Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Holocaust Almanac - I.G. Farben's Auschwitz Diet...
Summary: Average weight loss per individual: 6.5 to 9 pounds per week...
         Three months from arrival to death by starvation, overwork, and
         simple exhaustion. Contrary to the recent claims of Dan Gannon,
         the starvation at Auschwitz was not the result of "those last
         horrible days of the war," but of deliberate policy.
Reply-To: kmcvay@nizkor.org
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Nizkor Project, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: diet,Farben,starvation

Archive/File: orgs/german/farben.ig farben.002
Last-modified: 1993/10/24
See Also: holocaust diet.01

   I.G. Auschwitz: I.G. Farben's Buna (synthetic rubber) division, built
   near the site of the Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II concentration
   camps. (Farben eventually built their own corporate concentration
   camp at the site, to eliminate the need to march prisoners several
   miles to and from the Buna plant every day, as had been the practice.
   It was known as Monowitz, and had a sign over the gate which read
   "Arbeit Macht Frei.")

[Editor's note: I understand that the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign can be seen
today over the gate at Auschwitz I - this raises the question of whether or
not there were more than one, or if the one the author mentions was moved to
Auschwitz I at a later date, or if the author was simply incorrect. knm]

   "Starvation was a permanent guest at Auschwitz.  The diet fed to I.G.
   Auschwitz inmates, which included the famous 'Buna Soup' - a
   nutritional aid not available to other prisoners - resulted in an
   average weight loss for each individual of about six and a half to
   nine pounds a week.  At the end of a month, the change in the
   prisoner's appearance was marked; at the end of two months, the
   inmates were not recognizable except as caricatures formed of skin,
   bones, and practically no flesh; after three months, they were either
   dead or so unfit for work that they were marked for release to the
   gas chambers at Birkenau.  Two physicians who studied the effect of
   the I.G.  diet on the inmates noticed that 'the normally nourished
   prisoner at Buna could make up the deficiency by his own body for a
   period of three months....The prisoners were condemned to burn up
   their own body weight while working and, providing no infections
   occurred, finally died of exhaustion.'" (Borkin, 125)


                            Work Cited

   Borkin, Joseph. The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben. New York: 
   The Free Press, 1978, and London: Macmillan Publishing Company. 

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