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Frank Lowe Jr examines one of the Olère sketches of Auschwitz, Thursday, October 14, 2004 
David Olère's drawings of Auschwitz VERY interesting detail in the SS doctor's companion in the photo, the "German SS" man. Notice in the "drawing" that the guard has the SS "runes" (twin lightning bolts on the collar) which indicates that he is in fact a German SS man. Only German SS men were allowed to wear these on the collar and it is the identifying insignia for such. According to all contemporary sources, including Austrian/American Jewish history professor George Stein of the State University of New York, the majority of SS guards in the camps of Poland were Latvian and Ukrainian. Most of the German SS men were transferred out of the concentration camp system in 1940 when the Totenkopfverbande (Order of the Death Head) became the Third Waffen (armed) SS Division "Totenkopf" under Theodor Eicke. The only way a German could serve in the concentration camp system was to be so crippled in combat as to be unfit for combat, i.e. such as Dr. Josef Mengele who was given the choice of going to Auschwitz or back to the Eastern Front. By the end of the war, 70% of all SS men were foreign mercenaries. Hitler's "elite bodyguard" in 1945 was French, Latvian, and Estonian (See Geoge Stein's History of the Waffen SS: Hitler's Military Elite at War, Stein and Day, 1966) As for the syringe, the German doctors at Auschwitz in the summer of 1942 usually injected the hopeless typhus/typhoid victims with phenol to administer death before there were any "gas chambers" contemplated. Judging from the "painting", the victim of the selection was a "muselman" or "Moslem" (extremely emaciated) or what the German doctors classified the typhoid/typhus victims. This is the same term that Dr. Kremer used to describe the first victims in September 1942. I hope this helps the readers understand exactly what they are seeing in this piece of art.
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