Hitler & the Third Reich: IX - The Camps Quiz

Answer: Moringen.

Moringen is near Northeim, Lower Saxony. The camp was a women's only concentration camp from 1933 until 1938. It held Jews, Communists, Jehovah Witnesses and other 'undesirables'. In 1940 it reopened as a concentration camp for young persons.

Other women's camps were to open in later years, including Lichtenburg, Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück.

Ravensbrück was opened in 1939. Horrific medical experiments were performed on some of the female inmates.

Answer: 3

The main site at Auschwitz had three large camps:-

Auschwitz I : The original camp (and administrative centre), eestablished in 1940.
Auschwitz II: Birkenau: This included (i) the extermination camp, (ii) the women's camp and (iii) various other sections. (Established in 1941-1942)
Auschwitz III: Monowitz: The industrial, private enterprise (labour) camp, built by the chemicals conglomerate IG-Farben. (The prisoners did, however, have to work under SS supervision). Established in 1942.

In addition, there were 45 satellite camps (sub camps). Many of these were located around Auschwitz, but some were in Moravia (in the Czech Republic).

Answer: Work makes you free.

The slogan has various translations.
"Work makes you free".
"Work liberates".
"Work will set you free".

This was of course a sick joke. SS General, Theodor Eicke, ordered the use of the sign.

The sign above the gates of Auschwitz was stolen on the 18 December 2009 but was recovered by police two days later.

"Jedem das Seine" was the slogan above the concentration camp at Buchenwald. It means literally: "to each his own" or, in other words: "everyone gets what he deserves".

Neither slogan was new. "Arbeit macht frei" had been used by the Weimar Republic for its public works programmes designed to alleviate unemployment. "Jedem das Seine" is much older is derived from the Latin "Suum cuique" (Cicero).

Answer: Mauthausen.

Mauthausen was a concentration camp located in Austria. It opened in 1938 and acquired a large network of sub-camps including Ebensee and Gusen.

Treblinka commenced routine mass killings on 23 July 1942.

Chelmno was established on 7 December, 1941. It closed down for a while and reopened briefly on 23 June, 1944.

Belzec started in 17 March 1942 and ceased operating in December 1942, having slaughtered 434,508 Jews and an unknown number of Roma/Sinti in about nine months. (This is one of the very few cases where the SS's own figure is known).

Answer: Ilse Koch.

Ilse Koch was known as: "The Witch of Buchenwald", "The Beast of Buchenwald" and "The Bitch of Buchenwald".

Ilse Koch arrived in Buchenwald in 1937. She was married to Karl Otto Koch.

It is widely believed that she made lamp shades out of the skins of murdered camp inmates. It has been suggested that certain inmates were selected because of their tattoos so she could have them removed and keep them for her collection.

She was pardoned after two years in jail, but was later re-tried. Found guilty once again she copped another life sentence. She killed herself in jail in 1967.

Answer: Irma Grese.

All of these women were associated with the concentration camps.

Ilse Koch was the wife of a commandant, but the others were SS Nazi guards.

Irma Grese was known as the 'Bitch of Belsen' and the 'Beautiful Beast'. She wore heavy boots and carried a whip that was used on prisoners constantly. By 1943 she was in charge of over 30,000 women prisoners and during her career rose to the rank Senior SS-Supervisor. She enjoyed torturing prisoners and unleashing her starving dogs on inmates.

At her war crimes trial (the Belsen Trial held in Lüneburg in September-November, 1945) she said, "Himmler is responsible for all that has happened, but I suppose I have as much guilt as the others above me." She was just over age 22 when hanged on 13 December 1945.

Dreschel was apparently very ugly and had buck teeth. She was described as a thin and vulgar woman with a passion for dishing out brutal beatings.

Juana Bormann originally started out as a kitchen hand but the prospect of obtaining better wages caused her to become a guard at the Lichtenburg camp. She later went to Auschwitz. She was known as "The Weasle". She was a cruel woman who would unleash her dogs on to inmates.

Answer: They were destroyed by the SS.

Extermination camps like the one at Treblinka are well known, but some of the the other camps have little information available, possibly because they had very few survivors.

As the Soviet army advanced west towards Germany the SS started to destroy the evidence of what had taken place at these camps. That evidence included the eyewitnesses!

Belzec and Chelmno had only two known survivors each. Maly Trostinets (near Minsk) had no known survivors and remains as one of the least known extermination camps.

Answer: Twins.

The 'Angel of Death', Josef Mengele, was exceptionally cruel. When the transport trains arrived at Auschwitz he would stand by with a whip in his hand and make a decision over the inmates' lives. A flick of his wrist to the left would mean a death sentence, a flick to the right would give that person a reprieve.

Twins held a fascination with Mengele. He conducted a number of experiments and studies on twins, and the end result was usually a horrific death. One night he killed 14 sets of twins and dissected them to compare their internal organs. He even went as far as having two twins sewn together as Siamese twins.
When twins were located at the transport trains they were selected to stay in a special building. Survivors tell how 'Uncle Mengele' would give them candy and clothing. The evil Mengele would even inject chemicals into the eyes of children to try and alter their eye colour. Mengele wasn't the only sadistic doctor that used the inmates for horrible experiments.

Werner Fischer conducted his medical experiments at the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. He experimented on Gypsies to see how they stood up against various contagious diseases. When he ran out of Gypsies he started on the Jews.

Carl Clauberg arrived at Auschwitz in 1942. His brutal experiments would involve injecting chemicals into the wombs of his victims. His experiments revolved around sterilisation and castration.

Dr. Kurt Gutzeit would conduct experiments on children using the hepatitis virus.

Answer: Rudolf Höss.

Rudolf Höss was the first commandant of Auschwitz in 1940. He joined the SS in 1934 and was deployed at the Dachau concentration camp. He left the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943 but returned a year later.

Hoess was caught in March 1946, gave evidence at Nuremberg and was then handed to the Poles for trial. After his conviction he was taken back to Auschwitz and hanged just inside Auschwitz I, facing the inscription 'Arbeit macht frei'. His memoirs, written while he was awaiting trial, make fascinating and frightening reading.

Answer: The Soviet Army.

Auschwitz was liberated on 27 January 1945 by the Red Army (Russians). By then, most of the prisoners had been taken westwards on death marches. The Soviet troops found about 7,000 sick and desperately malnourished prisoners. The liberation date is now observed as the International Day of Commemoration of the Holocaust.