Gas Chamber at Monowitz?
At the Nuremberg International Military
Tribunal, the SS was indicted as a criminal organization. The
star witness for the defense, on the charges against the SS,
was Sturmbannführer Georg Konrad Morgen, a judge who was
authorized by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to investigate
the Nazi concentration camps for corruption and unauthorized
murder. Dr. Morgen found plenty of corruption at Auschwitz-Birkenau
where the SS men were engaged in stealing from the warehouses
where the possessions, that had been confiscated from the prisoners,
were stored. In the course of his investigation in which he spoke
to many of the prisoners, Dr. Morgen also claimed to have learned
about the gassing of the Jews, not at the main Auschwitz camp,
nor at Birkenau, but at Monowitz.
In his testimony at Nuremberg, Dr. Morgen
claimed that, although gas chambers existed at Monowitz, the
SS was not involved in this crime. Dr. Morgen testified that
the gas chambers at Monowitz were not under the jurisdiction
of the SS and that the order to build these gas chambers had
come directly from Adolf Hitler, who had given this order to
Christian
Wirth of the Kripo (Criminal Police), who was not a member
of the SS, according to Dr. Morgen. Wirth had previously been
in charge of the T-4 program in which severely disabled and retarded
people had been gassed. Wirth later became the first commandant
at the Belzec death camp, one of the three Aktion Reinhard camps
under the jurisdiction of Odilo Globocnik.
On August 8, 1946, Dr. Morgen testified,
as follows, at the Nuremberg IMT regarding the "extermination
camp" at Monowitz:
Then the trucks left. They did not
go to the Auschwitz concentration camp, but in another direction,
to the Monowitz extermination camp, which was some kilometers
distant. This extermination camp consisted of a series of crematoria
not recognizable as such from the outside. They could be mistaken
for large bath installations. Even the detainees knew it. These
crematoria were surrounded by barbed wire and were tended on
the inside by the Jewish working groups already mentioned.
(....)
The Monowitz extermination camp was
set apart from the concentration camp. It was situated in a vast
industrial zone and was not recognizable as such. Chimneys smoked
all across the horizon. The camp itself was guarded on the outside
by a detachment of Balts, Estonians, Lithuanians, and by Ukrainians.
The entire procedure was almost entirely in the hands of the
detainees themselves, who were supervised only from time to time
by a subordinate officer (Unterführer ). The execution itself
was carried out by another Unterführer who released the
gas into that place.
Dr. Morgen's testimony is included in
IMT vol. XX, p. 550 - 551.
This page was last updated on February
21, 2008
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