War-time German document mentioning Auschwitz gassings: testimony of Eleonore Hodys

Eleonore Hodys was a non-Jewish Auschwitz inmate. She became commandant Hoess' lover, and when he found out that she was pregnant, apparently he ordered to have her locked into a bunker cell so she could die of starvation.

Hodys was somewhat lucky in that SS Judge Konrad Morgen and his colleague Gerhard Wiebeck were investigating corruption in Auschwitz at about the same time. In autumn of 1944 they found and interrogated Hodys. She testified against Hoess.

Her very long and extremely detailed official statement survived the war, although the current location of the original German text is unknown (Institut für Zeitgeschichte only has a reverse translation into German by Wiebeck). The English translation was published in 1945 book Dachau and in 2003 in Dachau liberated. Apparently the document was handed over to the Americans by Wiebeck, who had prepared the statement (see Hilberg's Destruction..., 1985, p. 579n25; he relies on Wiebeck's testimony, NO-2330). Why it was published in the book about Dachau I have no clue. Perhaps just as a general illustration of Nazism. And the editors of the 2003 tome had no clue about who E.H. was and simply reprinted the statement, thinking it was a testimony of a Dachau prisoner about her time in Auschwitz.