’s collection was never completed in practice. Was it a “whim” on his part, quickly forgotten after having cost 87 Jewish women and men their lives for nothing, or did he simply not dare, given the worsening military situation, to finish realizing his project? Hirt could have told us, but he preferred to disappear (4).

These 87 purposeless murders are a perfect example of what can come from the contempt of a group of men for other “different” ones, and of the danger of a society in which too much power is concentrated in the hands of too few. The expression “Die Macht ohne Moral”, or “Power without Morality” is a fitting close to this short study.
J-C P.

NOTES
(1) _The trial of anthropologist Dr. Bruno Beger was held in Frankfurt in 1970 and 1971 (case no. 4 KS 1/70). Beger was the man who selected Auschwitz prisoners, to be sent to the camp of Natzweiler-Struthof. However, the court was unable to establish whether Beger was co-responsible, with his friend Professor Hirt, for the project of a skeleton collection, as alleged by the prosecution (bill of indictment, pp 33-35).

Beger claimed to have made his choices by looking for mongoloid types and anthropologically interesting specimens, on the basis of normal scientific criteria, and without knowing that the prisoners he selected would be killed after their transfer to Struthof (depositions by and examinations of Beger on the 31 March 1960, 14 December 1961, 22 January 1961, 18 January 1963 and 9 April 1963). Of 1 15 prisoners selected, 109 were Jews. Beger was assisted in his mission by another anthropologist, Dr. Hans Fleischhacker, and by a specimen preparer, Willi Gabel, who made 26 head castings among the 115 chosen prisoners (depositions by Fleischhacker of the 18 January 1963 and 6 November 1963, by Gabel of the 25 July 1960 and 23 November 1962).

Berger’s mission to Auschwitz lasted from the 7 to the 15 June 1943. After having been selected, the prisoners were measured and photographed; then the 85 men were quarantined in blocks 21 and 28, and the 30 women in block 10, to await their transfer to Struthof, which took place on the 30 July 1943 (bill of indictment, pp 50-58; deposition by Ludwig Wörl of the 3 January 1963).

An exact list of all these prisoners was drawn up at Auschwitz and sent to Berlin, to the Ahnenerbe (Ancestral Heritage), the scientific organization responsible for this and similar initiatives, and to which Hirt and Beger belonged (depositions by Herman Reineck of the 15 January 1962, Ernst Toch of 19 January 1962 and Charlotte Heydel of 6 February 1961). The Ahnenerbe executive was led by SS-Standartenführer (Colonel) Wolfram Sievers, who was in constant contact about this matter with SS- _

_Obersturmbannführer Dr. Brandt, of the personal staff of SS-Reichsführer Himmler, who unceasingly gave his entire support to Professor Hirt's proposal, quoted in document NO-085 of the 9 February 7942 (Brandt to Sievers, 27 February 1942, NO-090; Himmler directive to the Ahnenerbe, 7 July 1942, NO-422; Brandt to Eichmann, 6 November 1942, NO-089). Sievers and Brandt were found guilty of this charge of murdering Jews, for the constitution of a skeleton collection at Strasbourg, by the Allied Military Tribunal in Nuremberg and were hanged. For his complicity in the murder, Beger was sentenced in 1971 to 3 years imprisonment by the Frankfurt Criminal Court.

(2) See, in particular, the Beger trial depositions of: _

_— Otto Bong, who was Professor Hirt’s specimen preparer. In his deposition of the 10 January 1963, Bong (born in 1901) gives detailed descriptions of the arrival of the bodies, of the treatment he subjected them to, of Prof essor Hirt’s prohibition, laced with threats, against talking about these corpses, and of the attempt to destroy all the corpses before the Allies entered Strasbourg.

— Liselotte Seepe, who was Professor Hirt’s secretary. In her deposition of the 10 January 1963, Seepe (born in 1907) admits to having deliberately destroyed all files relating to Professor Hirt’s secret affairs; in particular, she destroyed the files of the skeleton collection, which must have contained measurements, photographs, reports of organ examinations, and perhaps the 26 head casts taken at Auschwitz as well

— Professor Doctor Anton Kiesselbach, Professor Hirt’s assistant in Strasbourg, who saw the bodies and who admits that they were spoken of at the University of Strasbourg in hushed and sombre tones.

— Elisabeth Schmitt, medical laboratory assistant. In her deposition of the 10 April 1963, Schmitt (born in 1922) admits to having worked on the corpses of the collection.

— Robert Nitsch, deposition of the 23 August 1962.

— René Wagner, deposition of the 17 November 1946 made to French Military Justice._

It was possible to identify only the prisoner bearing Auschwitz no. 107969, who is shown here in photograph no. 52. The calendar of events occurring at Auschwitz, as reproduced in the“Zeszyty Oswiecimskie” (“Oswiecim Papers" no. 4, 1960, p 84), informs us that a convoy of Jews arrived at the camp from Berlin on the 13 March 1943. Of the 620 women and children in the convoy, 147 women were selected for labour, while the rest were gassed immediately. Of the 344 men, 218 were selected for labour and identified by the numbers 107772 to 107989. We subsequently found out from a letter contained in the Beger trial records, addressed by the international Camps Committee to the Court President on the 1 January 1971, that the deportee in question was called Menachem Taffel, that he was born on 28 July 1900, and that he lived in Berlin at 9 Elsasserstrasse.

(4) Professor Doctor August Hirt, born on 29 April 1898 ín Mannheim of Swiss parents. Medical doctor at the age of 24 after having studied at the University of Heidelberg. At the age of 40, he became Director of the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Frankfurt. Member of the SS from the 16 October 1933 (no. 100414), and of the Nazi Party from the 1 May 1937 (no. 4012784). Director of the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Strasbourg upon its re-opening in 1941. After having lost his wife and son in a September 1941 bombing, and having tried to exculpate himself, in a deposition of the 25 January 1945 made at Tübingen, from charges brought against him upon the liberation of Strasbourg and Struthof, Hirt chose to kill himself on the 2 June 1945 with a revolver bullet in the heart.

Doctor Bruno Beger, born on 27 April 1911 in Frankfurt, son of an officier. Post-secondary studies in anthropology at the universities of Jena, Heidelberg and Berlin. Dissertation in 1940 under the supervision of Professor Hans Gunther, a racist theoretician. Joined the SS in 1934 and the Nazi Party in 1937. Participated as an anthropologist in a 1938 German expedition, patronized by Himmler, to Tibet. SS-Hauptsturmführer at the time of his mission to Auschwitz.

Doctor Hans Fleischhacker, born on 10 March 1912 in Töttleben. Post-secondary studies at the universities of Jena and Munich. Appointed to the Institute of Racial Research in Tübingen in 1937, when he also joined the SS. Nazi Party member as of 1940, and appointed to the SS Central Bureau for Race and Settlements.
S.K

The following are now presented :

· The documents produced at Nuremberg on the genesis
and the history of the collection of skeletons.

· Testimony by a civilian witness about the adaptation of
the gas chamber, and testimony by the man who carried
out the gassing operation.

(In these depositions, the English “prisoner” is consistently used for the German “Häftling”.)

· The available photographic documentation

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