LABOUR AS A METHOD OF EXTERMINATION

The meaning of labour assignment was total extermination. Apart from very few already existing buildings, Auschwitz concentration camp and a good part of the surrounding industry plants were erected by the prisoners themselves.

There were diverse forms of work for the inmates:

• Work within the camp: for example as "Lagerschreiber" (camp writer) or prisoners physician, handcraft works and work in "Canada" camp (depot for objects that the newly arriving people were deprived of)

   

• Commandos out of the camp grounds: The hardest work was construction works, street and trail track work, river regulations, work in the quary, in penal companies etc.

   

• Assignment in private, public or SS-owned industries (like IG-Farben): Firms could "rent" singular prisoners and dispose of their working power freely. As return, they had to pay to the SS between 3 and 6 Reichsmark per day. As a result of the inmates' labour assignment, in many industrial and armament plants developed a broad network of subcamps.

Generally, the education or profession of a prisoner did not influence the allocation in one or another labour assignment.

It was an aim of the SS to "break" the prisoners by imposing a lethal tempo, thus preparing an excruciating and most painful death.