Feb. 28, 1964 - Officials at Auschwitz (pictured during WWII) preferred to kill Jews rather than non-Jewish Poles because this involved less bookkeeping, Dr. Martin Broszat of the Munich Institute for Contemporary History told the war crimes trial in Frankfurt, Germany today. Dr. Broszat quoted an Auschwitz official as having said that, unlike Jews, “the Poles have to die ‘a natural death’ in Auschwitz.” Jews could be gassed by the thousands with no paperwork, but each Pole required a faked death certificate saying he died of “natural causes,” Dr. Broszat said.
Dr. Broszat said Hitler established three categories of Poles after Poland’s defeat in 1939. The first group was considered fit to be “Germanized,” the second was relegated to slave labor, and the third was considered “racially inferior.” Most members of the third category were sent to Auschwitz, he said.
He stated that, despite their wholesale killing of Poles, the Nazis were always interested in the Polish nation as a “cheap reservoir” of manpower. Between 1.2 and 1.3 million Poles were deported to Germany for slave labor, he said.
Dr. Broszat said German companies, notably the giant I.G. Farben concern, used 20,000 concentration camp inmates as laborers. The concern was broken up by the Allies after World War II.
He quoted a German military leader, Field Marshal Johannes Blaskowitz, as having stated in a message to Hitler that Nazi methods in Poland made him ashamed of being a German. According to Dr. Broszat, Hitler replied that wars “are not won with methods of the Salvation Army.”
