The Public Relations Center of the Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia has just published new declassified documents from their archive on the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army.
Monday marks 80 years since the Red Army liberated the surviving prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The new documents, published on the FSB website, reveal numerous new facts regarding the mass extermination of prisoners at the Auschwitz death camp.
The UN designated the day of the liberation of Auschwitz as International Holocaust Memorial Day in 2007.
Auschwitz was first created as a concentration camp for political prisoners in 1939, under the orders of Heinrich Himmler, Chief of the SS. The Auschwitz complex was made up of Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and Auschwitz III-Monowitz. The gates of Auschwitz I read ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ - ‘Works sets you free.’
The Germans used gas chambers to mass exterminate the Jews and other prisoners at Auschwitz. The bodies were subsequently burned in crematoria built specifically for this purpose. The Nazis estimated that they would be able to kill approximately 1.6 million per year using the gas chambers.
Around 1.1 million were killed at Auschwitz, of which almost one million were Jews. Of those killed at Auschwitz, around 90% of them were exterminated at Birkenau.
In addition to their involvement in liberating Auschwitz, the Red Army conducted their own investigations into the crimes committed at Auschwitz.
For instance, the SMERSH counterintelligence departments began looking for Nazi executioners, including leadership and guards.
They were able to collect an extensive evidence base which confirmed the crimes committed by the Nazis.
This also included investigating the roles of kapos, prisoners of the camps who collaborated with the Nazis in leadership roles.
One such kapo was Józef Pietzka, a Polish soldier who was taken prisoner by the Germans in 1939. After being released from the prisoner-of-war camp, he obtained German citizenship.
The declassified documents published today reveal new information regarding Pietzka and his role at Auschwitz.
Pietzka's history
In 1940, Pietzka was imprisoned in the concentration camp for three years, in an attempt to avoid service in the Wehrmacht (the German Armed Forces).
At his interrogation on July 12, 1945, Pietzka stated in his testimony, “I did have the opportunity to escape from the camp, but I did not do so because I did not find it necessary for myself to escape, because, being in the service of the Unterkapo and Kapo, I did not experience the difficulties of camp life. On the contrary, I lived well there, I was the chief and absolute master over the life of the prisoners."
On May 17, 1946, at a second interrogation in Moscow, Pietzka said, “As an overseer, I accompanied and was present daily at all the work carried out by my prisoners and, armed with a stick, systematically beat them because they worked slowly and reluctantly. Every night, my group alone brought from 100 to 500 corpses of murdered people to the crematoria.”
Pietzka developed schizophrenia during the investigation and was consequently sent for treatment at a psychiatric hospital. In 1955, he was handed over to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
The documents published by the FSB include testimonies of Pietzka at his interrogation, a photo of him, a certificate commemorating a badge he earned in the Polish army, as well as a certificate of his release from Auschwitz.