What's There to Hide? Camouflage and Secrecy of Nazi Extermination Sites

Contemporary German documents referring to the fate of Jews considered unfit for forced labour often do so in a conspicuously vague way. Instead of spelling out actual destinations or camps, general phrases like "eastwards" and "Russian East" were employed.

Elsewhere I've pointed out how the killing of Poles and mentally ill people in 1940 in East-Prussia was disguised by the Nazis. For "camouflaging" the "liquidation" of members of the Polish intelligentsia in the camp of Soldau, "the Poles in question had to sign a declaration of the content that they agreed with their deportation to the Generalgouvernement". The "mentally ill prisoners...liquidated by a special commando" were "evacuated" and "placed somewhere else" in SS correspondence.

The concept to camouflage murder with none or vague destinations was later also implemented for disguising the extermination of the Jews. The deception could work as it had a true core. The Jews had to gather in the towns and villages and were brought away. For the population and authorities parts of the operation could have appeared more or less like a real resettlement. Except that they never heard anything of those "resettled" again, as the "resettlers" were executed, buried and incinerated at the next extermination site.

A new document mentioning "special cellars" (Sonderkeller) in the crematoria 2 and 3 at Birkenau.

Dr. Pavel Polian has kindly provided us with several documents from a collection residing in the Military-Medical Museum (Voyenno-Meditsinskiy Muzej) in Saint-Petersburg, Russia.

One of the documents is important for confirming the chronology of the decision to install gas chambers in the cellars of the Birkenau crematoria II and III.

We will provide a short historical introduction as well as an analysis of the Holocaust deniers' take on the issue

1. Introduction to the "special cellar" issue.

We know that the first two Birkenau crematoria (II and III) were initially planned as "normal" hygienic installations. Their morgues were began to be intended as gas chambers some time in 1942* and as undressing rooms some time in 1943.

"Separate accommodation" in Auschwitz: a code word for extrajudicial executions

The Nazis usually used the term "special treatment" (Sonderbehandlung) to designate the legal extrajudicial killings. They were  seen as "legal" because they were sanctioned by Hitler's authority (the will of the Führer being seen as the highest law), despite their extrajudicial nature. The mass murder of Jews was the biggest instance of such "special treatment".

In Auschwitz an additional term was used for such extrajudicial killings: "separate accommodation"/"special accommodation"/"special lodging" (gesonderte Unterbringung, Sonderunterbringung). The people thus killed were designated as "separately accommodated" (gesondert untergebracht). This term seems to have been fully interchangeable with "Sonderbehandlung".

Holocaust deniers of course say that it's just an assumption. When Auschwitz Political Department functionaries like Maximillian Grabner, Hans Stark and Pery Broad testify that "separate accommodation" meant killing, their testimonies are dismissed as coerced, the usual evidence-free denier m.o. According to the deniers "separate accommodation" was some sort of a literal accommodation somewhere in the camp.

However there is a series of documents that proves beyond any reasonable doubt that to have been "separately accommodated" in Auschwitz meant to have been killed. In this posting we will establish the meaning of "separate accommodation" in Auschwitz on a purely documentary basis.

Auschwitz-Birkenau Selection List of 21 August 1943

If you've never heard a phrase like "give the name of just one gassing victim" - you are lucky enough that you did not come across Revisionist extremists such as Gred Gerdes yet. Their obsession that only evidence for individual gassings victims known by name establishes the reality of homicidal gassings aims to exploit the anonymous nature of the mass murder. 

Most victims were treated as an anonymous mass, and only the total number of people killed was recorded, but not the individual names anymore. In some cases, however, name lists of Jews sentenced to the gas chamber were actually produced in Auschwitz.