Kaitlynn O'Reilly: Block 11, "Death Block"

The gate to Auschwitz 1

I am a member of a generation reared in a language of tolerance.  We accept or tolerate a wide range of beliefs, and mannerisms as long as they do not harm others.  We have widespread anti-bullying campaigns, and diversity programs in school.  When we do not understand the other, most people tolerate them and leave them alone to their ways.  However what happens when this cannot be understood or tolerated?

  

Barracks of Auschwitz 1

"I cannot comprehend the otherness of the other person, it eludes my power, but I can kill" (Manfred Deselaers, "God and Evil: An Anthropological-Philosophical Reflection").  And so 12 million people were murdered by the Nazis because these people were the other.  The Nazis with theis pseudo-science could not comprehend the idea of people being equal, or the idea of tolerance.  Instead they created a hierarchy with their race at the top and all others below.  Those below were murdered.

While resisting in the Warsaw ghetto a Jew said, "There is always time to die" (Alexander Donat, The Holocaust Kingdom 135).  In the beginning, while still outside the camps this was true.  However, the ability to die of one's own choosing was the last power of the Jews in Warsaw, hence Lena's terror at losing their cyanide.  Can you imagine that the only power left to you is suicide? 

In the camps, even the death camps, the ability to die of one's choosing, by suicide, was taken away.  If a prisoner committed suicide, collective punishment would follow.

"Torture is the attempt to rule over the transcendence of the other.  And this attempt is even awarded with success- as long as the other clings to BEING and is afraid of dying" (Deselaers).  The prisoners were stripped of their choice to die, of all of their dignity.  "It was life that was terrible, the long, agonizing process of parting from it after it had been shorn of dignity" (Donat 176).  Those prisoners who still had families were afraid to die, collective punishment terrified them.  Uncertainty tortured every prisoner.  Starvation tortured every prisoner.  In Block 11, Auschwtiz 1, also known as the "Death Block" the prisoners suffered and had no certainty that when their ordeal was finished they would not be killed.

Layout 

Downstairs Corridor of Block 11 where Cell 11 and others are located

In these cells with set in barred windows and wooden doors with only a peephole, terrors were inflicted.

A cell door

In cell 11, Cyclone B was first tested for efficiency in the gas chambers.

Used Canisters of Cyclone B

In the starvation cell prisoners were kept for two weeks to starve, and if they survived they would be shot or given phenol injection.  In the standing cell, four prisoners would be kept in small brick enclosures which they had to crawl into through a small door.  Their only air access was through an opening the size of a brick in each enclosure.  There was no light.  These prisoners had to stand for several of more than 12 days.  Many died of suffocation or exhaustion, the survivors had no certainty they would return to work or be killed.  

It is no surprise that prisoners, stripped of all dignity and the choice to die, seized an opportunity when the electricity was turned on for the barbed wire.  They ran into the wires to kill themselves: taking back their last power.  Unknown to these prisoners, the others were then collectively punished.

Would you have ran into the wires?

Electrified Barbed Wire