Subject: Kaufering
From: [email protected] (Matt Giwer)
Date: 1996/07/25
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
Sender: shoahm[email protected] (soc.culture.jewish.holocaust Moderator)
Title: Mass Murder in the Dachau Subsidiary Camp of Kaufering
Organization: Shamash
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish.holocaust
In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (Cecelia A Clancy) wrote:
> I wonder if at the Kaufering KZ’s, like at the Auschwitz-Birkenau
> satellites, people were “selected” to be killed when they could
> no longer work. If so, when and where were the killings carried
> out. There was no gas chamber at Dachau (other than possibly an
> experiential one at one time) to my knowledge. But prisoners were
> regularly shot to death there in a specific area near a brick wall.
> So if Kaufering Ha”ftlinge (prisoners) were “selected”, could they
> have been transported to Dachau and shot? Certainly it would have
> been very economically and logistically unfeasible to send them
> all the way to Birkenau to be gassed. Or were they killed by
> some means right in one of the Kaufering KZ’s themselves?
>
Cecelia,
The prisoners at Kauffring Camp #4 were massacred.
The following isa translation of an article from Suddeneutsche Zeeitung, 29.11.1945; and was taken from “Concentration Camp Dachau 1933-1945” (ISBN 3-87490-528-4), p. 221; (Plate 448 with translation.)
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MASS MURDER IN THE DACHAU SUBSIDIARY CAMP OF KAUFERING
No end to the horror
Dachau Nov 29, (from our own correspondent)
The first witness, Capt. J. Barnett, described the conditions which he in Kaufering, a subsidiary camp of Dachau, on April 30, 1945. The witness stated: As I entered the camp, which was surrounded by a two meter high barbed-wire fence flanked by two big watch towers, I discovered a sign on which was written in German No entrance-typhus epidemic. The camp itself was almost completely burned down and near the entrance I found more than 200 almost completely charred bodies. The few uncharred bodies were emaciated skeletons, literally only consisting of skin and bones. The opening of two large makeshift pits, carried out by a Health Officer, revealed a huge number of corpses piled on top of one another, in five layers. The arms and legs of many of the corpses had been broken, apparently to force them into the pit. All life in the camp had been extinguished. The living quarters of the prisoners holes in the earth with a roof over them. One had to pass through a trench to enter each hole. The contents were more than primitive. There were no beds in the living quarters. On the floor there were wood shavings and a few dirty blankets.
I inspected the camps 1, 2, 4, 6 and 7. The latter was a work camp for Jewish prisoners. No. 8 was empty and No, 9, near the airport, had been blown up with the airport. During my inspection of the camp some prisoners appeared who had fled into the woods several days before. Counted like gold and treated like dirt.
One of them was the former Camp Clerk Dr. Fried. In the witness box he related that he had graduated as a medical doctor in Prague. He had come to Kaufering on Oct 6, 1944, along with 1500 other prisoners after the Auschwitz camp had been evacuated. In the camp there were only Jewish prisoners of all nationalities, about 2000 men and 280 women. This figure increased to 3000 by January 1945. The sanitary conditions were absolutely catastrophic. For 3000 prisoners there were, literally, 3 toilet facilities, which were absolutely filthy, as many prisoners had been suffering from dysentery. There were no washing facilities whatsoever, no warm water, no sheets, no towels or under-wear. A prisoner¹s outfit consisted of a jacket, a shirt, a pair of trousers and clogs. These items came for the most part from Jews who had been gassed at Auschwitz. Nutrition was so bad that prisoners died of starvation each day. There were only 400 bowls for 3000 prisoners, which meant that they had to eat in shifts…
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See also:
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/kauffring/dr-larson
In addition Dr. Larson (Colonel, U.S. Army, War Crimes Team 6823 and forensic pathologist) noted that:
“The first Kauffring Camps that Team Number 6823 investigated were located on the east side of the Rhine, situated in and around the town of Landsburg, Germany…. The prisoners were all underfed and poorly housed. Barracks were deplorable. They all wore similar clothing and were unprotected against the winter weather. They were so closely packed together that sanitation was practically nonexistant, and consequently they suffered from multiple diseases. They were all very poorly nourished…” [1].
Mark
1. “Crime Doctor” McCallum & Larson, ISBN 0-916076-20-2; Library of Congress Catalog Number: 78-16403.
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“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties–but right through every human heart–and all human hearts.”
— Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “The Gulag Archipelago”
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