Horror Stories from the Gas Chambers of Auschwitz

THE microphones of the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centres (CSDIC) picked up few references to Auschwitz, the slave labour camp attached to I.G. Farben’s new synthetic rubber plant at Monowitz. Regrettably, the top Auschwitz officers held by the British like the commandant, Rudolf Höss, or his erstwhile deputy Hans Aumeier*, were not subjected to C.S.D.I.C.’s sophisticated interrogation techniques, but to the cruder, leather-boot methods of Lieutenant-Colonel A.P.

Scotland, whose “interrogators” stood over them with their fists as they wrote and rewrote their confessions until the wording was just right.Occasionally a prisoner did arrive at C.S.D.I.C. who had probably been at Auschwitz, like Obergefreiter Till of the St/Nachr.Abt.708, captured at Trun

on Aug 19, 1944. Perhaps Till’s story — related in good English to British officers

on Sep 24, 1944 – – was true; or perhaps he had imbibed too much foreign propaganda.More likely his narrative was a mixture of fact and perverse fantasy. Prisoner-of-war Till claimed to have been on guard duty at the Auschwitz railroad station in Jul 1943, as arrivals from Greece were unloaded.”

PW thinks,” comments the report, “the woman [concerned] was a Greek Jewess.”* For Aumeier’s confessions See PRO: WO.208/4661 Occasionally a prisoner did arrive at C.S.D.I.C. who had probably been at Auschwitz, like Obergefreiter Till of the St/Nachr.Abt.708, captured at Trun

on Aug 19, 1944. Perhaps Till’s story — related in good English to British officers

on Sep 24, 1944 – – was true; or perhaps he had imbibed too much foreign propaganda.More likely his narrative was a mixture of fact and perverse fantasy. Prisoner-of-war Till claimed to have been on guard duty at the Auschwitz railroad station in Jul 1943, as arrivals from Greece were unloaded.” PW thinks,” comments the report, “the woman [concerned] was a Greek Jewess.”* For Aumeier’s confessions See PRO: WO.208/4661 More likely his narrative was a mixture of fact and perverse fantasy.

Prisoner-of-war Till claimed to have been on guard duty at the Auschwitz railroad station in Jul 1943, as arrivals from Greece were unloaded.” PW thinks,” comments the report, “the woman [concerned] was a Greek Jewess.”* For Aumeier’s confessions See PRO: WO.208/4661 ” PW thinks,” comments the report, “the woman [concerned] was a Greek Jewess.”