POLAND IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR 343untrustworthiness of my colleagues... My family, for sure, were well provided for at
Auschwitz. Every wish that my wife or children expressed was granted them. The chil-
dren could live a free and untrammelled life. My wife's garden was a paradise of flowers
... The children were perpetually asking me for cigarettes for the prisoners. They were
particularly fond of those who worked in the garden. My whole family displayed an
intense love of agriculture and particularly of animals of all sorts. Every Sunday I had to
walk them across the fields, and visit the stables, and we might never miss out the ken-
nels where the dogs were kept. Our two horses and the foal were especially beloved. The
children always kept animals in the garden, creatures which the prisoners were forever
bringing them - tortoises, martens, cats, lizards. There was always something new and
interesting to be seen there. In the summer they splashed in the paddling pool, or in the
River Sola. But their greatest joy was when Daddy bathed with them. He had, however,
so little time for such childish pleasures..^27
These paragraphs were composed in a Polish cell in Cracow in 1947, a few days
before their author, after due process of law, was himself executed on the site of
his former duties.
The cold economic considerations are equally hard to comprehend.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was designed by supposedly respectable architects and
consultants, and the camp worked for the greatest firms in Germany. Its opera-
tions were subject to precise calculations of cost-accounting and quality control.
Hoess's office was adorned by a huge mural diagram which detailed the end-
products to be expected from any given input. Apart from the synthetic petrol
produced in the camp's chemical factory, there was gold for the Reichsbank,
and tons of bone fertilizer, soap, hair carpet, optical lenses from spectacles, and
scrap wood and metal from crutches and artificial limbs. The WVHA had care-
fully estimated its profits in advance:
The hiring of concentration camp inmates to industrial enterprises yields an average
daily return of 6 to 8 RM, from which 70 pf. must be deducted for food and clothing.
Assuming an inmate's life expectancy to be 9 months, we must multiply this sum by Z70.
The total, is 1,431 RM. This profit can be increased by rational utilization of the corpse,
i.e. by means of gold fillings, clothing, valuables etc., but on the other hand every corpse
represents a loss of 2 RM, which is the cost of cremation.^28Inexplicably, production did not match expectations. By the end of 1942., even the
SS began to realize that the extermination of one's labour force does not make
good economic sense. One of their enterprises, the Ostindustrie GmbH was forced
into liquidation when all of its employees were found to be dead. The Gestapo was
ordered to poach workers from civilian industry on trumped-up charges in order
to keep its own manpower reserves up to strength. In December 1942, Oswald
Pohl, the head of WVHA, ordered that all 'maltreatment' of concentration camp
inmates should end, as it was damaging efficiency; and in April 1943, he conceded
that lack of fuel would eventually cause the Final Solution to be suspended
indefinitely. These orders brought no relief. They condemned the remaining
inmates to a slow death instead of a swift one, and burdened the SS with a 'work-
force' of living skeletons who were not actually dead but could not work.